There’s Someone Dying Upstairs (Part 1)

“Can I move in with you?”

Laurel Louise Anderson (lovingly called Miss Ma’am) posed the question to our producer and her son, Marcel Malekebu, in the summer of 2024. After nearly a year of Marcel asking and a year of her denying, the request came seemingly out of nowhere. His mom moved in, and Marcel and his wife Jenae became caregivers not only to their two very young daughters, but to Miss Ma’am. Caregiving is not an easy thing to do, but it is a holy thing to do. And in this episode, Marcel and Jenae are sharing Miss Ma’am and their lives with her with us.

Transcripts may not appear in their final version and are subject to change.

---

Hi.

Hi.

Hi there.

Hi.

Hi.

Hey, Nora.

I’m Nora McInerny, and this is Thanks For Asking, a call-in show about what matters to you.

I’m Marcel Malekebu, and this is Thanks For Asking. For about eight years, I’ve been a producer on this show, working on episodes about all kinds of different topics. One of those topics is caregiving.

And it wasn’t until recently that I found myself in the position of being a caregiver. In the summer of 2024, I had just come back from a vacation with my wife Jenae when I got a somewhat unexpected call from my mother.

She told me that she wanted to move in. I’ve been asking her for almost a year because of the many health issues she had going on at the time, but this particular call was different because she would usually just decline and change the subject.

I thought that she had never agreed to it, so I had basically given up on asking. And so for the following nine or so months after that call ended, we went on a journey that was beyond words, the way life always is.

And that journey ultimately ended in the passing of my mother, Laurel Anderson. Ms. Ma’am, as we called her, passed away on April 14th, 2025, in the room that I’m sitting in right now.

This episode is part of a two-part series of a conversation between me and my wife, Jenae.

And while the conversation isn’t remotely exhaustive, it paints with broad strokes some of the challenges and lessons that we learned during our time caring for Ms. Ma’am. This is part one.

All right, so Jenae, nice to talk to you, my lovely wife. How are you doing today?

I’m doing great, thanks for having me.

I wanted to talk to you a little bit about our time taking care of Miss Ma’am. The funny part is we’re actually in the place where we took care of her. My studio is the same room.

And so it’s funny because some of her personal things are still in here, just because we don’t have necessarily a place for them yet or haven’t gotten rid of them.

So it’s kind of funny being in here and you sitting in the same corner where we would generally sit and me sitting in the space where she would generally lay or sit up and be watching old movies or something like that.

Eating snacks.

So, yeah, I kind of wanted to ask you because, you know, we lived it, but, and we talk about it, but I think, I thought it was important to talk about it, you know, more in depth, I guess.

And think about it in a way where other people can understand some of what was going on. Cause you know, sometimes people will talk to you about these sorts of things, but they really have no frame of reference for it.

And most of the time, when you have conversations with people, you know, family, friends, stuff like that, generally you’re not trying to like burden people with a bunch of stuff where you give them like quick answers or short answers.

And also people just don’t know how to handle stuff. So I think sometimes when you take it upon yourself, it’s kind of like when you throw your own birthday party, then you don’t got to have anyone else asking you questions about planning.

So I want to ask you, do you remember the day that she called and said that she wanted to move in?

Yes.

I very vividly remember the day.

So we had just gotten back from our vacation. We spent some time in South Carolina. We were in Charleston.

This was our first vacation that we took just the two of us and got to do our own things since our kids were born.

And we spent almost a week in Charleston.

Yeah.

And then I think we got back. Our plane landed at some time in the afternoon, like around two or three in the afternoon on Wednesday.

And then by maybe five or six that evening, she called and asked you to bring her to a doctor appointment the next morning because she needed a ride and this and that and the other thing. And also, I’m ready to move in.

Yeah. Yeah.

It was like, I need you to do this for me tomorrow morning, like right away in the morning. And also you’ve been asking me and telling me I need to move in or do something different with my living situation. And so also I’m ready.

And you were like, okay, well, when do you want to move in, mom? And she was like, I don’t know, this weekend. Yeah, I just remember being next to you while you were on the phone and your face was like, wait, what?

And like, okay, all right. Like it was very serious. And so I remember asking you like, what, like mouthing like, what?

Okay. And I’m like texting your cousin to see if they can watch our children as we figure out like how we’re going to actually move her in to our house. And so you brought it to the appointment the next morning on Thursday.

I had gotten your cousin to watch our kids on Friday, like all day. I dropped the kids off in the morning on Friday. You went to Ikea and then I went to your mom’s apartment and packed her things.

