Take to the Sky

Tomorrow we will be leaving for California on a not-a-vacation trip. My wife's mother is very ill and we're going to visit her. It's been a long struggle over the past few years with a lot of hope and even more disappointment, but it appears we're dwindling down to end-of-life options. Her mother worked hard her whole life and never planned to retire -- in both senses of the phrase "plan to retire." She felt she'd keep working until...well, she'd just keep working. However, that hasn't been possible and while she'd been relatively energetic the last few years, even that didn't last. This fall has been rough.

As difficult a trip as this one will be, we will also have two young children with us who don't really understand what's happening and quite frankly as far as the older one goes, won't sit still long enough to spend proper time with my mother-in-law. Which means I will most likely have to shepherd the kids around somewhere. But we've been through that before.

The weather of course will be beautiful and not appropriate at all for dying. My mother-in-law worked all her life providing the same critical care she now needs. In some ways she's fortunate to be in the same system in which she used to work; the doctors, nurses, and staff all know her. I don't know. We've had years, ever since the first diagnosis of late-stage cancer, to come to grips with this time, but no one ever really comes to grips with the finality of it.

All you can do is be there.