Waiting on the phone to ring

I know you never click on links. This time I wish you would, to save me the trouble of rehashing and reviewing. Read this.

The battle is almost over. My wife's mother has put up the good fight. She lies in her bed, tenderly cared for by her granddaughter. She is tiny and shriveled. I bet she does not weigh 50 pounds. She looks like an old woman doll in her hospital bed. She will spend her last days as she has the past year, in her room at her granddaughter's house. Her ravaged body is wracked with pain, morphine her constant companion. Too weak to speak, her few whispers are mere gibberish, the cruelty of Alzheimer's to the end. The few scattered members of the family have arrived. The death watch is on. The hospice nurse says it is now days instead of weeks and months.

I watch my wife cry tears of pain. I am helpless. What do you say to ease her anguish? I think it is harder because her mother does not know her. Her brother and sisters suffer the blank looks and confusion as their mother looks at them as they talk to her, no clue as to their identity.

There is no way to say this. I feel like a slug even writing it. Please say a prayer to ease her pain. By that I mean both of them, my wife and my Mother-in-Law. I hope God does not judge me too harshly.