Yeah, like a little bag and a couple items.

It wasn’t like her whole.

No, there was no way we could have packed her whole apartment that day, but she didn’t have anything ready. And so I remember packing all of like the things that she would need and then taking notes of the things that she didn’t have yet.

And also just realizing more about the state of her health while I was trying to get her together, that she really just wasn’t able to help with anything. And it was like, oh, okay, this is different.

Yeah. Did you have to like help her out and all that?

Yeah. She was still in bed in her pajamas when I got there. She hadn’t eaten anything.

She hadn’t taken her medication. I probably got there around like nine or ten. She just was sitting in her bed and I was kind of like, okay, are you going to get up and help like grab your things or anything?

Nope.

And it was like not that she wasn’t trying to help, she couldn’t get up by herself.

Yeah.

And I think it was kind of jarring to figure out that, that difference of like, it wasn’t that she didn’t want to help, it was that she couldn’t help.

So I had to help her get up and I had to help her change her clothes and there wasn’t really anything for her to eat there. So we ended up stopping at one of her favorite stores close to her house and getting some food while we were there.

But it took a lot to like help her get to the car, help her move through her apartment. And like, she got lightheaded at a certain point. And I’m like, you need to eat, like, you need to take your medication.

Where is your medication? And so it was just, it was interesting to see what was going on. And it was hard to watch because we didn’t know the full story.

Whenever we would go by, she would sit on the couch the whole time, which wasn’t abnormal. And so if you’re only there for a couple hours and she’s sitting on the couch, we didn’t really understand how, how severe her health stuff was.

And we didn’t know what was happening when we weren’t there. We didn’t know that her husband wasn’t helping make sure she would eat because she couldn’t cook for herself at that point.

We didn’t know that she wasn’t taking her medication because she would either forget or she needed to take it with food and then she couldn’t make any food or didn’t have snacks by her bed.

And so it was like very clear within that first day of how her moving in was different than we initially expected.

We knew it was going to be a change, but we didn’t know, I didn’t know, I should say, how much support she really needed until we got her to the house.

Well, and like she had been going through a lot of this like health stuff prior to this. Like in June, I was taking her to appointments because she moved in like the last day of July. And she had fallen a few times at work.

She had actually stopped going to work prior to this because of how many falls she had taken.

And I remember distinctly like about a month and a half before her moving in when she came to our daughter’s birthday party and I had to walk her back to the car.

And I had already seen that she was taking these falls from the appointments that I was taking her to. But she still had a little bit of volition, a little bit of energy where she could do some of the stuff.

So I didn’t know, you know, like you said, the full extent. And I didn’t know how quickly her condition was declining. What was it like for you initially in the first week or two adjusting to her being here?

I think it was challenging.

Like, I remember the first day. I don’t think you had gotten home yet, but your brother had come by. Or he was on his way maybe.

I think he was on his way.

And so, I had got your mom situated on the couch, and I think I was doing some dishes, and we were supposed, I thought we were all on the same page, that we were waiting for your brother or you to get home so that we could get her up the stairs to

the bedroom. And she had other plans. So she just was, decided she was ready to go upstairs. And so she went up the stairs by herself.

Like she got halfway up the stairs before I realized that she was going up the stairs because I was doing dishes, and like the way our house is situated, it’s like on the other side of the house.

And I could hear something, but I’m like, there’s no way she’s going up the stairs by herself. Like we barely got her in the house, just the two of us. And then I was like, my intuition was like, nah, you need to go check.

And so I stopped doing the dishes, I wiped my hands off and I looked around the corner and she is not on the couch anymore. And so I kept walking and then I’m like jogging and she’s halfway up the stairs, like crawling up the stairs by herself.

And I was like, Laura, what are you doing? And she was like, well, I needed to go upstairs. And I said, okay, that’s great, but you need to tell somebody when you’re going up the stairs.

Right.

And she was like, well, you were busy.

And I said, I was doing dishes and I could have stopped. You need to tell me when you’re going up the stairs. Like, I thought we were waiting for your brother.

And she’s like, well, I’m here now, so let’s get up the stairs.

And I’m like, oh man.

Yeah. And so I think that that story is just kind of like how my expectation of what was going to happen was very different from what actually transpired.

And like, I obviously knew your mom and I know like different things about her, but I didn’t know like exactly how prideful she was.

You would walk up this, crawl up the stairs when you were doing dishes.

