My
mom’s death when I was still in my 20's was the defining event of my young
adult life.
Not moving to two different cities to get my education.
Not getting my degrees. Not success in different areas. Not my travels. Not
even living with a man, despite his bigger than life personality.
There’s before and there is after Mom’s death.
I still remember the phone call in the staff room at the
school where I taught. My mom told me she had cancer. Generalized. She’d waited
too long to see the doctor. She didn’t want any treatment. She had maybe 3
months left.
I was in shock.
At some point, Mom and I started believing that she
would miraculously be cured or live with this condition for years.
So, I joined a tennis club in the city thinking I’d need
someway to occupy the long summer break if I didn’t take a summer course. Yup,
my mom was dying and I thought I’d be playing tennis to pass the time.
The club got my money, but I never showed up.
I spent the summer driving the triangle between the city
where I lived, the hospital where mom was dying in a small Ontario border town
and our tiny Quebec village where my childhood home was.
I’d drive back to the city to care for my cat and meet
up with friends and my
then-off-and-on-no-longer-live-in-boyfriend-soon-to-be-permanently-ex.
My mind was spinning overtime. I’d scream in the car. I’d
imagine turning the wheel sharply and diving into the river far below the
bridge but I knew that I’d be hurting everyone I loved. So, I kept the wheels
straight.
The only time that my mind would shut up back then was
if I’d had too much to drink or if I was shooting pool.
I shot pool in the city and in the village. I shot pool
in billiards rooms and in seedy bars. I played not for money, but to run the
table. I played government clerks, bankers and drug dealers. I got to be really
good.
When lining up a series of shots, my mind would become
still and calm if only for a few blissful seconds. It was a balm for all the
parts of me which were crying in pain.
Day after day when a visiting a dying loved one,
conversation can become awkward. She hated when someone would walk into her
room and ask her how she was doing.
One day, I brought music books to the hospital. I
wheeled Mom to the music room. She played the piano and we sang and harmonized
as if we were on holiday in the Laurentians.
Another time, I brought in very old family photo albums.
We’re taking early 1900 to mid 20th century. Mom had emigrated from the
American south. If we didn’t identify ancestors in the photos, there’d be
nobody north of the border who could. We managed to do a few albums before she
got tired. We’d do the rest next time.
Mom had nausea and found meal times at the hospital the
worst. Who wouldn’t? Dad and I took turns to be with her for lunch and dinner.
I’d never heard of meal replacements drinks. That’s what
they gave her when she stopped eating. As if she could build up strength and
what? Live?
I’d never heard of palliative care before. Mom wasn’t
getting better.
I soon lost my appetite, too. I bought chocolate
flavoured Boost meal replacement drinks by the case. For me.
Things took a turn for the worse when I had to go back
to work at the end of the summer. I walked into my principal’s office one
Monday at lunch after downing a couple of Boosts and told him that I needed to
be with my Mom and I had no idea when I’d be back. He said “Go.”
That night, a nurse found me on the floor on the far
side of Mom’s room. I must have felt that the end was coming. They wheeled in a
cot and a blanket for me.
Alma, a kindly nurse from Newfoundland, would sneak in
meals for me. She once rushed in apologizing for having been too busy as she
handed me all she could find so late at night: a piece of pecan pie. It had
been one of mom’s favourite. Relatives from Georgia used to send us boxes of
pecans before Christmas so Mom could bake pies. She was drifting in and out of
consciousness, but she would have enjoyed the coincidence.
I’d lied to Mom all summer that he and I were no longer
seeing each other. I made the definite and final break-up call to my ex from a
pay phone down the hall from her room. He wanted something I could no longer
give. Time and attention. My reserves were empty.
That last week, with her eyes closed and morphine shots
kicking in, Mom would babble in slurred bursts. I’d grab my notebook and
scribble everything I thought she said. I needed her wisdom. I still needed my
mom. She was slipping away.
When she stopped talking altogether and fell into a
coma, I sang to her softly. I read her favourite psalms. She was a devout
evangelical Christian.
I still wonder why I didn’t lose my faith right then and
there.
It would take another 10 years and my Dad’s sudden death
for that to happen. With faith gone, anxiety had room to take hold of me. But
that’s another post.
Mom’s breathing became more and more laboured. My best
friends, my Dad, my brother and sister-im-law all came to see her Saturday,
September 21st, 1991. When they’d all left, I sat by her bed, holding her hand
and timing the seconds between each shallow breath. Sadly, it never occurred to
me until now that I could have climb into bed with her and held her.
All of a sudden she took a deep breath.
And then, there was nothing.
After many months and then all of a sudden.
Ma mère n’était plus là. She was no longer there.
Her presence was gone.
I rang the station. A nurse came. She confirmed what I
suspected, what I feared, what I already knew.
She said that I had to wait for a doctor to confirm her
death.
As I waited, I looked at my mom’s ravaged body and
realized that it was a shell. A vessel which had contained an incredible
spirit. A daring and talented woman with a booming laugh.
A woman who’d lived alone on a sailboat, then on a tiny
island with her dog, Tricky. A woman who’d moved to Puerto Rico after WW2. A
women who came to Quebec on vacation and stayed on to see snow. Falling in love
with our village, then with my father. A strict mother who made every kid and
teenager we called friends feel welcome and loved.
A mother who set aside her own dreams, like many before
and since, to raise us.
I felt like an orphan.
I called my Dad. My brother answered. I was the baby of
the family announcing the death of our mom.
Despite her death being far from sudden, no one had
contacted an undertaker. The nurse informed me, that I needed to empty her
room. Only when I’d left the hospital, would they remove her from the room.
So, I went to work silently and alone in the room where
my mom’s body lay.
Things accumulate in hospital rooms. Unworn clothing,
nightgowns, gifts and other personal things.
I returned to the nurses’ station and asked for a pair
of scissors and an envelope. I never told anyone before now, but I snipped a
lock of her soft white hair. The same hair, I’ve now inherited.
There was only one thing left that I could not bring
myself to carry home. Her pillow. It would have meant lifting her head to
retrieve it. And, yet, when I finally arrived home that night and unpacked her
suitcase, it’s the one question I can still hear my dad asking: “Where’s her
pillow?”
When I started to explain that it would have meant
lifting her head to retrieve it, he cut me off to say that it was okay. He’d
had no idea that mom was still in the room as I gathered her things one last
time. And he realized what I’d had to do.
What so many others have had to do.
After her funeral, I’d walk to her grave late at night
trying to feel close to her.
Her doctor had predicted 3 months. She made it to five.
Within months, I accepted a position which would take me
a continent away from everyone I knew for 3 years.
A few years after my return, I ended up taking over our
family home in the quaint little village.
I rarely, if ever go to the cemetery now. I feel close
to my parents when I smell the moist earth as I tend the flower beds.
When I observe birds at the feeders.
When I prepare one of their favourite recipes.
When I sit at Mom’s upright and play one of her
signature songs.
When I enjoy the view from the home they’d named
Hillview House.
When I come upon something noteworthy that I’d like to
share with them.
When I choose to see beauty in every day life.
I haven’t been near a pool hall or a seedy bar in
decades, yet I’ve found ways to still my mind.
Journalling, swimming, playing musical instruments,
reading, hiking, kayaking, nordic skiing, snowshoeing, forest bathing in all
seasons, writing, composing music, drawing, gardening, cooking from scratch,
building things, and being grateful.
We all have defining moments. If we live long enough,
we’ll have many of them. Some highs and some lows.
Mom’s death is now, 26 years later, one of my life’s
defining moments.
May we choose to straighten our wheels, survive and
learn from all of the moments which amount to our lives.
