My mother died in late February.
It was a Friday. I was at work and got a call from my brother who stated matter-of-factly, “Mom’s dead.” Then he went into the details; she woke up at the usual time and wanted to use the potty so my brother, who lived with her, walked her to the bathroom and sat her down. Then she asked for a glass of water. Nothing unusual whatsoever. When he returned to give it to her she was slumped over. He checked for a pulse and any signs of breathing.
Nothing. She was gone.
We knew this day was coming. She was ninety-four. She’d more than beat the odds for life-expectancy – especially for a woman who smoked and drank for sixty years. Her death really couldn’t have gone any better, save for the room she left in. She got exactly what she wanted; she went quick without any suffering and she died at home. Mission accomplished, mom. Well done.
No, the misery didn’t start until I contacted emergency services to report her death. The dispatcher grilled me for the details then informed me the police and paramedics were on their way. Then they asked if I had a “DNR” and I responded with an “um” and “sorta, I think” and “It’s all in the trust paperwork”. She informed me paramedics would not be able to stop “life-saving efforts” until I arrived with the correct paperwork.
She was already dead. She had been for several minutes by that point. Completely unresponsive. But the dispatcher instructed my brother to drag her body to the floor anyway and begin “life-saving” chest compressions immediately. Ugh.
My brother is 68 now. He moved to my mother’s house after suffering a stroke and a heart attack of his own eight years ago. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to dead-lift a body before, any body, but it ain’t easy. I once had to drag my father onto the toilet from the bathtub and I thought I was going to have a stroke myself – and I was only 46.
Thankfully, emergency services arrived quickly. My brother had managed to drag my mother’s body as far as the hallway outside the bathroom by that time. When he opened the door for them they barged in, pushing him aside while barking orders. He did not take kindly to that, I can tell you. A young, over-eager policeman took the brunt of his chagrin and will no doubt tread more lightly in the future under similar circumstances.
Paramedics began working on our mother immediately – not really as an attempt to revive her, I think, but simply to avoid liability lest somebody accuse them of not doing everything in their power to save her life.
I get it, but I swear the fear of liability has diminished us as a species.
In any case, they would continue pumping my mother’s 94 year-old chest and administering IVs in vain until I arrived with the proper paperwork to relieve them of that responsibility. Unfortunately, I had to stop by my house first to retrieve the ppwork, and without the benefit of lights and sirens of my own to cleave traffic, it seemed to take forever.
When I finally arrived at my mom’s house I found paramedics straddling her dead body. She lie on her back, her legs still in the hallway and her head in the living room, pointed toward the front door of the small ranch she’d lived in since 1956.
Discarded medical supplies littered the navy-blue, high-pile carpeting she had installed sometime back in the 90s. Crumbs were revealed in the empty footprints of the oak coffee table that was now pushed out of the way and up against the couch.
I handed the paramedics the trust folder and they immediately began leafing through the pages, looking for the proper medical directive. When they were satisfied I had the authority to bring an end to this unnecessary travesty, they offered their polite condolences, packed up their gear, and left and left as quickly as they arrived. They didn’t even cover the body.
Our mother still lay halfway between the hallway and the living room in her powder-blue bath robe. Some sort of plastic breathing apparatus was still lodged in her throat; mucus with traces of blood trailed down the left side of her face and onto the carpet in a small puddle. It was a miserable looking scene, but then death is rarely dignified I imagine.
My brother and I were relatively stoic about it all at first. We knew this day was coming, yet somehow hoped it never would. We cried while we crouched down to kiss her forehead and say our goodbyes. My brother covered up her body, then we went outside to call our sister.
After we’d shared the sad news, we sat on folding chairs in the garage and awaited the funeral director. Soon, memories of our mother and the little house at the corner of Byron and Shelley came spilling out. It was the house of our family of origin, where all the troubles and triumphs of our childhood took place and left their mark on our psyches. But we didn’t talk about the troubles.
Instead, we talked about mom’s drive toward creativity, the way she started painting the basement walls in wildlife murals in the 1960s and didn’t finish until the 1990s. We talked about how she bought antiques at flea markets and garage sales and how she restored picture frames with the greatest care and covered the walls with prints and tapestries she’d found on her weekly hunt. We talked about how she made her own clothes and Halloween outfits for us as kids and later collected racks of beautiful outfits she’d rarely get to show off in public. We talked about her cooking, how she made Chicken Soup and her Chili With Noodles right up until the very end. We talked about how she’d load us up with leftovers any time we visited for the holidays. We talked about the way she took care of her lawn and planted maybe too many flowers, shrubs, and trees for that tiny lot. She loved flowers and she knew all the names.
It began to sink in that a lifetime of memories had now come to their inevitable close – and our own mortality seemed to loom larger in her absence.
Yes, thankfully, it was the good memories that bubbled to the surface while all the troubling memories sank deep into the murky past where she’d always prefered to keep them. Despite those troubles, she loved us kids fiercely and unconditionally and we never doubted it – even when her behavior might have suggested otherwise, when the scars of her own history kept her from being the best version of herself.
The tears are coming again.
Even harder now while I digest what it all really means.
She’s gone.
Forever.
It’s really is the end to the only person in the universe who truly loved me unconditionally and spoiled me mercilessly.
It’s guts me but I need to feel it.
I’m also grateful.
I’m grateful she’s at peace now. I’m grateful she doesn’t have to worry about us anymore. I’m grateful she doesn’t have to suffer the isolation of her bad hearing which has been the bane of her existence since she was a teenager.
And I’m so grateful and so blessed to have had her for so very long.
Be at peace, Mom. I love you and I will miss you
until the end.
sūdrakarma 