Knowing damn well that she should not be doing that. She could have fallen down the stairs and like cracked her head. And that was a very real possibility, especially after all the movement we’ve already done that day, like she was exhausted.

And so I was just like, okay, this is different. I didn’t know how prideful she was, like to the extent of it.

I didn’t know how like determined she was to just do things herself, even if her body was telling her no, like she was very much a mind over matter person in a lot of ways and not in different ways. But I didn’t know the nuance of that.

I didn’t know how to like adjust to having another woman in the house. I think that was challenging to me and not just like any woman, but your mom. And I didn’t really understand how like the bond that you two had.

So even just like, I remember sometimes you would come home and you’d be like, good afternoon, like saying hi to me and the girls. And then you’d run up and tell your mom all about your day. And I’m like, well, I want to hear about your day.

And so like those little pieces of things that are just funny, that I was just, you know, you have to kind of put things into perspective that like it’s not, it’s not that serious.

Like it’s good that he has his mom here and that he wants to go and talk with her and all those different things. But like it was something to get used to sometimes too, that like you would be up here talking to her all the time.

And I’m like, well, I want to talk to you. And but like, I’ve been talking to her all day because I was home with her while you were working or different things. So I’m like, I’m a little, I’m good on being up in her room.

But like, I want to talk to you or different things.

And like even just not having any kind of privacy in the house was interesting too, because once the kids were asleep, it was kind of like we could talk about whatever we wanted to and just like hang out together.

But now we have another adult in the house.

And so like if we even wanted to talk about like how we were caring for her or different things around that, we had to kind of make plans on how we were going to have those conversations so that she wouldn’t like overhear what we were talking about

or like ear hustle on certain conversations that weren’t for her. And so just like there was a lot of just like different things that were.

It was a learning curve.

Definitely a learning curve. I felt like I had to keep the bathroom really clean all the time because there’s a new person in the house that’s now using the bathroom and I’m like, oh my gosh, there’s marks on the mirror. She’s going to like judge me.

Like I can’t take care of her son and her house and different things and she wasn’t I’m sure, but like it was just different having another adult in the house and a woman at that that I know pays attention to certain things, but I don’t really know

what she’s paying attention to yet. So there was a lot of different things like that and then it was just more to do.

It was just more to do as well throughout the day to make sure she had what she needed and make another plate of food, buy enough groceries to have another plate of food to add on to different things.

Yeah, I think for me, it was, those first few weeks were difficult because I had to work, and so I would be in and out, and then also doing caretaking, and I knew that my mom had certain foods and things that she liked, and certain, she had a taste

for certain stuff, or she’d want a snack or something like that, and so I knew that some of that stuff I just knew about, so I would have to deal with it in terms of cooking and different stuff, and then, yeah, it was weird. Sometimes, even for me,

those conversations, a lot of times I felt obligated to come and talk to my mom because she had been living alone for so long, and I knew what was going on over there, even though she wasn’t living alone, but she was basically living alone for the

last few years, and alone prior to that, and so a lot of the time, I would just kind of be… I think I was projecting, you know, like loneliness onto her and forgetting like she had people in the house with her during the day, and so I would just

come and like try to talk, because I was thinking it was hard for me to think about the fact that I was doing all this movement and all this stuff, and then she was just like completely immobile for most of the day and most of the time. And, you

know, I also like to get out and… We’re an active family, so it was within the first couple of weeks, and me having to schedule things was… That was the hard thing for me. I don’t like people clocking my time. I don’t like my schedule.

But I had to quickly adjust to that. So I think that was something… That was something that was hard for me.

You kind of talked about a little bit about her personality.

And you have said a few times to me in our conversations that you got to know her more. We saw her enough prior to that, but you didn’t know her too well.

Tell me what it was like to, I know you mentioned some of it, but what’s it like to take care of someone who has her personality?

I think it was challenging because I wasn’t used to having an intimate relationship with somebody who had so much pride.

And so I tried to like joke about things to kind of make it seem, like feel a little bit easier for her to ask for help, or I tried to like anticipate what she would need so that she wouldn’t have to ask for it because I didn’t want her to sit up here and feel like she was not being taken care of or because she didn’t want to ask us to do certain things or feel like she couldn’t ask us to get the snacks that she wanted. Like I remember she made like a whole grocery list of things that she

wanted specifically here. And I had asked her what she needed, but she only told me like, oh, can you get me some Envy Apples? She liked Envy Apples or like simple things like that.

