I didn’t go to bed until 4am, and here it is 12:30am again and I’m still up. I can’t seem to get anything done. My brain won’t shut off, but it isn’t doing a very good job of organizing all of the traffic it’s dealing with at the moment… I feel like I need 100 different lists to keep myself straight.

I sat here for an hour trying to make a “quick” Shutterfly book with pics of Mom before my free coupon code expired at midnight. That was a giant FAIL. It’s started, but nowhere near finished…

Today was an okay day. Mom was a little more “with it” – definitely more so than over the weekend, but still staring off into space. Emily came in at lunchtime just as the nurse brought in some ice cream for Mom. I didn’t think she’d take it, but sure enough she ate about half of the little cup – surprised the heck out of me! That’s the first food she’s had since Friday. Still just taking drops of water from the toothette swab. Not much intake at all…

Med adjustments continue, and she had more “awake” time today. They said she slept pretty well last night on the morphine and 1.5mg of Ativan at bedtime. Pain is still an issue through the day, and I did ask for a breakthrough dose at least once today – very small amount, though. Doc put it in perspective this afternoon when he explained that 2.5mg of sublingual morphine is the equivalent of half of a Vicodin or one third of a Percocet.

Since September, I’ve been telling myself I’d get busy on final arrangements so we weren’t doing it at the very end when emotions will be running even higher than they are now. BUT, thus far I’ve done nothing. Jess and I have talked about some ideas over the past few days. Mom never wanted a funeral or traditional setting; she always said she wanted a party. I’m sure that won’t surprise anyone who knows her.

In any case, we will have a Celebration of Life with a short memorial service. Jess and I would love for people to share “Marilyn stories” from over the years, and we truly want to celebrate her LIFE. It will come together, but we need to get serious about planning. I just know that waiting until the last minute would be a bad idea.

You would think with all this sitting around it would be easy to get things like that done, but actually the opposite is true. I really can’t do much of anything at Kobacker House unless I leave Mom’s room. If I’m in there, every time she moans, I want to be at her side. Tomorrow I think I need to make a point to spend a couple of hours in one of the family areas so that I can get a few things crossed off of my to do list.

Today, I sent the first Comfort Keeper home and called the office to tell them not to assign her to us again. She clearly had no interest in being there, and even less interest in taking care of my mom. The woman that came in at 2:30 was great; never left her bedside, talked to her, and held her hand.  Oddly, her birthday is two days after my mom’s. Same year. That makes her 76 years old! She worked 2:30p to 10p today and will be back for 7a to 7p tomorrow. Very easy to see that like Ciara, Cona is meant for this kind of work. Her caring and compassionate nature spoke volumes.