It's been almost three months since my mother died, and I think I'm beginning to process the thoughts and emotions surrounding this loss. A friend told me that we are never the same again after our mothers die. This is true for me. I accepted my daddy's death more easily, even though I have always been a "daddy's girl." But his death did not leave me alone; I had Mother. Now that she is gone, I am no longer anyone's child.
My mother lost the use of her legs about 9 months before her death, so those months required lots of personal care from family members and caregivers. She wanted badly to stay at home. No one lived with her full-time. She was accepted onto hospice care, which prevented her from being sent to a hospital or nursing home against her will. This was all quite challenging for her and for the family that lived nearby who accepted the daily care required for someone bed-bound.
Mother was mentally sound throughout these months, which was a blessing. About a month before her death she became ill, nauseous and unable to eat, after a 5-day respite visit to the hospice facility. She never recovered from this. Hospice finally relieved the nausea and vomiting, but she continued very weak and without appetite. Her decline was too slow for her liking. She'd always wanted to go quickly -- ideally, in her sleep one night. My daddy died within 24 hours of deciding to refuse treatment and entering hospice care, but he had an underlying health issue, diabetes. Mother had no threatening illness like that to help her on her way.
It took about 3-4 weeks, and I was there for much of that time. The local family needed more support for her care, and someone to sleep at the house. These were the hard days. She woke in the night, crying for a drink. She sipped through a straw. She was very uncomfortable in the hospital bed and needed regular shifting. She required regular changing and cleaning. She hated to impose on us, but had to ask for everything.
I am a person who comes to help in emergencies. I don't know why this is so. I'm good in a crisis: I don't break down, I'm fairly decisive and dependable, I help stabilize the situation. I'm willing to make the phone calls and do the next thing. I also process the trauma of those emergencies later, much later. My mother wanted to die in her home, and she did. It was early in the morning, so Hospice wasn't there. My sister-in-law, my niece and her baby, and I stood around Mother's bed, sang "Jesus Loves Me" and "Near the Cross" to her, and she took her last breath. That sounds peaceful, but it was not.
I found it a gruesome experience. Mother's dog had woken me about 4:00 am with unusual behavior. She knew what was happening. Mother's breathing changed from very slow (many seconds between breaths), to rapid and noisy, gasping. She was also in pain, because the last time that we turned her from one side to the other, she cried out, "No!" That was the evening before. So in the morning she was facing the window. She liked to see the sunshine and the trees. I'd called my sister-in-law and told her I thought it might be time. Thus we three stood around her bed. She was gasping for breath, her eyes closed. But they opened toward the end, and in the final minute or two, she opened her mouth wider, her teeth showing as her body tried very hard to take in more air. The color of her legs had changed, as the hospice nurse had told us it would, to a deep red-purple, and it moved quickly up her legs as her heart struggled to supply necessary oxygen. I knew my mother wanted very much to die. She'd asked us, "Why is it taking so long?" But her body -- it didn't want to die. Bodies never do, I think. It was fighting against it. This was very hard to watch, but watch we must because that is what she'd asked.
I don't think she'd anticipated this, that her request would require this of us. She took one last large, gasping breath. Somehow, I thought there would be one more, and we waited about 10 seconds I think, and she took one more. Her eyes were open, her teeth bared. And somehow that last image of her -- her dark hair streaming on the pillow behind her, her eyes staring at the window, her old teeth showing -- that's the image that has stayed with me. This has been very hard, because my mother was a lovely, kind person, a beautiful woman. Two nights ago I finally dreamed about her, and she looked like herself: beautiful. That has helped.
On the Sunday my daddy died, his hospice room was full of people -- church people came after the service, and stood around for ages, chatting about football and the weather. I found it appalling. My daddy was lying there, trying to hold it together for his visitors, while his body was doing that same last fight. I think that experience is why my mother asked that no non-family visitors be allowed in the house for those last days, even her pastor. She wanted only her children and grandchildren around her, which does sound wonderful, but the burden is also heavy for family.
I've written all this detail so that anyone out there who is contemplating the final care for themselves or for a loved one, will consider these things too. Nobody tells you how awful those last days and especially hours can be. I do not want to put my family through that. I would rather go into a hospice facility and allow professionals to handle those last hours. I didn't cry when she died; I didn't cry for days. It took quite a while. I've struggled with the experience. I think I might have handled it better emotionally, if I had not had to witness it as I did. Other people might handle and process it better.
It is extremely difficult to have her gone. Her absence still hits me unexpectedly -- I'm thinking of her, and then I remember that she's no longer there. I often think of her body in its casket, in the West Virginia soil in winter. So cold. The words are so true: earth to earth. Her spirit apparently left her body at that very second while I was watching her body fight against it, but unlike in the movies, there was no little wisp of light, curling up from her face through the roof to heaven. The reality is more difficult, an ice-cold body in ice-cold dirt.
One of my favorite movies is The Secret of Roan Inish, about a young Irish girl whose mother dies. Fiona is awake at night, staring out the window of her grandparents' home, thinking of her dead mother. "Mother," she whispers into the night. I do that too. "Mother," I whisper, hoping she is listening. I have nothing else to say. She understands, if she hears me, that that one word expresses all I feel.
