Bunnie Carol (Haggett) Lambert

 

Memorial Website

 

Death: August 1st, 2008

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mum had several competing diseases by the time she finally succumbed to one of them.  I lived with her during those last couple years and I treasure them now.  In February of that year 2008, Mum told me the doctors had confirmed (for sure this time!) that she had lung cancer.  But I reminded her how they'd found that spot on her lungs years before, and nothing had come of that.  Mum spent most of her life waiting for, expecting, maybe even feeling she deserved to die of that same cancer that took her 3 year old son.  She became a master of medical diagnoses and treatments, often knowing more than the doctors treating her.  While she was debilitated and in poor general health those past few years, Mum was also a bit of a hypochondriac, assessing every fleeting whisper of a symptom against manifold diseases.  And because of that, I didn't / wouldn't / couldn't face that truth, until that last month, with nurses coming to the house twice a day, and Mum deteriorating to a depth I'd never seen her at.  Mum knew I didn't really believe she was dying, but she realized she'd been telling me this for years.  Lol. In the couple years prior, when Mum thought she might have coughed up some blood, she would have me check the tissue to see if I saw a red tinge.  I checked but always complained, because she knew how blood makes me woozy and may even cause me to pass out.  But near her end, I was walking past her couch where she laid and spent most of her last few months, and saw her reach to grab some tissue that was well soaked with blood, to hide it in a nearby garbage pail within reach.  She immediately asserted that "that's not blood!" and that it was the cherries she'd been eating earlier.  Finally Mum had some conclusive proof that she was in grave condition - and wouldn't use it to convince me anymore.  I guess because all that time it wasn't me she was trying to convince she was dying, it was herself.   And now that she had real proof of imminent death, she no longer cared for the satisfaction of putting me in my place, proving me wrong (something she really loved! lol.).  She hid the tissue and I pretended I didn't see it.  That day was my birthday.  The next day, her lungs filled with so much fluid the nurses insisted she get rushed to the hospital, and she died soon after, with her four children all nearby. I even brought up her favourite photo of Jody and put it on the bed table beside her, so that indeed all her children were there.  I think Mum held out for that extra day just to keep from marring my birthday with her Death Day, as Jody's Death Day (November 2nd) lives in infamy in our family. 

 

 

Mum chose to be buried right beside her son Jody who passed away almost 30 years prior.