Emails to Heaven

Hi Mom.

It’s Kristy — of course — using email of course. My role!

I say hello and goodbye to you in the guest room all the time because I know you can hear me now — no more pesky hearing aids. I just hope you are well with Dad, Dan, your family, your friends, and not upset with any of us for what you didn’t have — a beautiful death. Like Dad.

You won’t think so, but selfishly speaking, I’m glad you were with family right up to the end, and not alone in Hawaii with us too far to get to you in time. It was good for us, not for you.

Clif was in the air when you finally left us, almost here. We were all together to care for each other.

You already know about what we did for you at the funeral home. It was a very profound experience for us, to be able to be the last hands touching you and kissing you goodbye. Warm at last, in your favorite sweater and you looked VERY good! Beautiful!

I’m writing now to beg for help from you, Dan, and Dad, to help with Clif and Kathleen. The pair of them, the health is so bad and Clif’s remorse about Hawaii is killing him also.

Please help me care for them and guide them in getting through these complicated and scary times.

If you can, I know you will anyway, but it never hurts to send these messages.

I miss you, my mother, in my house. It was a blessing to have you for so long. I wish we could have done more, seen more, played more. It wasn’t to be, but what adventures we had during this crazy year of terrible weather and disasters.

Please come and help your children when and if you can.

I’ll keep talking to you.

I love you Mom.

Mom is fading. I’ve been seeing her everyday in Hospice care. I pray I did not act hasty but the surgeon gave her as short as 3 days or as long as six months, and she is in such pain.

This care home I found is so clean and beautiful, with such nice staff, but at the same time I’m SO sad that Mom isn’t home in Hawaii, where she is desperate to be, or at least still in my own house — in the guest room I created for her, or finally, even in a city she knows. She’s in a strange place in a strange city with unknown people.

I know she is safe, and clean, and comfortable, but I’m heartbroken she is in this place that means nothing to her, a city that means nothing to her, while at the same time I’m relieved as to how much care she is receiving.

Clif is on his way to see Mom today. His plane arrives today. He will stay with me a few days while he sees Mom. He will be so anxious and broken when he sees how far she has declined. He is not prepared for it, thinking he can “take her lunch” when I’m just pleased she opens her eyes and recognizes me.

Kathleen starts chemotherapy soon. She is a terrible state and I don’t know when she’ll make it up to see Mom for the last time. She is carrying her own burdens.

I’ve been praying that you bring Mom home to you guys, as soon as you can, so that she isn’t miserable and suffering, or, show me another way — can you make her healthy and stable? I don’t want her gone for my convenience, but I’m adrift knowing how to take care of her up here in these mountains, with such access problems with Kaiser and Medicare. It frightens me to be on this “island of uncertainty.”

Mom came for a visit and never got to go home — it’s just a tragic set of circumstances to leave her house that way, not saying goodbye to her friends and her life in Hawaii, and ending up here, on a strange lifeboat with strange faces, knowing this may be where she dies.

Please bring Mom home to be with you. Please, Dad. Please, Daniel. HELP US.

I miss you both and I love you both.

xox
Kristy