But then she would give you this long list of like the specific, like jalapeno peanuts from Cub Foods or whatever kind of thing.

And once I learned that she was doing that and not asking me for specific things, then I would try to like probe her with different questions so that, and tell her like, it’s okay, like I’m going to the store anyway.

And like I like going to different stores if it’s like a specific store she needs me to go to, but like try and make it easier for her to ask me for those things.

Because I was willing to do it, but it was kind of annoying because she had so many different specific things and things that I’m like, I don’t even know what this is. So I had to ask her and then she’d like laugh at me. And I’m like, oh man.

I’m like uncultured because I don’t know what.

Herb de Provence and Havarti cheese.

Right.

But yeah.

Or different things like that. But I think especially as things progressed in her condition, I think it got a little bit easier for me to just let things go.

Like at first, it bothered me when she would like make comments about like the way I was doing things or about the way I would move through the house or whatever it was. Like she would make little comments and that would bother me a lot.

Or she would talk with you about how she didn’t like the way that I did things, or she felt like I didn’t want her here. For whatever reason, I can’t remember specific examples, but that used to bother me a lot at first.

But I think as things progressed in her condition, and we had to really understand that she was going to die.

So it put things in a different perspective for me, that it was a lesson I needed to learn about letting things go and not taking everything so personally.

And then I got to know her better, and I felt like we had a lot better conversations then because I wasn’t so irritated by the sharper parts of her personality that were hard for me to want to be around, if that makes sense.

And so I feel like once I was able to let things go and not take it so personal, then I was able to feel more comfortable sitting in here and having conversations with her and asking her questions and getting to know her more one-on-one.

Because at first, I would talk with her when I was helping her with things, but I wasn’t just sitting in here having conversations with her.

I would when you were home, but I wasn’t just sitting in here because I was irritated that I was having to do with this, to be honest. I was like, well, you’re home, let me take a little break.

But then as she was here longer, it was like, okay, well, you need to build this relationship, and it was okay to do that. And then I felt like I got to know her a lot better, and we had developed our own relationship separate from you.

And I felt like that made it even easier to deal with the harder parts of her personality because I would just laugh about it, like in the room with her.

Like I remember one time I was moving her all over the room because we needed to get on both sides of her bed and the hospice nurse, and everyone kept saying we need to be able to get on both sides of her bed.

And so I’m like, okay, well, I guess I need to move her bed around. And so I had her all over this room trying to make it work so that we could be on both sides of her bed.

And I was just joking with her the whole time, like I know you didn’t think you were going to an amusement park today, but like this is what’s happening because she’s going back and forth and up and down.

And I had to move her bed up and down to be able to move it around the room. And she was really, really annoyed with me that day because she didn’t want to be doing that. And she was like, the bed was fine where it was.

And I’m like, well, people needed to move, so we got to move. But I felt like even though she was irritated, she also was like kind of enjoying it. And I was able to just joke about it with her, so then I wasn’t taking it personal.

And then I felt like that was kind of a turning point even for us of her realizing that she can just enjoy it too.

By the end of the time we were moving things around, I was putting her stuff back in her dresser, she was just laughing with me instead of being so frustrated about the process.

Yeah, her, my mom’s personality I think is like something that’s a lot to deal with. And I did notice a lot of the sort of like personality clash that y’all had. And I knew that that would happen just because I know you and I know her.

And for me, I already didn’t always get along with my mom very well. I always had, you know, a very, you know, interesting relationship just because she was a woman. As we would say, she was a woman with a sharp mouth.

And so she would say all sorts of things. And especially while she was here. And, you know, one of the aspects of her illness, you know, she had liver disease.

She had the, what was the blood? Syncope with her heart. She had the blood pressure.

What was that called?

Orthostatic hypotension.

Hypotension. And so she had a lot going on. But part of one of the pancreatitis and she had surgery, I mean, so she had a lot going on in her body physically, but one of the elements of her illness was cognitive decline.

And so it was something that I could notice and that we had even noticed prior to her moving in here between my siblings that something was going on. And it only got further and further as time went on.

But I remember that the most difficult part of it was, we’re taking care of you and then you’re talking shit or you got a problem with everything. She would send me those extensive lists.

And as you remember, I wouldn’t get, but maybe half of the things on the list because I get irritated. I hate shopping. I hate looking for Havarti cheese at the grocery store.

And so, you know, but also she would, you know, give me the little bit of extra money that she had in her purse to buy cookies for the girls. She would, you know, tell me to get something nice or, you know, get a little snack.

