My mom, Carolyn Citron, passed away Tuesday morning sometime in the wee hours from a battle with COPD, valve stenosis, and some dementia. She had been in declining health over the past half dozen years, and really rather suddenly dropped down lower and lower as she got weaker and weaker. We had Hospice come in to help in the end.
Oddly a lifelong friend of hers called out of the blue just to chat. They chatted often, but as life and age got in the way not as often as before. He just called to talk with her. I spoke with him yesterday. He was shocked by the news, but he said it wasn’t unexpected because her conversation was a bit incoherent at times during their hour-long conversation.
Monday night was not unlike others we’ve experienced. She had been calling out to her relatives during her sleep for months. We would get up and find her asleep but calling “Nana, Grampa help me”, or other nights it was my sisters both the still living and the one that passed, or other people we don’t know but she did. Then it was “Help me!, help me, help me!”. We would ask her what she needed help with and her answer was “I don’t know”. This would of course bring on some not-so-nice words, but not aimed directly at her as she woke one of us up at 3:30 am. Living on 2-½ to 3-½ hours every night is tough. I talked to a neighbor who just went through this with his wife who passed from cancer. He said it’s caregiver burnout. It’s a tough road for everyone, and now I worry about my dad!
But Monday night was different. She was more active during the night and thrashed about more, and more unusual she was lying on her left side which she never did. We had to keep reinserting her air hose that she kept pulling out.
Dad got up, my brother got up three or four times, and I got up at least twice to check on her. In that time between 3:00 am and 6:30 she passed.
She celebrated her 81st birthday last Friday on December 6th. We never did big birthday bashes in my house, except for the younger ones, and this one was no different. My brother got her a bag of Lindt truffles, and my sister visited with my niece. She had a few truffles and sat and enjoyed the visit as we all did. She didn’t eat much else though and then slept. That day I said to myself, i don’t think she’ll last until her next birthday. Something inside me was saying that.
The week before, we put up the Christmas tree. This was tough since we lost my other sister a year ago, and I didn’t want to, but my brother said let Beth and Ali do it, it’s for mum. So up went the tree, crammed into the corner next to the TV between the humidifier and the stairs only a couple of feet from her hospital bed, which was also in the living room. We lit it up every night for her, and were hoping she could have made it past Christmas.
She wasn’t just a mother, but a friend too. When things were tough, we could talk and talk.
She taught us respect and tolerance for others, which is something I’ve always lived by.
She would let it be known if a boyfriend or girlfriend met her approval or not usually right in front of them! If anything could make or break a budding relationship, that would!
Mom had the magic power of the LOOK. Yes, that LOOK where you get nailed for doing something and know you are a goner. She had that power over my brother and me.
Mom was mom...
My only regret is I took her for granted and never had a chance to say goodbye, though I had mentally a few times knowing the end was coming, but I didn’t expect it so soon. We seem to do that. People are there forever so it seems, and unexpectedly or not, they’re gone. There was no time for goodbyes, sorries for stuff done that was long forgotten but gets mentioned anyway from time to time, none of that. It’s not always like we read about in the those 19th century novels and see in the movies as families gather around a loved one. Gone! Poof! That’s it!
Tuesday morning my dad woke me up around 8:00 am. “Get up she died”. He said as my brain was putting things together and I was thinking about Sadie, miss cone of shame, the cat, “Come quick, your mom is gone,” he said.
Selma the heath aide who came every Tuesday and Thursday found her “asleep”. She made my mom’s breakfast and then went back to wake her up.
Smoking is a killer. Even up to 2012, she was still smoking though told she had to stop. This is evident by the cigarette and lighter on the table in front of her. She was already failing in this picture, and probably clearing fluid from her nose by the looks of the tissue. This is what took the life of the best person in the world.
In late 2010, she developed what appeared to be a bad chest cold but turned out to be pneumonia caused by fluid in her lungs. She had congestive heart failure from the COPD. In 2011 she had stents put into her legs to open the clogged and calcified arteries.
Mom being mom, she bounced back from this only to break her hip. She fell one night on the way to the bathroom. The doctors thought it may have been caused by a mini-stroke, and she had some hack surgery for it. The doctor has since been sued out of business (not by us), but the damage was done. This set her back as it made her immobile for a few years until her heart got stronger after the pacemaker implant in early 2012.
In 2015 she finally had a hip replacement done and was mobile only for a few short months before she ended up sliding down more and more to be followed by multiple hospital stays for bouts of pneumonia and respiratory distress.
Each time she bounced back, but each time with less of the bounce she had before like a ball tossed down a flight of stairs. This last bounce in April this year set her on the final spiral downward after a stay in a horrific rehabilitation center. After that she ended up back in the hospital again a few times in the ICU due to more of the same, and never really recovered.
Her life was not easy growing up. Her father was a poor Swedish immigrant and her mom a mongrel of German, Irish, Native American, and English heritage. Her mother was an alcoholic and fought often, and my mom spent whole summers living with her Nana and “grampa” at their cottage in Marblehead. That she said was the best times, and her grandmother is the one who brought her up mostly.
After high school, she was accepted to the Museum of Fine Arts School in Boston where she met my dad during her first year. They married a couple of years later in 1959. My dad told me yesterday it was love at first sight. They would have been married 60 years this coming August 1st.