I shall post this both in alt.sewing and rec.crafts.textiles.quilting.
Dear Friends,
thank you for your good thoughts, prayers and warm wishes towards my mother. Much to my regret I have to say that she passed away on Saturday morning at about 9:45 a.m. after a short but increasingly worsening illness. The Big C was a bit too big and too fast; the palliative doctor who saw her through her last days said that within the week she had been out of hospital not only the metastases (yes, it's a plural) in her liver had increased in size and number but that there were now lots of them all over her abdomen. I guess they were almost everywhere. She took the sacrament with us (husband and children) and her cousin, my godmother, on Monday last, and was greatly comforted by this, especially since the woman minister was one of her good friends.
On Tuesday morning, my DF found her out of bed; she had dreamt something about a girl running down a hill. Of course she hurt herself, and was sent to hospital to get x-rays. Nothing broken, and they sent her back to us, fortunately. That day we called in the palliative doctor who put her on morphine and a couple of other useful drugs. She really could hardly swallow any more, so it was a great relief for her. It was clear that she wouldn't last much longer so he didn't insist on any form of nourishment but just a litre of physiologic salt solution with all the drugs in it over 24 hrs. From Wednesday she was without speech, hardly coherent it seemed. We didn't attribute this to morphine but to the general progress of her illness. We took turns, reading to her, singing to her (those who could, I couldn't) or just holding her hand and stroking her hair. The nurse said the she must have noticed because her breathing changed to the calmer. On Saturday my dad had gone down to get himself some breakfast; while he sat there, the nurse came to look after my mom, and obviously found her dead.
We are all so lost without her, and I don't know how my father will go on. He bravely keeps a businesslike face most of the time but there are moments when he breaks down in tears. So far, I had seen my dad shedding tears only once: I must have been about 6 years old, we were both in a tiny dinghy off the Swedish coast, it was raining, and our outboard motor was failing us again, I don't know how many times. Anyway, the nurse had taken out the needle, bound up her chin, and arranged her hands so that she looked almost asleep and much more relaxed than we all had seen her for many years. Today the undertaker took her away and we gave him a dress, some nice undies and the knit scarf I gave her for Christmas and her birthday - she was so fond of that. The funeral will be on Thursday and there is still so much to do. I don't know what to do when all the turmoil is over. However, I still have my husband and my beloved daughter and only hope that at least they will not be taken from me soon.
Sorry for the long post, but I think you will understand, and thanks for listening.
U.