TheBanyanTree: Dealing with Loss

[Monique Colver]

I am doing a fabulous job of not dealing with Mom’s death, in case you were
wondering. In fact, so good am I at not dealing with it that I think I may
have surpassed my earlier records for not dealing with things. It takes a
certain set of skills to achieve this level of not dealing with, I would
think. I don’t mean to brag, but I am exceptional in this regard.

I was sitting with her when it happened, though perhaps she didn’t know it.
She’d been unconscious for two or three days, a mute reminder of how fragile
life is, and every so often my sister and I would turn her and make her
comfortable all over again, and we’d wait. On this particular night, we’d
sent my stepfather up to bed – he was so tired, and my sister was supposed
to be sleeping out in the living room, though I knew she was really on the
phone. I sat with Mom, my laptop on my lap, intermittently sending messages
to my husband two states away. We were both away from our families, but
still with our families.

For several days we’d all been attuned to the very sound of her breath, and
we’d kept a baby monitor in the room so we could hear when we were not in
her room. Every even breath was a signal to us that she was still there, and
any variation in breath called for a rush to her bedside to see what was
going on. On this last night she breathed evenly, a backdrop to the sound of
my fingers on my keyboard.

On Friday night I’d slept in her bed, next to her, holding her hand. It was
easy to do – she was so tiny anymore, and she was on one side of the double
bed, and there was plenty of room for me next to her. My sister slept on the
floor at the foot of the bed. I woke up now and then, startled awake or just
because I was lying next to my Mom who was dying, and I would still hear her
breath. The following nights we’d arranged her in a more flung out posture
to ease the possibility of bed sores, so Friday night was the only night I’d
slept with her, something I hadn’t done for as long as I could remember.
Perhaps when I was five?

But now it was Monday night, and she was breathing much as she had for the
previous two days. And then she stopped. I looked over at her and saw the
final signs, the death rattle, though perhaps that’s not the most politic
term, and I held her hand. She breathed out once more, one big breath as if
sending out to the world her very last wishes, as if the air inside her was
released so that those of us waiting could have the use of it, and I walked
into the living room and asked my sister to come in.

My sister is a nurse, and so she took Mom’s pulse, and she felt it fading
away, and she went upstairs to get Dad, and we all cried and told Mom we
loved her. Hopefully she knew that already, but it’s one of those things
that can’t get said enough, isn’t it? I remember telling her, “I miss you
already,” and I remember getting Dad to sit down. He was faltering,
stumbling, a man in pain at a loss that he'd known was coming, but that
didn’t make it any easier.

He told Mom there’d be a mass said for her every day, so her time in
purgatory would be short, and I thought, but didn’t say out loud, “No way!
My Mom’s not going to purgatory!” I don’t believe in way stations, but then
again, I’m rather an impatient sort anyway.

I called hospice and the mortuary, and when they had trouble finding the
house in the dark I trudged down the long dark driveway to guide them in
from the private road. It was cold, and there’d been snow recently, and I
walked with my hands thrust into my pockets, since I’d forgotten to bring
along gloves. The air bit at my face, and reminded me that I was still
alive.

We dealt, and we did what needed to be done.

And then I came home. We shipped Mom to LA by train. She always liked
traveling by train. Tomorrow my husband and I fly to LA for the service on
Saturday. And so far, I’ve managed to avoid dealing with the fact of my
Mom’s death. But I’m not sure what that means, so perhaps this is me dealing
with it. I don’t know.

I do know that I miss my Mom. I also know that she was happy, that she
expressed no regrets, and that she thoroughly enjoyed her last few months,
even knowing what lay at the end. What better legacy could she leave? Faced
with the immovable object called death, she met it on her own terms –
thankful for a happy life, thankful for the friends and family who crowded
around these past few months, none of them willing to let her go and wanting
her to know how much they cared until the very end.

I miss her already.

-- 
Monique Colver