Denial, Bargaining...

I've never seen anyone die, but I may be seeing it now.

My mother was moved out of the ICU and back to a normal hospital room, which we'd normally take as a good thing. But she's pretty weak, and her deteriorated lungs are making it difficult for her to breathe. Nobody at the hospital has said 'make plans', and it feels a little ghoulish for me to be doing it -- but we are, just a little. Asking ourselves the kinds of questions that could be expected to come up, having the feelings that could be expected. Some that wouldn't -- my wife said she was okay with taking food from my mother's refrigerator if she was just using it to keep it from going bad, but when she contemplates that my mother might not be coming back, she's suddenly not willing to touch it.

For me, I find myself wondering: if I hadn't brought her to the pulmonary doctor, which indirectly led to her admission into the hospital, would she still be okay? Not great, certainly out of breath, but okay? The cardiologist seemed to think not, but I don't know. We wonder: if I hadn't, could she have had a stroke, or worse, at home? Something we couldn't handle, or get care for, in time? Certainly, the hospital sounded like a good idea. But -- we brought in an elderly woman with a fast heartbeat, frequently out of breath, who five days later was sitting up, talking, eating dinner, with a controlled heartbeat, not out of breath at all. Five days after that, she's in a bed, saying she finds it hard to breathe, and getting last rites from the hospital chaplain. And somewhere along the line, she picked up ringworm. What if I hadn't?

Its not that its tough to think about, or even painful. I just don't want to think about it, period. I know I didn't cause it, but I feel as if I facilitated it.