Sometimes I forget...

Now that the immediacy of my emotional response to Mum's diagnosis and the knowledge that she doesn't have many months left to live, has died down a bit, life for me has started to feel kind of normal again, but in a different way to before. It now feels normal for me to greet Mum every morning with a barrage of questions:

"How are you this morning?" 
"Have you been to the toilet?" 
"Are you in any pain? (and if so, have you taken an Endone?)"
"How was your blood sugar this morning?"
"What did you have for breakfast?"

And it's normal for Mum to demurely answer these questions as I fire them at her (and to reassure me that she doesn't mind me asking them, when I ask if I'm being too bossy).

It's also starting to feel normal to think and talk about what will happen after Mum dies. She's already given me instructions about which real estate agent I have to use to sell the house; she's told me about some donations she wants me to make; we've already done a partial wardrobe cull, and taken her excess clothes to the Fusion Wombat Wardrobe op shop, and we've talked about where her funeral will be held, and who will conduct it. So Mum's death is something that has become quite normal for me to be thinking or talking about.

We recently became clients of Catholic Community Services, who provide us with some domestic assistance every fortnight as well as visits from their Counselling and Advisory Service worker (and the fact that we managed to get into this service without having to wait at all is quite miraculous, as their books are officially closed to new clients, but that's another story).

This morning our regular cleaner came for the first time. She was lovely, and I think it will be good to have her around. As I was showing her where all the different cleaning equipment resides, and what we needed her to do around the house, we struck up a conversation. She asked me if I worked, and I told her I live in Victoria, and needed to take leave from work to be with Mum. Then she asked the fateful question:

"How long will you be here?"
Without thinking, I replied, "Until Mum dies."

When I saw the look on her face, I thought, "Oops." 

Although Mum had mentioned to her that she has pancreatic cancer from which she's not going to recover, I don't think our cleaner had made the connection that this meant Mum is going to die in the not-too-distant future.

This brought home to me the fact that the things in my world that are now 'normal' for me, are not necessarily normal for others. Sometimes I forget that this is so.

I'm still not quite sure what this will mean for me, but it is certainly something to think about.