Pearls of Wisdom and Foolish Mutterings

Maple Fudge

My mother loved maple fudge, maple donuts, just anything maple. I can never pass up buying maple-flavored anything, whether it's donuts or candy. As an example, yesterday when Charles and I were driving home from spending the weekend at his company ranch, we stopped at Bucky's (my idea - I wanted to stop for some fudge.) I stood at the fudge counter eyeing all the delicious-looking types of fudge, trying to decide which one(s) I would buy. Then I saw the maple fudge. It was out of the question to NOT buy it. So I did. In honor of Mom.

That fudge started me thinking; remembering little things about Mom - her quirks, her wonderful laugh, her favorite things. One of the last times Mom was here to visit, my sister, Kathy, was here, too. The three of us loaded into my car with my two daughters and headed out to Galveston. We shopped for a while on The Strand (a reclaimed part of Old Galveston with lots of trendy stores - a real tourist trap - but lovely, nonetheless) and we found a candy store where they sold homemade fudge. Mom got her favorite, of course. Maple fudge. I can't remember if I paid for it or if she did. I hope I did.

Then we all climbed back in the car and drove to the ferry landing. We waited in line for quite a while to take the ferry over to Crystal Beach. It was a weekday, so the beach was empty, only a few stragglers here and there. We parked the car and got out. Kathy and I hauled out our cameras and we all started clowning for the cameras. I don't know how many pictures we took, but it was a lot. We were happy. Mom laughed a lot; we all did. In fact, that was the last time I remember Mom being happy. She seemed so young and vibrant and beautiful. It's one of my favorite memories of Mom.



The next time she came to visit, she wasn't the same. Even though it was only a few years later, she seemed to have aged tremendously. She always liked being sick; she liked the attention she got when she was sick. She had been diagnosed with COPD or emphysema - it changed with every conversation. Her doctor had arranged for her to have hospice care. She had been under hospice care for less than a year at that time. She came to my house lugging her oxygen tank and liquid morphine. And a plethora of other medicines. She wasn't frail, but she acted the part. I always said that she would "cry wolf" one too many times and it would come back to bite her.

She wasn't happy during that visit. She wanted me to "accept" that she was dying. Her nurses at hospice had prepped her; "tell them this. tell them that." She didn't want me to ask questions about her hospice care. She got nervous when I tried to ask her why she was under hospice care. "I'm dying," she would say, getting more and more agitated. It didn't add up. She went home unhappy that I had not "embraced the truth," forgetting, obviously, that I had watched her play these games all of my life.

She remained under hospice care for three more years - a total of four years in hospice care. When I asked her, "Isn't hospice a short-term thing for people who are in the end stages of a fatal disease? You've been on it for four years. How is that possible?" She would explain it to me as if I were a child, "I am dying. I have a fatal disease."

Kathy and I began peppering the hospice program where she lived with phone calls. We left messages with our mother for the nurses to call us. Our calls were never answered, messages to call us back were ignored. We paid a visit to Mom and she slept the whole time - a drugged sleep. We were horrified at the number of medications on her bedside table. Every narcotic you can imagine, sleeping pills, morphine pills, liquid morphine - it was staggering. We tried talking to the nurses when they came by. They told us how very sick she was and how brave she was. "Why has she been under hospice care for four years?" my sister pointedly asked. "Is it not possible that the drugs you are giving her are causing her problems?" They were sorry, but they had other patients to see and would not be able to stay any longer. "Please call the director if you have any questions," they tossed back over their shoulder on the way out the door.

Kathy and I decided to kidnap Mom to get her away from hospice. Kathy showed up unannounced, packed Mom's bags and practically had to drag her to her car. Mom was scared she would get in trouble. "I can't leave unless they give me permission," she kept insisting. Kathy drove away with her, in spite of Mom's protestations.

When Mom was examined at the hospital in Albuquerque, the doctors determined that her health wasn't all that bad; yes she had emphysema, but it wasn't severe, it wasn't the problem. Her drug dependency was. Drugs that the hospice program had put her on and kept her on for four years.  She could live for many more years, IF - and it was a big if - IF they could wean her off the morphine, percodan and all the other narcotics I can't recall - there were too many. We had hope. We were sure we had saved her. But my brother, Mike, told us that Mom might not survive detoxing from the morphine. She had been on an incredibly high dosage and we had no idea for how long. It was dangerous, Mike told us.

We didn't save her. She never came out of that hospital in Albuquerque. Weaning her from her morphine addiction produced a severe psychosis. She was convinced we were all trying to kill her. There was a rapist roaming the halls of the hospital. Twice she called 911 from her hospital room. She hid behind the door and tried to conk a nurse over the head with a glass flower vase. The nurses found her trying to crawl into bed with another patient in another room. She was scared; there's a rapist, you know, she told them.

She was moved to the psych ward. Things went downhill quickly, very quickly. Even though she had been weaned off the oxygen she was on and was able to take walks in the halls without any oxygen; even though the doctors told her she was not dying and that she could easily live another 10-15 years, she didn't believe them. She kept trying to call hospice where she had lived to come and rescue her. One day, she insisted she couldn't breathe, she had a severe panic attack. Her psychosis worsened. Everyone wanted her dead, she screamed. I can't breathe, she gasped. Nothing, no one could calm her. The doctors said they had no choice; they had to intubate her. Would we agree? Yes, yes! Just keep her alive.

She was never able to come off the ventilator. She died in that hospital, thinking her daughters wanted her dead. We were all there - Kathy, my brother, Mike, me, her sister and her favorite cousin. We all kept vigil over her for two-and-one-half days. Then she was gone. She was only sixty-six.

I miss her. I want to eat maple fudge with her and make her laugh. But I can't. So, I buy maple fudge and think of her while I eat it by myself.