[ WP ] Your dementia riddled mother has a brief period of lucidity just before she dies .

I've been sitting by my mothers bed for days now. Watching her laboured breathing and furrowed brow as she lay in semi-consciousness. The dementia took over and she's been slowly starving to death. Every once in a while she frantically tries to haul her bony frame off of the pillow and searches with wild eyes until fatigue violently collapses her and she fades away once again. I miss her kind nature and her matter of fact approach to life. All the shit that was handed to her she greeted with utter acceptance and dignity. I just miss her asking how my day was. I've seen people die before but never someone I loved so deeply. Where will she go after this? Is she in pain? What will I do without her? Who will I ask for advice? Will she hear me if I talk to her? 
 
 Exhausted I trudge to my bedroom above the mock hospital room we've made for her, knowing I most likely wo n't sleep. The support worker wakes me around 5am telling me it's time so I gather the others to say their last goodbyes and as we enter I see her turn her head towards us and she's there. I mean, all of her. I see my mom in her eyes again. 
 
 `` Mom?'' 
 
 `` Help me sit up'' she says and turns herself over. 
 
 We rush to her side and dangle her legs over the edge of the bed. My sisters and I acting as bumper pads on all sides of her. My mother looks around at all of us with every possible human emotion registering on her face at once. And with a shaky voice she says the first clear headed thing she has said in 3 years and the last she'll utter for the rest of her life. 
 
 `` All my girls! Oh thank you god. Thank you!!'' 
 
 And I know that she has heard us, that she was at peace, that we were all to her what she was to all of us and that will never be lost to me. Goodbye mum. See you soon.
