Time to take that trip

After talking with my sisters and thinking very hard about my reasoning, I've decided to head down to Southern Indiana and see my mother one last time.  They know this is the only trip I can make unless there are some months in between this trip and a funeral.  It sounds callous to talk about it in terms of absolutes but she's fading, has renal cancer, most likely, and is too weak for any kind of treatment.  It's possible there will come a time when she stops dialysis and goes into hospice.  I think we're talking days or weeks rather than months.  So I won't make the funeral but it's more important that my mother and I have one last visit together.  I told my younger sister yesterday that I miss my phone calls with Mom.  We used to just talk for an hour or so about everything.  She's been too weak for that lately.

I'm taking the socks I've been working on.  I'm on the last pink sock, heading toward the heel flap which I will most likely finish tonight.  I can turn the heel on the way down and finish up the foot, hopefully, before I come back home on Sunday.  My aunt is down there now, being my mother's baby sister, so I can just give them to her.  I'll try to get pictures before I go down there but doubt that I will be able to post them as I have laundry to finish up, bills to pay and the car to pack up before tomorrow morning.

I'll be offline until Sunday evening so don't expect me back here before Monday.  This is still a bit unreal although I knew that some day I would get "that phone call."  It's just that we always expected it to be our dad since he's had COPD for over 20 years.  Mom was always the strong one and fully expected to outlive Daddy. Now Daddy is the strong one, taking care of her.

Now it's time to get things packed up.