Playing it out:
It’s pretty clear at this point that the bathroom fall, for any number of reasons, pushed Connie along on the path towards death. She’s glassy eyed all the time, and has spoken only a couple of times - nothing all that clear or profound. She’s lost in an incoherent jumble of dreams and past memories; needing to call in to a former supervisor in the school system she retired from years ago to ‘tell him I was in an accident and can’t come in.’
She doesn’t recognize much of anybody, in person or over the phone.
The other signs we were given about the progress towards death are coming up pretty steadily. Last night, she wanted to watch TV, but couldn’t follow anything, and Susan came up with a bunch of old favorite songs of Connie’s on her iPod and let that run for a while.
We figure that it’s only a couple of days now. Susan has done a lot of work on the arrangements for her cremation and the memorial service in January, so that’s pretty much lined up…and we wait for the inevitable, trying to keep her as comfortable as possible. It’s not a pleasant wait.