And it was just it was funny. And so it was hard. And I would say it was it was pretty much hard virtually the whole way through the process, especially for me.

I think we got into a lot of scuffles and skirmishes more than you guys.

No, you definitely did. I remember one time during those first, probably the first month that she was here before she went to the hospital the first time, like we were both in here talking to her. And then you two started going at it.

And I was like, let me just exit the situation, and let you two have this, because I knew it was going to happen. But I was like, all right, it’s happening today. So then I went downstairs with the girls.

And I remember hearing you yell or like, you weren’t yelling, I guess, but you said in a loud voice, oh, you want to go there?

All right. And then I heard the door slam closed. And I was like, okay, girls, you want to go for a walk?

And I remember that happened a couple of times, a few times probably, where you two just kind of went at it because you generally in the past, when it got to a certain spot, you would just not call her for a little while.

And she would just or she would just not call you. And you wouldn’t go to her house and she wasn’t coming here. So it was like, y’all would just take your space.

And then something would happen or one of you would extend an olive branch and then you would slowly move back in communication with each other. But while she was here, it was like, like you said, oh, you want to go there?

And then you had to go there. And there was things that had to be hashed out.

Yeah, we had to get to it. Yeah, we had to get to it. I mean, she was a she was funny because she was such an introvert, but a big personality for an introvert.

So she had a lot going on.

I think one of the major things that we realized during this process was that it was going to be final, that her being here was going to be final.

We had talked about between ourselves that we kind of had this picture that she would probably carry out the rest of her life here with us. But we had no idea of knowing how long that was.

It took pretty far into the process to know for her to get put on hospice or for that to even come up with the doctors.

Initially for me, I think deep down, I had a sense that something was happening and we knew something obviously was happening with her health, but I had a feeling that she just needed some help, that she could heal.

I remember going and picking up herbs for her and different greens and supplements and things of that sort.

I remember trying to replace some of her medication with something a little bit more natural so that she didn’t have such a strain on her system.

She was taking a lot of different medications, some of which made her anxious, some of which made her nauseous, some of which made her tired.

And so, I remember the day that I took her to the hospital for an appointment for her heart, and the cardiologist told us that, you know, he said, hey, I want you guys to sit down. I want to talk to you about something.

And he kind of laid it out for her and myself that he didn’t think she had more than a couple years to live. And it was an interesting experience because up until this point, she had been hospitalized like five, six times that year.

But I just remember him having that conversation with us and both of us kind of being quiet in the room. And, you know, my mom kind of asking him, you know, like, oh, how long? And things like that.

And she had a lot of anxiety. And so I tried to ask the majority of the questions to him. What makes him think that?

And I remember we ended up leaving. And, you know, she was really grateful that someone had finally been honest with her because we had been to many doctors appointments. We had been, you know, in and out of places.

And no one had told us that, you know, the truth that she was going to pass, you know, soon. Or that they thought she would pass soon. And so for me, it was, you know, there was speculation.

But for the most part, I thought, oh, there’s still a chance that, hey, she can recover. And so that was my mindset. You know, we had talked about the two of us had discussed taking her on a vacation, which is something that I really wanted to do.

And she hadn’t been able to do, you know, the things that she wanted to do.

So I think I remember in that moment, like the, that was the kind of midpoint of this whole thing, was learning that she probably wouldn’t make it to go on a vacation and do all that. I mean, I had to wheel her into the appointment.

So I think that that appointment was kind of like the day that we both kind of sat in it and realized like, hey, this is what’s happening. And we went and we ate lunch together after that. And she was just really quiet, you know.

And we had already been dealing with her and her personality, you know, even getting her out of the car, out of the appointment. And at that day, there was no more of that for the rest of the day. There was no, you know, agginess coming from her.

There was no bickering or anything like that.

But it also felt like almost a relief that we had more information because, you know, the two of us, we had been talking about this and saying, like, well, you know, what’s the point where we need help or where we need to put her in a long-term care

facility, which, frankly, there was no money for, there was no insurance for, and that wasn’t going to happen regardless unless they depleted all of her resources or, you know, that it just wasn’t realistic anyway. But I remember a lot of our

conversations about that, and we just weren’t sure. And so I remember when hearing that, that I knew that she for sure would be here for the remainder of the time.

And it kind of threw a monkey wrench in some of the plans that I had had in my mind because I thought, you know, hey, you know, she’s going to get a little bit better.

