Bon voyage

When my brother Jay and I arrived we were greeted by Maya who was standing watch. Kathy and Dad had taken their turns, said their goodbyes, and gone home to get some rest. Maya ran us through what we needed to do to keep Mom as comfortable as possible, then left as well. The feeding tube had been removed days before. She couldn’t drink, so we dabbed a damp cloth on her lips regularly to keep them from drying out and cracking. As I dampened her lips with the cloth I reminisced about drinking a cup of tea with her, a favorite way to spend quality time together.

Looking at Mom on that bed, I thought about what a bright light she had been during her life. I had watched that light slowly extinguish over the previous decade or so. She was already beginning to lose her mental clarity when Jay and I took the Alaska cruise with her in 2004. The major stroke she suffered about seven years later would take most of the rest of it. A subsequent fall in the hospital broke her femur putting her in a wheelchair and steady decline. There was a little less of that bright light in her eyes every time I saw her after that.

Now and then, I would see some of the light return. The femur break had necessitated regular physical therapy sessions where they would stretch Mom’s leg out. The muscles had tightened badly and these sessions were pretty painful for her. On one of my visits home after Mom had been in the convalescent facility for about a year, Dad asked me to sit with her during the session. At one point, the therapist was really working her leg trying to stretch it out and she cried out in pain. It was hard to witness. I caressed her back and said: “I know it hurts, Mom. I’m here.” She looked at me. I saw the vacant look change as the light of recognition turned on. “Larry?”, she asked. “Yes, Mom, it’s Larry.”

Now, on her death bed, there was only a shell of my mother left. She breathed softly and didn’t really respond at all as Jay and I took turns dabbing her lips with the damp cloth. While one of us did that and whispered our love, the other one would usually get up and stretch their legs walking around the room. Around four in the morning, her breathing became a bit more labored and shallower. We could tell the end was near. From that point on we both remained at her bed, caressing her and professing our love. Her breaths continued to become shallower and the time between them longer. Then, shortly after 5 a.m., she took three or four final breaths and the breathing simply stopped.

There was no heralding of trumpets, no flashes of brilliant light, no dramatic ending at all. I did not see her soul rising from her body. There was simply a final ember of light that quietly extinguished, and the woman I loved most on this earth was gone. I had cried so many times before and I would cry again as I carried her coffin to her grave with the other pallbearers, but at that moment of her death, I did not. I was simply numb. I stared for a while at her lifeless body in disbelief and numb grief, then began making calls to the family to let them know she was gone.

As I made those calls, the entire staff of the convalescent facility came and stood silently at her door, paying their respects. The head nurse told us that mom was a favorite. Even in her final period of life, mom had endeared herself to everyone she met.

Mom was a deeply religious woman of faith. If her idea of God and the afterlife was correct, then she had a straight ticket to heaven. She had lived a good life filled with giving and love, and she had done her time in an earthly purgatory. Not only would she have a guaranteed spot in heaven, but she would also have a special place there close to God.

I am a Pantheist, so I believe this: that day at five in the morning, the beautiful energy that was my mother left her body and melded back into the All. I take comfort in this. She is free of the illusion of separateness. She is one with Everything, what I consider God. So every day I sense her around me. I feel her gentle caress in a warm summer breeze. I hear her voice in the song of the birds. I see her beauty in a newly blossoming flower, the hummingbirds at their feeder outside my window, and the freshly fallen snow. I see her free spirit in the flitting butterfly. I hear her laughter in the childish laughter of my son and other children. And whether I’m drinking a cup with my wife or by myself, I sometimes share one more cup of tea with Mom.