It's been a long time since I've looked at the blog or made anything. My mom's illness took up some time, and more recently - with her death and my stepdads shortly after. Not to mention 3 house moves.
My mom passed away on February 28th, 2016 and I cut my achilles tendon the same day. So, that day was spent in the hospital where I live and then next day I had to go to a hospital 1,5 hrs away to have surgery, that took up another day.
My older sister pretty much had to do everything. My stepdad no longer wanted to live in the condo where he and my mom lived, and I wasn't much help packing up the house since I was on meds and crutches and couldn't put any weight on my foot. Plus she had to take care of me since I couldn't even carry a cup of coffee! I was SO EXCITED to get a walking cast!. That came just in time for me to move in to my mom/stepdads old place in May. Then meant packing up my place and moving also.
My stepdad stayed with some friends until he found a place for June 15th, which was perfect...right across the hall from me in the condo. At this point he was diagnosed with terminal cancer also. Sadly, he did not get to spend much time in his new place and passed away July 9th.
My sister was in Quebec spreading my moms ashes during this time, so this time it was my turn to pack up his place alone. I got the better end of the deal since he didn't own much and we had already went through everything a few months before when mom died.
All in all, it's been a rough 2 years and a really really rough 6 months, and overall, I feel emotionally drained. Just plain out tired. I just tell myself that things can only get better now.
Update: January 23, 2015
I can't believe it's been 6 months since I had any update. My mom had a minor stroke last Friday, but really, no worse for wear. She was only in the hospital for a night or so. There isn't much they can do about it. She has diabetes also, so she needs to start having insulin injections to manage it. She used to take care of it by diet alone, but that's no longer possible. Medication (Metaformin) won't work either, it will be too hard on her liver, especially with the cancer there.
Update: July 9, 2014
Time flies!
My mom is home from the hospital and really, not to worse for wear. There doesn't seem to be any physical change from the stroke, but I think it's affected her short term memory a wee bit. She still remembers all the stories and everything, but when she's talking she'll stop and forget what she was talking about.
She definitely can pack away the food and treats! I have brought her 3 dozen pumpkin cookies and all the date squares. The cookies are gone and there are only a few date squares left. I'll bring her the Jelly Roll today!
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Update: June 25, 2014I'm now in BC and have visited my mom in the hospital. She had a stroke while we were enroute (driving) to BC.
She's tired, but coherent, and still likes to laugh. She was so happy to know I was staying indefinitely, since I let her believe I was just coming for a vacation. I'm glad I got to see her smile for that!
I'm here, I've told her I love her, she has told me she loves me, so all the rest are additional blessings.
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This is me and I'm making some major life changes.
I'm leaving the big city of Toronto going to a SMALL town in British Columbia. Think 5.5 MILLION in the GTA compared to 800...yes, I said 800. The closest 'town' has a generous 4,000 people and the closest 'city' is an hour and a half away and has 24,000 give or take. It won't be a complete culture shock, I've been there many times. It's where my dad lived and died; where my sister lived, moved away, and moved back to; and where my mom lives and will die.
My mom has terminal cancer and since I don't know what I might feel in the future, I would rather have it be 'I wish I spent MORE time with my mom' and not 'I wish I had spent SOME time with my mom'. I can't afford to fly back and forth across the country and I don't have the vacation days I'd need either.
It took a bit of time for my mom to come to terms with having terminal cancer, but when she did, she wanted to be sure that we had things of hers that meant something to us. She didn't want to wait until it was too late.
I have her old cookbooks. I'm not sure where she got all of them.. I know she didn't go out and buy them when they were published, since she would of been too young, I'll have to ask her.
I also have a few scribblers where she wrote down her favourite recipes; one is 30 yrs old. I'll get to those recipes too…but growing up on her cooking, I already know how they taste and I've made them myself many times. These notebooks are my prized possession, not only do they contain a recipe history of what my mom wanted to remember, but also notes jotted down by all of us through the years (my favourites are the pages where my daughter drew stick figures or tried to write her name).
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