We’re going to be able to at least take her, you know, on vacation and do that sort of thing. So I think that was one of the biggest stresses during the first part of her stay here, was not knowing how long it would be.

Because also when she first called to move in here, she framed it like, I just need a month.

Right, a couple months or something.

Yeah, I’d need like just a little bit of help right now, and then I’ll move back in with my husband. I’ll go back to my apartment.

And then when she got here and during those first couple weeks, we realized that the chances of her living by herself again, which is basically what was happening because her husband wasn’t there and helping very much, were very slim.

And then she was hospitalized about a month after she moved in here and then went back and forth from hospital to a transitional care facility, then back to the hospital, then the transitional care facility.

And there was all these different things we were learning about her health situation while we were at the hospital with her and while we were getting to talk to the doctors.

And once we got access to her chart information, we were learning all these different things about what was actually going on. And then we were seeing things too that the doctors didn’t know.

Like she didn’t have cognitive decline on her chart until we mentioned it to the doctors. They’re like, hey, we’re seeing things. Like we’re noticing she’s not remembering different things.

She’s having a hard time keeping a conversation or finishing her sentence in a ways that she wasn’t having before. And so like collaboratively, we were figuring out what was going on.

And then one problem would be like a bigger issue, but the other ones would be a secondary for this hospital stay. And then like one hospital stay, it was the orthostatic hypotension. And then the next hospital stay, it was the edema in her legs.

And the next hospital stay, it was the liver disease, or maybe it was a different order of those. But it was like each time it was like a different part of her condition.

And so the doctors were not having those conversations with us about her prognosis because they’re like, well, this edema will go down if we do X, Y and Z without having the full conversation that the edema can’t go down because of the medication

that she’s on and because her organs are slowly shutting down and like all the different pieces to it. And so like we knew that she wasn’t going to be going back to her apartment, but like I know for myself, I thought that she was going to be going

to a long-term care facility. Like it wasn’t like fully clear to me that she was going to stay at our house until too late, I think, in retrospect.

I think there was still like a part of me that was like, nah, like there has to be a different way to do this. That would be easier.

And like, that feels bad to say now, like that, like I was just hoping for something that would be easier because it was, it was, it was really hard and it was like 24 seven. And I remember we’d have conversations at different points.

And I think there was still that part of me that was like, well, but maybe he didn’t say completely no or whatever.

Right.

And I mean, now I think we did exactly what we should have done, but there was that part that made it hard for me. Like how you’re talking about a hard part about it was just not knowing how long it was going to be.

And at what level of care she was going to need for how long too, because once she moved in, it was like we had a newborn again. We couldn’t go to wherever we wanted to go.

Whenever we felt like going, we had to plan to make sure that someone was here to take care of her. It was like a newborn, but we couldn’t bring her with us.

Yeah.

And so that was a big shift and hard to plan on top of what you’re saying about just figuring out how long it was going to be and what our expectations were. That was your big thing.

Whenever we talked to the medical providers, we’re just trying to manage our expectations.

Yeah. And the majority of them, A, weren’t looking at it through a holistic lens, and B, they didn’t want to say the wrong thing instead of having a real conversation. So I really appreciated the cardiologist for letting us know that.

And yeah, I think there was two major eras. I think it was really the before hospice and after. I think that, you know, after that meeting with the cardiologist, it took us a little bit to actually start hospice, but…

I think it was one month later, yeah.

Yeah, but we…

When I think about the hardest part prior to hospice, it was that. It was like the complete uncertainty of, like, what is this going to be?

And, you know, and I know she didn’t want to go into long-term care, and I didn’t want to put her there, but I did, you know, consider it.

And it was hard, but I remember when we got that news and when we kind of knew that, you know, no one really knows when someone’s going to die, but when we had the information presented to us in a way that made it seem like, you know, that was a

likely outcome, I think that it changed the way I looked at caring for her at that point. I think that the most difficult thing changed at that point.

I also think that her health took a steeper decline at that point too, because I remember after that appointment, you were like, we need to do this vacation as soon as possible.

And, but you thought that you would be able to do it, like that appointment was the end of November. And then, like I remember you were trying to get a vacation for February or March.

And I remember telling you like a couple weeks after that appointment, while you were trying to plan things and figuring out, and figuring out what would be the easiest way to do this vacation for her.

I remember telling you that if you’re going to do this vacation, I think you should do it like New Year’s at the latest, because I don’t think she’s going to be able to go after that.

