Honouring Joan
My wonderful mother‐in-law is dying. I should say first that she is 91 and comfortable with that. She has a terminal condition which means over the last two years it has become harder and harder for her to eat, and her last hospital trip resulted in a procedure that had a 50/50 chance of working and it didn't. She hasn't managed to eat or drink anything at all since Friday, that's five days so far.
She is at home on palliative care, but still getting herself up and dressed independently. A hospital bed arrived for her yesterday along with a cushion for her chair and just yesterday she started using a zimmerframe around the flat.
She is making everything as easy as is possible given the circumstances and I'm very grateful to be somewhat prepared thanks to Annalisa Barbieri's podcast on what dying looks like.
She’s getting slower and weaker, both physically and mentally. But we're still talking and laughing and she's organising things around her, either herself or directing me. Knowing what was coming meant that my girls, now young adults, have had the opportunity to come home and say their goodbyes.
I was intimidated by Joan when we met and honestly that continued for a quite long time, mostly because I was worried she'd judge our house by her (extremely high) standards of cleanliness. She never did. She said one of the best things she could possibly have done when she and Wally came to visit and meet Kate, our elder daughter. I was sitting on the sofa that we had in our kitchen. I can't remember if I was breastfeeding or just holding her, but she looked at me and said, "I wish I'd done more of that and less cleaning when Alan was a baby."
We did things very differently – I breastfed beyond babyhood, we home educated – and I know she was at times baffled by or concerned about our choices, but she never judged. Once she walked in on me sprawled on the sofa, tandem nursing my girls. I'm pretty sure that she was a bit shocked and really not comfortable at the sight, but she just said, "Ah, lovely. I'll go and put the kettle on." After Covid she moved to be close to us and lives just a ten-minute walk away. It's only since then that I've really got to know her. She has never lost her curiosity about the world and we've had some interesting conversations. A fairly recent one started with her asking about Andrew Tate and ended with the impact of pornography on girls!
She has a wicked sense of humour. Recently my husband bought some pajamas and found that they didn't have a fly in them. He asked her if she could put one in for him (no use asking me!). She did, but not before asking him if he couldn't just identify as a woman and sit down to pee!
Her support has been unwavering during the horribly stressful time I had during my year as a trustee of LLLGB, culminating in essentially being kicked out because I do not believe that supporting men (biological ones) to lactate and "breastfeed" is ever justifiable and is a safeguarding issue. That support continued as we set up MoMa Breastfeeding and her Easter gift to me of a donation made her our first proper donor, several weeks before we got the donate button working on our website and went public.
I could not have wished for a better mother-in-law. I am very glad that I have had the opportunity to tell her and that I took it. On Sunday when Alan and I went round anticipating a difficult conversation, she greeted us with "We need to sort out palliative care." She has been crystal clear about her wishes – nothing that could prolong her life – and we are fortunate not only to be able to honour them, but also to spend her last days with her. It is a huge privilege.