Goodbyes

Note: I wrote this to force myself into venting a few emotions that have been running high. I started writing this post on the 1 year anniversary of my Mom's passing and have added onto it over the last month based on reflections, my personal diary entries and talking with my family, please note that this post talks about death, grief and mental health issues. Please take care.

The day is 17 July 2025, 11 o'clock at night. A World of Warcraft patch just hit and I had just finished datamining music for work to post online when Mom called. Grandma had a fall and was in the emergency room. Mom was pretty worried and I told her I'd come to the hospital to handle updates on Grandma so Mom could rest as much as possible without wanting to take control of the situation (she liked doing that). Mom had been in the hospital for about a month at that point and was diagnosed with cancer only ~2 weeks earlier. I remained in the hospital for a few hours that night until the situation calmed down a bit and Mom sent me home again.

The next morning on the 18th Mom was moved to the hospice down the street, but thanks to the nurses was able to make a drive-by stop at Grandma's bed. A bit after she settled in the hospice, I biked over to spend the day there. I set up the TV for her and logged in on some of the streaming services so she had stuff to watch. She appreciated it but didn't seem too interested for reasons that make sense in hindsight and was probably just humoring me. In that state you don't exactly want to watch Netflix.

Her room was a small room connected to a small porch with a garden overlooking the road towards the hospital. She was hooked up to a noisy machine for oxygen and had trouble breathing, not helped by the fact there was a heatwave going on at the time as well. There was a small bird house in the garden with a bird regularly visiting it for food and water. We both love animals but she had trouble seeing it so I managed to grab a picture of it to show her. I still look at that picture regularly.

We talked about her impending visit to the zoo the next day as part of her last wish to go see the koalas. She was going to be transported by a special ambulance service dedicated to fulfilling people's last wishes. She didn't feel up for the trip, probably because she knew what was coming so we had to cancel it. Dad was able to bring the cat that day (also a day earlier than planned) so they could say goodbye to eachother which I'm still very happy we were able to do, even the cat seemed to have some understanding of what was going on and behaved pretty well. There was a minor escape attempt, but we got that under control pretty quick.

Around lunch I visited grandma (who was fast asleep) and then grabbed some food for dad and myself. I think it was during that time when Mom told Dad that she was proud of both of us and that she had a good life. This is something I only heard the next day, but I'm glad she was able to be at peace in that regard.

As the day went on it was harder for her to catch her breath, so we just sat and tried to evade having long conversations for a while so it was easier on her. At some point when it was getting pretty late we all decided it was best leave and go home and get a good night of sleep as the last few days were going to be difficult, most of all for her.

I left the hospice that night without knowing it was my last proper day with Mom and I frankly don't even remember saying goodbye properly. I'm sure I did, I just don't remember. My memory sucks, so I'm glad I kept a diary throughout the whole process. One thing I wrote down that day is that I realized it wouldn't be a matter of weeks, but I definitely didn't realize it would be about a day at that point or I would have stayed.

I got a call the next morning as I was preparing to leave to get there a bit quicker. She was unconcious and not waking up. Her breathing was irregular and she had what I knew to be the "death rattle" where you are too weak to swallow in the last steps before the body gives up entirely. Its not like in the movies where people pass away peacefully, she was very restless and required morphine to calm her breathing a bit.

With grandpa visiting grandma in the hospital down the street and dad grabbing a smoke, one of the moments I was alone with her I distinctly remember her she was the best Mom I could have hoped for and that I'll miss her dearly. I'll never know if she heard me or not and realistically speaking at that point she probably didn't, but she knew this regardless.

In classic me fashion, the stress was catching up with me and my health issues were playing up and I had to make regular trips to the toilet while dad and grandpa stayed with mom. Grandma was in the hospital down the street, so all the direct family was closeby that day. During one of the trips I heard my grandpa in the hallway telling the hospice staff that his daughter had passed. I will never forget that moment, my heart sank and I finished up in record speeds to lock in as best as I could. In a way the timing felt intentional on her part to spare me the stress from having to figure out if she'd actually passed or not as the moments where she stopped breathing for a bit during the day were pretty scary already. When I entered the room it was pretty clear, but we had to wait for a doctor to come officially confirm it. We sat with her for another hour until the person who takes care of things arrived. We talked over next steps and a few hours later Mom's body was picked up in a the most respectful way possible. In a way it was a small ceremony on its own, and I will never forger closing the rear hatch on that van. That was the last time I saw her.

In a way I am glad that she passed as quickly as she did and didn't have months of treatment and misery to go through, just those 2 weeks of hell. On the other hand, we had so many plans together still. We had been putting several things off for a while now given both of our health issues, but neither of us expected any of this to happen and that we still had many many years of things to do together. Fate however had other plans.

