Mum's Final Days

 My family and I have been worried about the state of my mother's soul.  Will she join our Heavenly Redeemer or not.  I have been exposed to a lot of theology around this subject.  I'm not one who believes in "Once save, always Saved." But neither am I inclined to quickly condemn anyone to hell based on what I have seen or heard them say.  God is a merciful God and only He can know the state of her salvation.   I know that my mother was raised in the Church of England, and if it's services are anything like Catholic services, the message of Salvation is repeated again and again.  I know that she made a "death-bed" confession to one of my nieces, but I have seen little since then to be convinced that it took.  But who can know the state of one's heart? I know that my sister-in-law along with one of her daughters pressed her for a confession of faith recently without success. Now my theology makes room for a God's whose ways are not the ways of...

  One thing that has been a blessing is that mum’s pain level has gone almost to zero.  She has been on Hydrocodone for years because of degenerative back issues.  I think when she told the doctor, she oversold the pain telling them it was a 9 out of 10.   I don’t think she could have walked to the bathroom with such pain let alone getting out of bed every day or sitting in a chair.  Oh she had her aches and pains but for the most part given her age, I thought they were typical for a 90 year old.   But at the beginning of this year all that changed.  Her pain from arthritis became quite severe.  Some nights we were woken by her cries of pain; they sounded like a pain level of 9.  She had a set dose per day, but the doctor made accommodations for days where her pain might be more severe.  But even that wasn’t enough.  We looked at alternatives.  We tried CBD oil and CBD gummies.  We must have spent over $500 on CBD gum...

I am finding that writing blogs on little to no sleep is more challenging that I realized.  When your head hurts and you cannot think straight, it is hard to collect your thoughts and put them down for others to read, but here I go anyway. Mum's sleeping habits do not always align with ours.  In fact it seems most of her sleeping has been during the daylight hours.  It almost seems strange how little care she needs most of the day.  Sometimes we just sit quietly with her and other times we try to find time to connect with each other. They say that when people are under duress that they may find unconventional or even immoral ways to find relief.  I admit that when mum call out for me repeatedly while I am in a sleep depraved state, I find that I am more likely to say something snippy or harsh.  Rationally I know that she cannot help herself, but there is part of my sleep deprived mind that thinks otherwise.  I say things like “Don’t you know it is 3 AM...