Is there a way that you could give her an experience, rather than an object? Maybe watching one of her favorite movies together, or some dorky craft that you could do together? It probably won’t matter what it is as long as she gets to do it with you.
My mom has lung cancer too, spread to several places including the brain. sigh. It feels like there isn’t really anything I can do, or say, or wrap that will matter as much as I want it to, but she likes my company and I’ll bet your mom feels the same.
Maybe a digital picture frame loaded up with photos? It can just run there by her side with a lot of happy memories and thoughts. Heck, I like having one on my desk at work with pictures of my wife and bambinas.
My mum did this during the final weeks of her best friend’s life (also cancer). It is a brilliant suggestion. With another old family friend it was visits, talking with people about the old days. Mum’s friend didn’t have the energy for that.
And also the favourite book / music suggestions, too. Especially if it’s something she talked about while you were growing up. Anything that will give her immediate pleasure, every day from now through to her birthday and beyond if you get the chance.
Dad fought cancer (initially diagnosed as “lung cancer related to smoking”, apparently it was “pleural cancer related to asbestos” instead) for over three years. We’d get him food treats that he could enjoy in all but the weakest days (there were also some foods which eventually got “reserved” for him on normal time because they were what he could eat on those bad days; it’s been ten years since he died and I still can’t eat chopped pork), we let him choose what was on TV or which movie from his extensive collection to play (mind you, it’s not like the rest of us hated Sergeant York or Stagecoach either - “you start from the one at the back” is one of our in-jokes). We were careful to avoid tiring him, but the only one who tried to pamper him (and who would occasionally be told “I’m sick but not dead, I can break my own bread”) was Mom.
My brother and his gf of 7 years got married 6 months before Dad’s death; they had originally, when the diagnosis was “superb expectations” been planning on waiting for him to get healed. They changed plans for unrelated reasons, but Mom was still angry that they’d changed them (neither Dad nor her father liked the choice of specific date, as it’s one with heavy political connotations, but he was perfectly happy about them getting married). After Dad died, I know of more than 10 people who told her “I’m so glad he got to see his son married!” - they didn’t do it as a gift to him, but in the end it was.
I came back home to help take care of him, but it was a push-pull situation: I was living in the US at the time, trying to get any information on the situation was like asking Uncle Scrooge for candy money (the only available channel was my mother, and if denial was a river she would’a been floating), and my employers decided it “was better for all parties concerned” if I moved from “legal immigrant” to “illegal worker” - if my employers hadn’t been pigs, I would have gone home for the funeral; if my father hadn’t been dying, I might have done what they wanted (it’s not the official rules of the game, but the written rules and the actual rules are different).
I think the best gift is a combination of being there for them with keeping as much of your own life as you possibly can. SiL’s Dad would get jealous when the people around him paid heed to anything else (say, a 2yo kid asking potty - that one incident really stuck in my craw), but it wasn’t because he was dying of ALS, it was because he was a self-centered git; Dad would have berated us and told us to call a doctor for ourselves if we’d stopped going on day trips with friends or looking for jobs for his sake.
I somewhat recently had the same discussion with my family about what to get my dying Grandma on her birthday. “We” eventually decided that I would be getting her a picture of myself for her bedside, her favorite type of cheesecake and a remastered Frankie Valli CD. She really appreciated it, especially the old music that me and my cousins brought her. The cheesecake just sat there because she wasn’t hungry
Another vote for pictures + music + flowers.
Mix CDs. Read to her from her favorite book. Cook her favorite meal. Make a collage of her favorite places. Tell her you love her and that she’s the best mom ever.
This is great. As someone who’s struggling with cancer, my ipod is the best thing my husband has ever given me. I can lay with my eyes closed, listening to audio books, podcasts, favorite music, when I have no energy for anything else. It helps also in the dead of night when I’m in too much pain to sleep, but don’t want to go the trouble of turning on a light to read.
So many great ideas in this thread. And more than that, it’s so oddly nice to share all this.
More bad news from the doctor today. Mom is a classic case of what happens when lung cancer moves to the brain. The radiation did what it was supposed to do, but that wasn’t good enough. She had a seizure (we think) a week ago, and the cognitive decline and bed-boundness mean she’s basically living on borrowed time.
The fact that she doesn’t seem to know what’s going on, can’t really talk, and mostly just sleeps makes a lot of these wonderful suggestions not applicable.
I’m trying to take congodwarf’s advice and not mourn prematurely. Mom and I, we had a complicated relationship … probably like all mothers and daughters to some extent. But I know that she knows that I love her, and in the past few years we’ve smoothed out a lot of the rough edges. It’s just so hard knowing it’s the end.
I’m kind of babbling now, but I just got this email from my brother, part of a chain about what to do on Mom’s birthday:
I figured I owed you all an update, but it’s not a happy one. Mom died on Friday morning, surrounded by her children and her best friend. She didn’t make it to her birthday, but we had a little brunch in her honor yesterday.
My condolences! My father is in questionable health - nothing fatal, but he’s 70, diabetic, overweight, and would rather be happy than healthy at this point. I think about how I’ll handle the death of a parent…and can’t imagine it.
Give her yourself. Spend time with her. Talk to her. But most of all, be there. Spend all the time you can with her without driving her completely crazy.
(After she is gone, you’ll find it was also a gift to yourself as well)
ETA: Even if she’s mentally out of it, spend time with her anyway. Talk to her anyway. Be there anyway. She may be aware of you even if she isn’t responding well to you.
I know it wasn’t her birthday yet, but what greater gift could your mum have wished for than to be farewelled from this life by her kids and her best friend? I hope that when my time comes, I have such blessings too.
I’m so very sorry for your loss, liberty. I lost my mom just over a year ago so I understand how you’re feeling. Christmas will be difficult but you’ll get through it. It helped my family to do all the things she loved and remember how much she loved us all.
I am very sorry for your loss, liberty3701. Your kindness and consideration shown to making your mother’s last days as peaceful and as happy as possible must have been a great comfort to her.
