I did not want to be there when she died. I thought it would be so hard and so painful and maybe too much for me to deal with. But it wasn’t. It was beautiful, sweet, and almost too easy. One minute she was taking slow, breaths and the next . . .never came. She slipped away from us but it didn’t even feel like she was gone. Her shell, her body, wasn’t working, but her . . .my mother she was with us. She was free from all the hard—and she’d had a hard life full of health challenges. It felt joyful. I know this cannot always be the case, but for her, I imagined her flying around us, young, healthy, strong, emotionally whole, and full of the truth that she had lived this amazing life and it was over and she didn’t have to hurt or worry or fear anymore.
Of course we cried. So so many tears. A migraine full of tears, but I would say most of them were of joy and relief and knowing that she was just fine. Like . . . Way way way better than fine.
There was no sting in her death. Only joy.
But we feel her loss. I feel it. For the past five years, she’s lived beside me—sisters have moved in since and shared this time—but for a few years it was just us. She wasn’t well and needed a lot of help, meals and other help and I wasn’t always good about giving it. I had a growing family with lots of demands and I constantly felt guilty that I didn’t give her enough time or love. It was hard. But also, I always felt so lucky to have her at dinner often. We all learned to enjoy food without salt in it (garlic and spices are your friend!) . .. though my mother was the first to say after taking a bite, “Do you have any salt? It needs a little.”
When I visited her at the end, which came so much faster than any of us imagined, she told me, her speech slurred and faint, to put my head on her shoulders. I couldn’t, but I could hold her head on mine. She reached out to touch my arm and I grabbed onto her hand and held her. I was holding her, but I felt her love wrap around me like the warmest blanket, so big and so warm. I felt her unconditional love for me—a pure mother’s love that I did not often feel in life. I challenged her all the time. I was impatient. And we did not see eye to eye on almost anything, but in that moment, I knew none of that mattered. Me, her seventh child, and forth daughter, was infinitely precious to her. That she knew me, and loved me.
I didn’t even know I needed that—oh how I needed that. It let my love for her free. I could love her perfectly in all her imperfections. We forgave each other because in that moment, there was no room for anything but love.
Each time I wake in the middle of the night and think, Why didn’t I spend more time with her? Why didn’t I tell her more often how much I loved her? I think of that embrace and know it didn’t matter. IN the end, it didn’t matter. Being there then, at that moment, that’s what mattered. That she could tell me without words that there was no failure, there was only gratitude or our time we did spend together.
She had so many demons. She fought them so hard and well, but they would come out. I always thought that she’d find peace after she died—not on this earth or life. But those final days, it came to her. It flowed out of her. Being in the room with her, you felt it. You felt the insignificance of daily upsets and worries. You felt you own infinite preciousness—that you, just how you were, was enough.
John would, on our drives home, say, “We need to learn how to live this way. This, this goodness and peace, and love, we need this in our lives as we LIVE, right now.”
We would cry for just a minute together that it was taking my mother leaving us, a mother to both of us, to realize how precious loving without conditions and living with joy is.
I think, thought she couldn’t say it, that’s what she was begging us all to do. Drop our anger and hurts and worries and see the beauty of life around us. Live, I felt like she was saying . . . Don’t waste this time—it’s precious. Love, love, love.
I find I am trying to be quicker to forget the hurts and let go of my anger—it’s so useless—and just hug and hug more and not keep any good thoughts inside me but speak them.
Every self help guru and book and religion teaches this concept and yet, how many of us actually do it? Let go of anger, hold onto joy and love? We are sillies, us humans. Blind, self-justified, right, stubborn, judgmental and beautifully flawed and endlessly capable of change.
Where there is breath, there is hope.
And love.
So much love.
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