The van from hell

This is a post from my blog of two years ago before I moved to Louisiana. My mom’s death was a defining moment in my life, and I’m posting this to give my new Substack friends a chance to get to know me. My mom was a little trippy after anesthesia…

We left the hospital in the van from hell. I could not believe that the vehicle used by institutions created to heal and care for, in this case, the frail, sick and elderly, could be so entirely pieces of junk. My 100 year old mother, who had suffered a fractured femur repaired three days earlier with several screws, sat in her usual upright posture, strapped to a wheelchair that was held to the floor by four thick cords. None of this reinforcement seemed to keep her, and myself on the seat in front of her, from being jostled around like a blow up yard decoration in the wind.

I wondered about patients with internal injuries, and if their transport would be handled any differently. Her poor leg, propped up on the foot holder of the wheelchair, jostled with every bump and hole of the parish roads leading to the rural town of Lacombe, north of New Orleans, the town where her parents had once had a home, passed down to her sister and her children who my mother had taken in over the years at various times of transition; where my brothers used to catch fish at the fish hatchery in the 50s. She had come full circle back to the land of her roots to heal.

During her three days at hospital, she had developed the idea that she was dying and that all this fuss was really not necessary. She had come up with several ideas to speed up the process. Can you just hit me over the head? How about one of those pills that just makes you go to sleep except you don’t wake up? Or how about just some whiskey? How much of this was the effect of the anesthetic and pain meds, I’ll never know. But in the van ride, it continued.

This must be strange for you. How many daughters get to go with their mothers like this to be buried? That’s where we’re going, isn’t it? To the cemetery?

When I tried to explain that she had broken her leg and was going someplace where we could get help to heal from it, she insisted that the leg didn’t hurt, that at this point in her life, why bother with all this, she was not going to be around long enough for any of this to matter. This was all said with a calm and serene, often flippant manner. No complaining or frustration, more of a commentary on the absurdity of it all.

As I consider this now, all the physical, occupational and speech therapy. The switch to pureed food, the leg braces, the exercises, I wonder: what if we had just brought her home, put her in a recliner next to a nice window, a potty chair nearby, let her eat and drink whatever she wanted and die there without all the institutional hassle.

Of course, you never know. How long will it be? Will she walk again? Will she aspirate her food and die of pneumonia? What should I be doing now? What’s the best solution for everyone?

I had her here close to me for three blessed months during the most glorious autumn I can remember. That’s what I know. The rest is past.