And I remember you looking at me like with your eyebrows up like, what? By New Year’s? And I was like, yeah, I feel like she’s not going to be able to, like it will be worse to bring her than to have her stay here.

Like it will be less enjoyable for her to go than to stay here because of the amount of work it will take to get her there and the strain it will take on her body and the limited amount of energy that she had and that I could see each day, each week,

pretty much each week, it was like we noticed something different in terms of her decline. And it was like happening so quickly at that point. And then we met with Palliative Care, probably around like December 10th, you know, give or take.

And when we talked with them, I think they had been here for maybe five minutes and she was already talking about hospice and we were like, excuse me, ma’am, your job is Palliative Care. Why are you talking about hospice?

And she was like, I don’t usually do this because I am here to do an intake for Palliative Care. But I want to be honest with you. And what I’m seeing is that you can put her on Palliative Care.

But I think hospice would be better suited for what I’m seeing on paper and what I’m seeing in person. And I think that was another one of those appointments where we were all like, wait a second.

The thing I remember thinking was that when we had the… We had just had the live show with TTFA.

We had just had the live show, and I was thinking in my head, well, like, you know, we were somehow, we managed to get her out of the house and get her there, and it was a group effort on you guys’ part.

And I don’t think she left the house after that. I think…

No, she didn’t.

I think that was the last time that she left the house. But she had so much fun at the show.

Yeah, she really enjoyed it. She really enjoyed it. And I think that was the thing is, like, I kind of had hope because she went to that show, and she enjoyed it.

So I still kind of had a little bit of hope.

And, you know, then she, you know, she went into hospice, and, you know, I think that that that process taught me a lot just about the whole process of the way that, you know, the markers are the signs that somebody is getting sicker, you know.

There was a lot of things about pain management that I struggled with because I was big on not, you know, taking a lot of pain medication and things of that sort. And that was when she had the biggest decline.

So obviously we had a lot more manpower, like lifting. She lost, you know, a lot of her ability to use the bathroom and things like that. And so it was a lot more, it became a lot more intimate.

And I think in a sense, it was the hardest part physically, but the easiest part somewhat to deal with sort of, you know, her frustration with things, because, you know, for the most like, most of that was like us dealing with our own sort of

acceptance of what was happening. I mean, at the time you had just, you know, you weren’t even 30 years old yet when this was all going on.

And, you know, so this was a thing where we were, you know, young, we were dealing with a bunch of other things in life, like, you know, some financial stuff, some, you know, personal stuff.

And so this whole era was like, it seemed like almost like a, like a practical joke or something like that on our lives.

Like, you know, like someone was just, you know, trolling or something like that, or just like stabbing the knife further in or something like that.

But it, it, it made me think about how caretaking affected me, like personally, like how caretaking for a parent.

And I was wondering, like, how did that affect you to have to care for someone and realize that they were going to pass? Like when you had that realization, how did it affect you?

I think, excuse me. I don’t think that I fully understood. I don’t think I fully understood.

Like I knew she was gonna die. Like logically, I knew she was going to die because they were telling us that she was going to die. I knew what I was seeing was that she was declining very rapidly.

But I think that it was hard for me to like fully like understand that as they say. And I think a big part of how I was able to keep caring for her until the very end was by kind of using two parts of my brain.

Like I’m going to turn on my like, like I’m trained as a birth doula, not a death doula, but being a doula just means that you are someone who supports another person through a medically significant event of their life.

And so there’s a lot of crossover with different types of doulas in terms of what you do for that. It’s emotional support, it’s physical support, it’s educational support, right?

And so like I was able to kind of turn that part of my brain on when I’m caring for her, like she needs her legs rubbed. Okay, I can do that. I’m just helping another person rubbing their legs.

Oh, we have a nurse here. I can turn on that part of my brain and I can talk medical with them. Like both of my parents are in the medical field.

They spoke to us in different ways growing up. So like I recognize how to like turn on that jargon at different points. She needs help going to the bathroom.

Like I can turn that part of my brain on and try to disassociate kind of from the fact that this is my mother-in-law.

And I think that I kind of use that as a coping mechanism throughout the whole time to be able to keep giving her the level of care that she needed because I am a very emotional person and I am a very empathic person.

I’m a very like emotionally invested person. And I think that I deep down realized I had to turn some of that off in order to keep going.

Because there’s a part of this whole situation that’s realizing my part or my place in the family tree when we’re talking about this. Like this is your mother. This is your mother, my husband’s mother.

