For the record, I want it known that I really really dislike this business of death. Don't get me wrong, I know we all will die sooner than later and that is a simple fact of life. No, the part of death that I hate is being left behind to live with grief and loss in all its forms. But that is also part of this thing called 'life'. The pragmatist in me says "yeah yeah - grow up, deal with it..." but the little girl in me cries out that I miss my mom and my dad - every day.
Still, I've learned a few things over the years and one of those things (perhaps the most important) is the business of letting go.
September 2007 I packed up my apartment in St Paul MN, loaded some things, my 2 old cats and my best friend into my 98 Honda Accord and drove across the country to come home where my parents lived so I could help out. Dad had been diagnosed with Parkinson's and mom had suffered a case of Temporal Arteritis. They were both doing well, but they were needing help around the house and would probably need more as time went on. I was in a place in life where I could pick up and move back home. It's a decision I've never regretted.
I've learned so very much about myself, aging, my parents, dementia and the health care system among many things, but nothing as much as when I waited at their bedside when they both lay dying a little less than 5 years apart.
The staff at Regent Court will tell you that I was in denial about my mom's dementia. I knew I was in denial and that she wasn't going to get better. But somehow I thought each setback was just that - a setback and we could help her feel better by doing this or that. I even told them many times "I know I'm in total denial here, but just help me out this once okay?" Letting go of my mom (and my dad 5 years before) was just never an option for me. As bad as things got, I knew if I did this, or maybe if I did 'that', somehow she would feel better and last a little longer.
Anyone who has been a caregiver probably understands this a little bit.
It wasn't until my mom was lying in her bed those last few days that I finally learned how to let her go.
I didn't think she would make it through the weekend, but by Sunday she was doing better enough that I began to hope maybe this was just a blip and she'd snap out of it.
Monday she slept most of the time but woke up now and then. Monday night she started getting very agitated and it didn't look pleasant. Her arms flailed wildly upwards toward the ceiling and her hands were reaching for something. I couldn't tell if she was trying to grab or push whatever it was away from her. Either way, it kind of scared me and I didn't know what to do. I even tried to pray into her ear thinking maybe that would help calm her. But I couldn't remember any of the prayers I learned as a kid in the catholic church.
So I called my brother who is a hospital chaplain (and former priest) and asked if he would pray with mom while I held the phone up to her ear. After I explained how agitated she'd become he told me about Thomas Merton telling about his mother as she lay dying. Merton's mother had been deeply spiritual her whole life, but when she lay dying it seemed that she was very scared and had to work something about before she could let go and be at peace.
The description sounded like mom - in fact I remembered many times over the past several months when she would cry out in pain "where is God?" almost like she felt abandoned.
I put the phone to mom's ear and listened as he prayed with her and I remember that she did calm down some, but not completely. At that point, the Danni the med aide came in and told me very calmly that "Jo, this is very common among people who are dying. It almost seems as if she has something to work out". Charity, another caregiver, also checked in with us and after seeing mom she told me that she'd seen this many times with people as they were dying. My mother wasn't in pain and there was nothing I could do.
It was at that point I think that I was finally was able to let go of my mother. This was her journey and not one I could help her with. Now was her time to make her peace. I couldn't walk that path with her.
This wasn't my journey but hers alone. When I went home that night I finally felt some peace along with the grief - but I knew she would okay. My sleep was attainable that night.
The next day was Tuesday and mom slept quietly the whole day, not waking once. AngelMaryBeth from hospice came that night to clean mom and commented on how her face had changed and how peaceful she looked now. It was true. She held a small wooden cross in each hand as she laid there.
My brother and his wife came by around 9 and so I left so they could be with her, and play their Christian music and pray. If I stayed they would visit with me and I wanted them to focus on mom.
I got the call at 12:30 a.m. November 18, that 10 minutes after Bob and Shellie left, she let go and passed away. Some calls you don't forget right?
It didn't take me long to drive back there as I'd been sleeping in my recliner fully dressed. By then the staff had cleaned her and she lay peacefully in her bed. Mom was gone.
It took a while for the hospice nurse to come and pronounce the death and call the mortuary to come get her body. I stayed there because well, I just didn't want her to be alone.
The men from the funeral home came and took her body, my siblings had been called, and I had to go home - yet all I could do was sit in a chair and weep. It was surreal.
By then it was around 4 am and the night was clear and cold when I went out to my car. I stood at the back of my car and looked up at the stars to just breathe for a bit.
At that moment I had this strong sense that mom was up there. I knew she was in the stars - and she was there with dad. They were finally together, whole again and dancing away as they had always loved to do. I don't believe in heaven or hell (okay, maybe this current political climate is a kind of hell) so I didn't think of mom and dad in heaven. But I believe they are in the stars, and now I can look up at the stars and say hello to mom.
“You - you alone will have the stars as no one else has them...In one of the stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing, when you look at the sky at night...You - only you - will have stars that can laugh.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The little Prince
I heard once that all the atoms in the universe have been swirling around everywhere and are in everything. So the atoms that make up my body have been part of the galaxies forever in one place or another as they move in time and space. They are in the sky, air, the earth, water, plants, clouds, trees, bugs, rain and each of us. Which means we are all connected. I can't explain it in my own writing but this site does a good job of it for me.
Now when I look up at the sky, I know mom and dad are there together - dancing in the stars.
There is a line from the Little Prince "Only you will have the stars like no one else..."
I started writing this in March of 2017 and today is October 3, 2017. There are photos of my parents all around my house and so I'm always looking at them. I have videos on my phone of mom talking and telling me 'important things', or singing in the midst of her deepening dementia. Still I miss her every day. But I have comfort knowing that her DNA is part of my DNA and she is part of the stars and I got to love her for 60 years.
NOTE: - Today is April 30, 2020 and I'm in week 7 of lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Somehow I never posted this, so it's a bit late. But it's still true.
