If you are grieving the loss of your mother, know that she is not as far from you as you might believe … The bond of a mother’s love can not be broken by death or time.
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Celebrating Mother’s Day when your mother is dying is no picnic. Don’t rush to judgement, though. It’s isn’t that I don’t cherish the memories of our last holiday. It’s just that it was awful. Harrowing. Absolutely terrible. But perfect nonetheless.
On our last Mother’s Day, we ate lox and bagels with extra capers and thick slices of red onion. (Which I detest. The whole kit and caboodle, truth be told.) But I suspect it was mother’s taste for onions (at breakfast, lunch and dinner, it seemed) which gave her the well earned reputation of Phoenix, one who rose time and time again from the ashes of yet another impossible to beat illness. But not this time.
We ate our breakfast on styrofoam plates, balanced awkwardly on our knees. My proper mother would have preferred china plates and cloth napkins, and she jokingly scolded me for forgetting the silver. The Three Musketeers (my husband, mother and I) watched as her three grandchildren bounced like so many restless quarks around the nursing home’s day room. We did a yeoman’s job pretending she wasn’t actually dying.
I so wanted to keep the shirt she wore that day. We had chosen the fabric together on a trip to London. It was hand beaded and smocked, made for her by a seamstress who designed costumes for operas. But we chose to dressed her in that shirt for her viewing and burial. I didn’t remove the faint smudges of cream cheese left by the baby, who’d chewed thoughtfully on one of her sleeves as she cradled him in her arms while we’d eaten our bagels.
We ignored doctor’s orders that Mother’s Day, and shared a box of European chocolates while we told favorite family stories. About the time my father misspelled “diaper” on my oldest brother’s birth announcement, then convinced my mother it was the “English spelling” in order to save face. When my mother was scolded by the head of the radio station for using the word “womb” on air while hosting her 1950s radio shows (Bylines With Bonnie and A Date With Bonnie). The tender retellings of the night she bore each of her five children.
We helped her open handmade cards, clapped as she blew her nose on her new handkerchief (embroidered with her favorite flowers, violets and lily of the valley), then spritzed her lightly with her favorite perfume (her signature scent, reminiscent of a verdant English rose garden).
For all the special touches and laughter, celebrating this holiday (or anything for that matter) when my mother was dying felt wrong, like a piece of death. What I wanted in the depths of my being, I could not have: a table at the new Brazilian restaurant; front row seats for my daughter’s kindergarten graduation; to take her for a ride in a fancy red sports car, over the winding mountain roads that led to Vail. All of this, thrown together with a set of working lungs and a new heart.
For a few hours, though, time stood still in that sunny room. The children didn’t fight or wander off down the hallways. We made my mother chortle with glee. “Remember when dad waved his cane in the air at the lamp store? He broke an entire chandelier’s worth of glass on top of your head, then managed to lay the blame on you! Thank God for your Priscilla Presley bouffant! Back combing and hairspray saved you from becoming a porcupine!” She laughed so hard her shoulders shook. Then, she began to cry. We stood at the ready with her crisp white handkerchief and gently wiped the tears from her face. The children paused, wide eyed, as our laughter turned suddenly to weeping.
Two days later, our daughter turned six, then graduated from Kindergarten. With great concentration, I watched her leap across the make believe frog pond, which signified that she’d become a graduate of Mrs. V’s Bumblebee Class. We held her birthday party at the trampoline center, as promised. But I forgot the candles for her cake. Despite our seamless lies, we didn’t stop by and pick Meewaw up on the way to the party, but Ava was too excited to notice.
Across town, while Ava somersaulted and opened her gifts, Hospice nurses placed little white Tic Tacs of morphine on my mother’s tongue every half an hour. The closer she inched towards death, the more jokes spilled from my lips. “So this is the new Communion?” I quipped, “Will it end her thrashing? Could you spare a couple for me?”
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If you are facing the death of your mother, it will not matter how many books you’ve collected. Don’t try to to prepare yourself. When your mother begins to fade, the dance of death will frighten you. You’ll feel abandoned, and it won’t matter that you’ve hemmed yourself in with legions of friends and family, or an army of Hospice angels. No matter how well adjusted, ready or strong you feel, at some point, you’ll be convinced that you are the one who’s dying and gasping for air. Because your mother’s descent will force you to question who she was in life, and who you will be in death.
As inconceivable it sounds, the searing pain you will experience is as it should be. This grief is a right and just part of the Universe which will facilitate your growth as a wise and seasoned soul. This will be true whether your mother was good, bad or indifferent. It it is only right that her passage from this mortal coil should cause you to pause and consider your own dance with death, and take stock of your life on this spinning wheel of a planet. As long as you know that losing your mother will test you, and that there is no way around it, you’ll survive.
