Such Devoted Sisters

On August 11, I wrote of the loss of my Aunt Kittie and my memories of her. Tonight I'm writing about the death of my mother, Paula, on Thursday, Oct. 1.

If you didn't know them well, you might not know that Mom and Aunt Kittie were as close as sisters can get without being twins. And while they spent their middle decades raising families and creating careers, their childhood and their retirement were spent together.

When my father died in 1990, Aunt Kittie had recently retired, and she moved up to San Luis Obispo to help with his caregiving. After he had passed, Mom invited her to stay on and the two sisters lived together, naming their shared home "Hag Harbor."

On Labor Day weekend, just weeks after Kittie died, Steve and I went up to Arroyo Grande to visit. It was ostensibly to get out of the fire zone for a time, but I also wanted to see how Mom was doing. I had worried that, like an old married couple, when the first one died the other would not be far behind.

On that visit, Mom seemed OK with Kittie's death, but I think she was denying or cloaking the loss she felt. Mom often said she hoped she would survive Kittie, because she was worried what might happen if she weren't there for her sister. So I wasn't too surprised when my sister Kittie (named for her aunt) called me on Thursday, Sept. 24, and explained that Mom had been in the hospital and that things didn't look good. "They think her lungs are shutting down," she said.

Aunt Kittie's memorial was being held on Sunday, Sept. 27, so we had planned on going up the coast in any case. When we got there Saturday, Mom was sitting in her chair in the living room looking worn out and barely speaking above a whisper. On Sunday, we had a wonderful memorial for Kittie, but everyone was asking where Paula was; surely she wouldn't miss her sister's memorial. During the memorial, my brother-in-law David slipped away and helped the home health nurse move Mom back to a hospital bed in her room. He returned after the formalities were over, and we let close friends know the situation.

The family that came to town for the memorial stayed on, and my brother Steve's family arrived from Wisconsin on Tuesday. His daughter Amanda is a healthcare professional and was a godsend, both for Mom and everyone there. Mom was medicated and as comfortable as possible, and we all felt much better knowing someone was there who was not only family but skilled in hospice care.

On Wednesday, Mom's breathing became very shallow and she was nonresponsive. Thursday afternoon, about 1:30, Amanda came out to the patio where the family was sitting and announced that Mom's breathing was going. Ten minutes later she could no longer find a pulse, and Mom was gone.

I told myself I was not going to write about this right away; I was going to give myself some time to collect photos and organize my thoughts, but I'm just not willing to do that. I may visit this experience again in other posts, but I have to put it down here now, because seeing the blog published will help me make this a little bit more real. Certainly, there will be things about her I will recall now and then for the rest of my life. I just hope the memories don't come with questions, because she's not around to answer them anymore.

My sister Kittie and her husband Dave have been absolutely the most fabulous, greatest people to Mom and Aunt Kittie over the past several years, especially when health problems limited the sisters' ability to get around. Kittie and Dave live just a few miles from the Moms (as Paula and Kittie were known in our extended families), and their presence as helpers was a reassurance to us all. It's not only that they were there to help, but also because the sisters had a habit of going into the hospital for something and never bothering to tell anyone.

Kittie and David were our touchstone to Hag Harbor. And, ever the accountant and stage manager, my sister is a master of planning, organization and confluence. Her husband Dave is a genius in the mechanical realm, so the sisters were in good hands whenever the couple were there.

it's early in the morning and the therapeutic value of this writing has been depleted. Now I'm just looking forward to sleeping in my own bed after this weeklong vigil. Obviously, there will be more later. But the saddest part of all is that, when I write my blog, I write knowing Mom will be reading it, so I write to her. But I see no reason to change that.