It’s not my mother. She’s my mother by marriage. But like also I really didn’t have that close of a relationship with her until she moved in.

And so and like this is my children’s grandma.

I am I felt very much like a extra person in this situation that like I needed to kind of stay strong and stay as level headed as I could in order to allow you space to move through your emotions that were inevitably gonna happen.

And not that you were like all over the place, like by no means were you all over the place, but you were dealing with emotion of your mother, potentially dying at this point, and also having to intimately care for her.

And our children are dealing with their mother, their grandmother in the room next to theirs. That’s not really acting like grandma used to act before. They don’t fully understand that, but they’re seeing something shift.

And then when your siblings would come over, that’s their mom. And so I had to kind of remove my emotional connection from the situation for myself to be able to try to stay as level and as like present as I could.

And then like, oh, I’ll deal with that later. But I do kind of wish that I would have like sat with it more. There was times where I like couldn’t keep doing that and you would catch me downstairs and be like, what’s wrong?

And I’m like, this is just a lot. This is a heavy, like I’m sitting with the fact that there’s someone dying upstairs. And like it’s the emotions of the house, I’m feeling them all right now.

And like, I can’t stop feeling them and I need to just let myself feel them. But I kind of wish I would have really sat with that a little bit more, because I think like in retrospect, I would have had different conversations with her.

Or I would have tried to just like, the dishes can wait, you know, I’ll just sit up here with you a little bit longer, or whatever kind of thing I could have done. But you know, hindsight is 2020 and you never really fully understand it.

I didn’t really, I hadn’t dealt with like loss of somebody that close to me very much before. Like my own grandma had passed, but I wasn’t like really, really like I didn’t feel emotionally really connected with her.

And so and it was a very like challenging part of my own life, where I was just kind of in a selfish spot of my life. And so I kind of moved through that really quickly.

But I hadn’t really dealt with a loss of somebody that I was that intimately involved with before. And so I didn’t really know how.

Thank you so much for being here and being a part of this show. There are so many ways to support podcasts that you like, creators that you like that are free, that don’t cost anything. And one is just listening.

So thank you. And another is rating and reviewing, which everyone tells you to do. And I know it’s so annoying.

Sharing an episode with a friend, texting it to a friend, sharing it on social media, and always calling us and telling us what you wanna talk about. 612-568-4441 or thanks at feelingsand.co.

That substack that I mentioned at the top of the show is where I send out weekly essays, monthly reading roundups. There’s plenty that is there for free, just like on this podcast.

But if you want to join and support the show, financially, you’ll get ad free episodes, bonus episodes, our back catalog.

You can do that monthly, annually, or as a supporting producer who gets their names in the credits and credit where credit is due. This episode was produced by Marcel Malekebu, coordinated by Grace Berry.

Our opening theme music is by Geoffrey Lamar Wilson, and our closing theme music is by my youngest son Q. And thank you, of course, to our supporting producers who are people who sign up to support us at the very highest level, over on Substack.

Thank you to Augie Book, Joy Heising, No Name, Nancy Duff, Jenny Mendein, Kathleen Langerman, Jordan Jones, Ben, Jess, Tom Stockburger, Beth Derry, Sarah Garifo, Jennifer McDagle, in all caps, Kathy Sigman, Sarah David, Mary Beth Berry, Sheila

Crystal, Kaylee Sakai, Virginia Labassi, Lizzie DeVries, Rachel Walton, David Binkley, Lisa Piven, Michelle Toms, Nicole Petey, Renee Kepke, Melody Swinford, Stacey Wilson, Car Pan, Caroline Moss, my best friend, Michelle Oh, Anna Brzezinski, Amanda,

Stacey DeMoro, Jess Blackwell, Abbi Arose, Crystal Mann, Bonnie Robinson, Lauren Hanna, Jacqueline Ryder, Patrick Irvine, Shannon Dominguez-Stevens, Kathy Hamm, Erin John, Penny Pesta, Madd, Christina, Emily Ferriso, Elizabeth Berkley, Kiara

Komistay, Monica, Alyssa Robeson, Faye Barons, Kaylee, Kate Byerjohn, Jessica Reed, Courtney McCown, Jeremy Essin, Jen Lindsay Lund, Jessica Letexier, Stephanie Johnson, Alexis Lane, Robin Rular, Joe McDonald, Dave Gilmore, Elia Filiz-Milan, LGS,

Chelsea S, Kelly Conrad, Jen Grimlin and Micah. Thank you so much and we’ll see you back here soon.