When my mother neared death, I awoke each morning in a spasm of fear, wondering if I’d missed her big moment.. Had she died? Would she die soon? How long could I listen to her rattling, tortured breathing without running from the room, screaming like a baby? It had been three agonizing weeks, and she was clearly in pain. Where was the grand plan in all of this, and what help were her doctors and pain specialists?
Just as I began to sense myself unraveling, one of my mother’s favorite aides furtively called my name, gesturing to me as if she was about to hand over file of state secrets. Had I noticed the tip of her nose had a bluish tinge? It wouldn’t be long now. Get ready, she whispered. Perhaps you should spend the night, settle the kids in the day room in sleeping bags.
My mother moaned and spiraled closer to death. She had not spoken for weeks. Late that evening, the Nigerian priest whom she adored came to bless and grant her Extreme Unction. According to our Catholic faith, this absolved her of her sins and prepared her to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Inexplicably, while praying over her body, my mother suddenly sat bolt upright and took hold of Father Steve’s hand. Looking into his eyes, she said, “Father, know that you have given me great joy.” Those were her last words.
Father Steve smiled as he walked slowly away from her bedside, a man clearly accustomed to miracles and death. But I fought the urge to chase him as he left. Had he done his job properly, used enough of his sacred oils? Was she ready for her journey? Was I?
He had performed no Sacrament for me, because there was none designed for the living. None which would release me from my fears. I stood alone facing a sharp precipice, unwilling to become a motherless child. I wondered what releasing my mother from her agony would mean for the future of my soul.
But in my almost senseless grief, her final words found a way to comfort and calm me. I realized that she had chosen them carefully. I remembered the story of the day she chose my name. She had been determined to call me Amy, but my father insisted that the short moniker sounded too much like a doughnut shop. A physician, he threatened to pull rank and sneak back to the hospital during his nightly rounds and sign my birth certificate with the name “Paddington Bear”. That, he supposed, would get my mother to see things his way. Fortunately for the two of them (and for me) a Mass card fell out of my mother’s Bible. It showed a picture of Snoopy (remember, it was the ‘70s). His ears were flying high as he danced, caught up a rapturous song only he could hear. It read, simply, “Joy is a sure sign of the presence of God.”
They called a truce then and there, and agreed to name me Jennifer-Joy. Growing up, my mother told me that my birth was was a sign that God existed and that He was good. Both my parents believed wholeheartedly joy, in every circumstance. They knew that life lived with a hefty dose of faith was a prerequisite to happiness, and they devoted their lives to joy.Even when life threw vicious curve balls, and when everything seemed to fall apart at the seams, they clung to joy. When the darkness closed in, so penetrating that the light of a single candle, lit in wavering prayer, seemed an insult to hope itself, they persevered.
I did not understand the gift of my name until I heard my mother utter her last words. Then I understood what she had been trying to tell me all those many years. There was joy in all things. In the bitter and the sweet. In life. Joy, even in death.
It was my eight year old son, my mother’s first grandchild, who knew when her hour had arrived. Sleeping soundly in the next room, he appeared so suddenly in her tiny white room that the hairs on my neck stood on end. For a brief moment, he surveyed the change in his grandmother’s face. In the depths of our exhaustion and grief, the adults who stood watch over her had missed the change in her countenance, the sudden peace. But my son sensed it immediately, even from the next room. He turned to wake his little sister before we had a chance to stop him. We heard him whisper loudly, “Wake up, Ava. It’s time. Meemaw is finishing her race to heaven today!”
Indeed. The beautiful green eyes, which had been tightly shuttered, as if blocking out the labor pains of death, fluttered open in recognition of a beautiful mystery. First, her eyes found mine, then took in the faces of each of her loved ones. Finally, they swiveled to a far off corner of the room, and there they stayed, fixed and staring, until she breathed her last, sighing breath.
I could barely breathe, and did not know whether to sit or stand. For I knew, at that moment, she stood on a threshold between two worlds, with one foot on the doorstep of heaven, ready to greet her Savior, my father and sister, and so many loved ones who’d long been waiting and watching for her joyous homecoming. I recognized the leap she took across the pond. She’d graduated. And although my soul cried out, my part in her vigil was done.
To this day, my mother remains etched in my being. Inexplicably, even in death, she remains close, despite her physical absence. A mother myself, I believe this is a mysterious gift, given to mothers alone. We remain, impossibly close, holding firmly to the hands we knit together and will always hold within our eternally beating hearts.
If you are grieving the loss of your mother, know that she is not as far from you as you might believe. She is waiting and watching in realms unseen. The bond of a mother’s love can not be broken by death or time. When you miss your mother, reach out. She is there, whether you believe or not, already holding your hand. But before she can find you, you must reach out. Extend your hands, you sons and daughters. Reach out, in faith, and be comforted.
For more from Jennifer Cooreman you can find her personal blog here, and her WattPad site here.
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Photo: Kristina Alexanderson/Flickr