Mom seems mad

I don't know if Mom is mad, or what. It could be that she is going through a memory confusion stage, and keeps realizing she can't get up by herself anymore. I don't know.

It could be that now that she knows she will probably die soon, she might be in the "anger" stage of dying, of Kubler-Ross' five stages of dying.

• Denial and isolation: "This is not happening to me."

• Anger: "How dare God do this to me."

• Bargaining: "Just let me live to see my son graduate."

• Depression: "I can't bear to face going through this, putting my family through this."
• Acceptance: "I'm ready, I don't want to struggle anymore."

The list was praised and criticized by grief experts. Some said the stages got people expressing their emotions; others said the stages were too rigid.

Mom wasn't really interested in eating lunch, until I mentioned corn on the cob, then her eyes lit up. Maybe like "Oh, something to live for!"

My boyfriend and I have been watching the TV series Dexter, and in one episode a woman is dying of cancer, but keeps asking for the perfect key lime pie - saying she can't die until she has the perfect key lime pie.

So maybe just being able to eat her favorite foods everyday will keep my Mom hanging around awhile longer. Today she ate scrambled egg with cheese, meat loaf, corn on the cob, fresh garden tomatoes, ice cream, and crushed pineapple with crushed ice.

She is still chocking some, so we are cutting back on the water and giving her crushed ice, which seems to help.

I phoned Mom's "church group" leader, invited her for dinner on Sunday. But, she is going out of town for a week. So, I invited her for Sunday next week.

By then all of my Mom's children will have seen her, and probably her closest friends, so I suspect she will hang around until then.