Inching Forward

I'm sure Mom is still sparkling somewhere.

This is a hard one to write. Mom snuck away during the night last Saturday, sometime in the two-hour window between 11 p.m. when I fell asleep reading in the bed next to her hospital bed, and 1 a.m. when I woke because I couldn’t hear her breathing.

When I checked on her, I believe she had only just died—her hands were cool, but her head and chest were hot (she’d been running a fever earlier). My immediate reaction was upheaval: shock, panic, fear, profound sadness. I was temporarily frozen. And I think I felt cheated, that after all these months of privately dreading the moment of her death, she left while I was sleeping, and I missed it.

I sat in the chair beside her bed and slowly calmed down. I kissed her, chatted with her, held her hand, straightened out her covers, brushed her hair, sent out my requests to the Universe for her peaceful passage to whatever adventure is next for her, texted my brothers (it was the middle of the night, my youngest brother was halfway here and had stopped for the night). Then I decided, greedily, to go back to sleep and keep her with me till morning.

Early Saturday morning, I made the necessary calls. Hospice came to do their “assessment” (verify and declare her dead), and the funeral home came to collect her—I admit I had to leave the room for the “draping” (it’s a body bag, Mr. Funeral Home Guy, you can say it). Shortly after, one of my brothers arrived. 

I spent some time dismantling our “care center”—stripping the hospital bed, putting away all the hospital-ish accoutrement, unhooking the oxygen generator (I had to do this last; I wasn’t sure I could do without the constant reassuring drone after four months). There’s nothing like furious hyper-responsibility and a list of chores to stem the grief floodgate, but it only lasts so long. Eventually, the steam ran out. We had to take to our La-Z-Peoples and sleep. 

On Sunday afternoon, my other two brothers arrived. We all worked on an obituary, sorted through paperwork, talked about Mom's final wishes. We went out to dinner and had a great time laughing and remembering, then came home to watch a sci-fi/western marathon.

Yesterday (Monday) was a little harder. My brothers all needed to hit the road early, and the medical equipment people came to take apart the hospital bed and haul it away, along with the O2 generator and tanks, and the commode. Suddenly, it was just Ray and me. Mom’s room – the biggest in the house – was a wide open, very empty space.

I realized as I looked around her room that I was already formulating to-do lists: sort the clothes for a giveaway, go through the jewelry for the kids and grandkids, collect her collection of stars in one place for family. As soon as I realized I was task-ifying Mom’s death and disappearance, I stopped. I was exhausted and raw. I gave myself permission to shut her door and spend the day resting, sleeping, watching silly TV.

I will probably need more of these rest days—we’re never really done grieving, we just slowly adapt, learn to live with vacancies. I don’t quite know what to do with myself yet. Time seems expanded somehow, round and fuzzy almost, after the intense, demand-heavy, scheduled, linear life of the past months. Mom had been in Hospice care since January 1 of this year, but the year before that was a time of her declining health, many, many medical appointments, and 4 hospitalizations. And before that was breast cancer radiation, knee replacement, eye surgery, and chemo for CLL cancer. It's been a long, hard road.

I’m not afraid of death. I’m sad to see my mother go, and I have all the typical feelings: I should have said this or done that; I should never have said this or done that; we didn't have enough time; I'm a motherless child. I have those other feelings too, for which we’re conditioned to feel guilty: relief, release to finally be a “grown up,” freedom. I’m secretly delighted that I can take a shower whenever I want, go to the store, sleep in. I don’t beat myself up for these feelings, knowing that grief always calls up the full range of human emotions.

I know, too, that death is the natural conclusion to our time here. And although I don’t know what, if anything, comes next, I believe death isn’t the end. We are, after all, powered by electrical energy, and energy doesn’t die—it just changes form.

Ray and I are inching forward now. I’m looking forward to a reading later this week with a dear friend, where I will see former colleagues. Afterward, I will celebrate poetry, friends, and Mom at our Little Town bar with a glass of wine and the live music she so loved. And if her energy is sticking around for a bit longer, as the Tibetans believed, I know she will be there with us, dancing.

Here's a little poem for us all, for the days ahead...