Knowing your mum is dying, how do you cope?

I really feel your pain and could have written your post myself. I wouldn’t even focus on working out how you accept what’s going to happen but instead plough your energy into making the most of any time you have together. I think acceptance comes in time. Be gentle with yourself. 

I mirror all of your thoughts, I have moments of calm, where there is a level of acceptance of understanding we have done all we can do. I equally get terrified, panic stricken, and yes the cruelness of it all; my mum is 62 and as I type I am by her bedside as she has very suddenly and unexpectedly hit end of life after two years of fighting. I had hoped so hard for one more Xmas together, but I know my mum has defied all medical odds to be still with us, as your mum clearly has to. My mum also had a different cancer which was cured 14 years ago - and probably like you you always considered that something of a lucky escape - peered behind the curtain and thought ‘thank fuck my mum made it’. But now we have mum’s who won’t. And it isn’t fair, it is cruel, it is scary and it is life altering for all of us. All I’m trying to hold on to is that we are lucky to have had such good mums, that we care about losing so much, and we got those extra years which, whilst not enough, thank goodness we did.

I too have been battling with the acceptance piece, because you want to live in the moment and rejoice in those moments but it’s hard to do when your brain is racing away to the final days which aren’t here yet - of course for me they are here, and I cannot see right now beyond this moment, nothing outside of it. I know there are things - work, Christmas, etc. But right now mum is all that matters. I don’t think I’ll ever fullyaccept the cruelty of it, the unfairness if it. 

wishing you, your mum and family well - hug her as much as you can 

I'm so sorry you've had this news. My Dad had stage 4 bowel cancer diagnosed at the end of 2018,and he was on chemo every two weeks until the beginning of the pandemic. He took a turn for the worst over the last few months, and we knew he had little time left. I felt so helpless knowing he was deteriorating but we obviously weren't going to see him due to concerns about covid. He was a chef before he retired and loved marshmallows, so not knowing what to do I'd make him batches of marshmallows and sent them to him. It was a really small thing but it really cheered him up when the chemo had messed with his taste buds., which made me feel slightly better, just having something to focus my energies on was helpful. 

I wish I'd discussed more important things with him before he deteriorated really quickly at the beginning of June, he died on the 6th of June in hospital, and my brother was holding his hand on the day he died and was asking him what his best memory was in his life, and he couldn't answer because his mental capacity was just not there anymore. Don't wait to ask those things you'd love to know, or to tell them the things you really want them to know