Indra Krastins (1952-2025)
Indra Krastins (1952-2025)
My mother passed away around 1 am on August 14th, 2025. She was 73 years old and died of ovarian cancer.
I received a call from a hospice nurse around 2 am. After calling my brother and aunt, I started the 15 minute drive to the assisted living facility where she had spent the last couple of weeks.
The city, that so often felt like it was hassling me with traffic lights and congestion in moments of urgency, retreated beyond the reach of the streetlights in those early hours.
My brother arrived at the same time as me. We were greeted at her room by two employees that gave their brief but respectful condolences before leaving us to the scene. The hospice nurse had already left to complete their paperwork. The staff had tidied up the room before our arrival. The trash was taken out and the bed, with my mother still in it, made dignified. She looked peaceful, like she was having the rest she earned after so many months of this.
We're not a family big on rituals or beliefs, but we each made the little gestures we had to make before taking a seat in the minimal furniture of her studio room.
"It has been a hell of a year," are the first words I remember from my brother.
We sat for about 45 minutes before the funeral home arrived to collect mom. We talked about the generations; our kids, our grandparents, and the folks in between. The move into assisted living had revealed to me photo albums and scrap books I didn't know existed; my mother had saved her essays from college and report cards from elementary school. It was something to look at now and explore later.
The arrival of the funeral home driver brought an end to the vigil. I posted myself in the hallway while she was transferred to the stretcher. After that was done and she was wrapped in a shawl I made a few more of those gestures and words of I-don't-know-what-I-am-supposed-to-do-but-I-hope-this-is-enough.
I took the things that felt like they don't belong separated from their person; her keys, wallet, and phone. Everyone was gone when I stepped back outside. In those early hours, it felt as if the world had paused to let us say goodbye.
As I pulled out from the garage, I gave my father in Arizona a call to let him know. Then I drove home.
It wasn't as hard to fall asleep again as I would have thought. I was tired. When I woke again in two hours the world had resumed and it was time to pack a lunch for the kids.
Back in December, I wrote about my mother's recovery and the miracle of modern day chemotherapy drugs. (See "Effort" from December 5th, 2024.) The progress was good for many months. After Christmas she moved back to her apartment and to a more-or-less independent life. It felt like there was a proverbial light at the end of the tunnel.
Eventually her cancer stopped responding to the chemo therapy. I was told that chemo drugs can be similar to antibiotics: the drug pushes back the weaker cancer but leaves cells with mutations that make it resistant. We tried another drug, and then another. Each one had a lower chance of working than the previous, as the doctors explained they always start with the best drug.
Slowly she started to get weaker. Trips to urgent care to manage symptoms became more frequent. They pulled more and more fluid from her abdomen, first on a bi-weekly and finally weekly basis. By mid-July, it became evident that she wouldn't be able to live independently for much longer. I found her a room in a comfortable assisted living facility close to my home. Within a few days of moving in, she was no longer able to get out of bed on her own.
Two weeks ago I took her in for chemo where the nurse advised me she would likely not survive the next round and implored us to switch to hospice care. At the time the nurses thought she had two to four weeks. She was in hospice for less than a week before her body could no longer sustain her spirit. The most we could offer her was an end in her own room, in her own bed, and as free of discomfort as we could make it.
Dying of cancer is in many ways a euphemism. We attempt to provide dignity to those who passed but we really do a disservice to the struggles of them and their families. People don't die of cancer. They die from being unable to eat. They die from suffocation. They die from an internal struggle for homeostasis that bloats them with fluid and starves their organs for energy. It is hidden only to those who are not in the room.
Every hour becomes a stretch for a little bit more. For my mother, life seemed to accelerate as she slipped away from awareness. For us, it slowed down until it stopped that Thursday night.
I did my best with the time I had. My biggest regret is not making an effort to capture all the conversations we had in the car rides to appointments. I learned so much about her on those days and heard so many stories that I had not heard before. I did manage to record some more intentional interviews with her in her last few weeks, amounting to maybe 90 minutes of content. I'm looking forward to putting that up somewhere to share with family.
I am on a (very short, Amazon-provided) bereavement leave now. I took it because I felt I was supposed to, but the truth is I've been deconstructing her life and mourning her slow passing for quite some time now. The last week was hard, but I'm not even sure it was the hardest of the weeks I've had in the last year. I am doing alright. I am writing this, which is what I want to be doing most of all. I hesitated a bit to send this because it feels maybe a bit too intimate. However, the experiences shared by others in similar situations were both a great comfort and a valuable tool over these last few months. Maybe this can help someone too.
I'm also packing up the little that remains and arranging donations to charity. There will be a celebration of life, most likely September 20th, when some more family is able to get into town.
For now, it's just another present to get past.
Aleks