My mother's hospitalization
A few years later, I got a phone
call from my
brother, who also lived in Northern California. Our mother
had
been hospitalized after a bowel blockage burst inside her.
She
was recovering from surgery where, among other things, the doctors had
performed a colostomy. She was out of immediate danger,
though,
and he was visiting her regularly.
At the time, I was up to my ears in a consulting project for a high-profile client shelling out more for my services than I’d ever been paid for anything. Since my mother was out of the main danger zone, I didn’t see a need to drop everything and fly immediately to Northern California. I did phone her, though, and she understood when I told her it would probably be a few weeks before I could see her in person.
A week or two later, I called her again—and was startled by what I heard. She sounded better than I could recall ever having heard her. There was something distinctly fresh and warm and… well, alive…in her voice. I complimented her on it, and she told me she’d been referred to a program for depressed seniors. She felt it was doing her a lot of good.
After I got off the call, I wondered if the people in the depression program might get in touch with my brother and me, to maybe learn more about the kinds of things she had once enjoyed, or whatever. As I considered this question, I found I couldn’t come up with anything except a one-time interest in bridge, which she had played regularly for a little while with some other women on our block.
It was at that point that it hit me that she might well have been clinically depressed for my entire life.
Not too long after that call, my mom told me she’d had to leave the depression program and go back to the hospital where she’d had her surgery. (I hadn’t realized in our earlier conversation that she’d been moved in the first place.) She also described some sort of infection that required the services of a full-blown hospital.
It wasn’t long after this that my brother phoned to say she’d died of sepsis. Alone. On the floor of her bathroom at the hospital.
At the time, I was up to my ears in a consulting project for a high-profile client shelling out more for my services than I’d ever been paid for anything. Since my mother was out of the main danger zone, I didn’t see a need to drop everything and fly immediately to Northern California. I did phone her, though, and she understood when I told her it would probably be a few weeks before I could see her in person.
A week or two later, I called her again—and was startled by what I heard. She sounded better than I could recall ever having heard her. There was something distinctly fresh and warm and… well, alive…in her voice. I complimented her on it, and she told me she’d been referred to a program for depressed seniors. She felt it was doing her a lot of good.
After I got off the call, I wondered if the people in the depression program might get in touch with my brother and me, to maybe learn more about the kinds of things she had once enjoyed, or whatever. As I considered this question, I found I couldn’t come up with anything except a one-time interest in bridge, which she had played regularly for a little while with some other women on our block.
It was at that point that it hit me that she might well have been clinically depressed for my entire life.
Not too long after that call, my mom told me she’d had to leave the depression program and go back to the hospital where she’d had her surgery. (I hadn’t realized in our earlier conversation that she’d been moved in the first place.) She also described some sort of infection that required the services of a full-blown hospital.
It wasn’t long after this that my brother phoned to say she’d died of sepsis. Alone. On the floor of her bathroom at the hospital.
(c) COPYRIGHT 2024 ROBERT
WINTER. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