The next day Dad came over so we could compose a list of people to send cards to together. What a strange concept. It took us a bit, but I think we managed to address most people that we thought should know. The funeral was going to be a closed funeral with direct family only, so there weren't any invites to deal with. As a picture, we picked one of the Koala's from Ouwehands Zoo, where we were supposed to go for her last wish.

Then came the Monday. Picking out a spot for the grave in the cemetary is also a very strange thing. Would she have had preferences? This obviously hadn't really come up. In the end we picked a spot geographically the closest to the direction all of us live. After that we were supposed to do a "closing of the coffin" ceremony, but the person arranging all this, bless her, suggested against going forward with it and to have our last memory of her as she was at the end, not how she was now. Instead I decided to visit grandma in the hospital with grandpa, we had a little cry which was nice in a way.

A few days later we had the funeral with just my dad, my Mom's parents and me in attendance. Grandma was in the revalidation center across the street from the hospital at this point, but wasn't mobile enough yet for us to get her to the funeral. We were thankfully able to enlist the help of the earlier mentioned ambulance service to get her to the funeral, I guided them there and the people from the ambulance service were absolutely amazing the whole way, the kind of people that restore one's faith in humanity. The funeral was short but good, very thankful to everyone from the cemetary, the ambulance service and the coffin transporters for helping out that day (well, we did pay them for it, but thats besides the point).

The next few days only have have sporadic entries in my diary. One entry notes "When I really try and think about everything, it is like I see a huge ball of emotions in the distance, but can't quite reach them. There's walls in the way, and I have yet to figure out how to traverse them." That was a year ago now, and I think I'm still largely in that same spot. I'm still regularly slapped in the face by grief by the most random things, but I'm told that is normal. I initially had issues being at my parents place, but recently had to catsit and thankfully got over that. One thing that has surprised me is that I haven't been able to make an emotional connection yet when going to her grave. Either the feelings are still too big, or I simply can't connect those neurons together for some reason.

Anyway, going back to around a year ago, I wrote this diary entry that I'll paste in verbatim;

I'm definitely sad, but also angry too I think. Not at mom but at the circumstances. It's not fair and I hate that. I don't like injustice in the first place but this is on another level. I don't know how to even start processing these feelings. I'm glad mom didn't suffer much at the end but the suffering there was and the short time she or for that matter we all had to deal with it is just so maddening. I don't know what to do with that.

I guess the only thing there is to do is to keep going. I'll admit that that is a hard thing for me to look forward to keep doing right now. My idea of a future in my head is currently no longer than a week away. After that whatever happens happens. There's stuff I had to deal with in terms of my identity and sense of self before mom passed, but now she has I feel like part of that sense of self left with her. She was my rock. I keep saying it because it's true. I'm going to have to restart dealing with my stuff once I've somehow dealt with all this.

My current driving factor is purely tied to finding out what is next for the entertainment I enjoy. Whether that be WoW, TV shows, Valve games or some of the content creators I watch. That is a problem. I only get fulfillment from people using my tools and stuff I make, but that is the extent of that emotion and is once again tied to WoW.

Sure, I want to keep going for my family (only grandpa, grandma and dad are left) and the handful of friends and all that too, but that doesn't really motivate me beyond that week. And sure, I want to expand my skillset and learn more, but that is also not a primary motivator.

I'm definitely not thinking of ending it or anything, that would make me feel exceptionally bad, but if the world came to an end tomorrow I'd be both be disappointed at how little I've achieved in my life yet and that I haven't become the person I want to be, but also content that it is done with in a way that is out of my control. Isn't that crazy?

Something to think and reflect about and maybe get help with at some point.

While some of the things in that diary entry still are true today, I do think I've made progress on a few things. I've been restarting my journey to deal with my sense of self, my moral compass and who I am, but it is and will remain to be slow. My direct future is still about a week long in length, but I am slowly working on developing longer term plans again and thinking about/looking forward to things beyond a week from now. The feelings I mentioned are still feelings I have trouble with, but every time I talk about them with Dad or my grandparents, it helps me give them a place a little bit more. I don't think they can go away, but I think I can stash them and build a process to not feel them as hard. Motivation is still an issue. I've also decided to try and find excitement and fulfillment outside of the internet given its current state, but that is a topic for another blog post.

Either way, this seems like a good stopping point. Writing this post was something I wanted to do regardless of publishing it or not. My dad read about half of the post as he came over while I was writing it and I think it helped in a way, so I'm deciding to go ahead and publish this in the hopes someone else can learn from it, either about how these type of things can go and maybe decide to spend times with their loved ones more.

See you in the next blog post.