Lifelines

My son has been helping me sift through the stacks of boxes of my mother’s stuff, mostly clothes and kitchen stuff. He has a lot of energy and is good at keeping me on track. He brought one box at a time out of the store room and had me go through the things. He set up three boxes to sort into: throw aways, give aways and keepers. He then divided the keepers into two piles: storage and immediately useful.

I put together a storage box and piled up turtlenecks, shirts and sweaters that I wanted to wear. My son is over forty, but still sometimes manages to make the word Mom into four syllables. He looked at the storage box that I asked him to put into the loft and said, “Mom, I’m going to put that box into storage and then when you die it will still be there and I’ll have to go through it.”

Next he looked at the pile of clothes that I was taking into the house to put away. “Are you going to wear your Mom’s clothes? That’s gross!” I looked down at the turtleneck and flannel shirt that I was wearing. “I’m wearing her clothes now. It’s not weird. It might be weird if you wanted to wear her clothes though.”

I can’t imagine doing a job this hard without him. We are blessed with our children. I know my mother felt the same way. I’m grateful for the gift of laughter that she left us with.

The day before my mother died was my sixty-fifth birthday. The assisted living home where she lived called me to say that she was passing. I drove the half hour drive up to see her, knowing that I would have only a couple of hours to be with her before I was to join my friends and family at a birthday party. She had been dying for nearly a year and I had been to see her many times thinking that I was saying good-bye for the last time, but I knew that this time was for real.

She was no longer talking. She would take three shallow breaths and one deep breath and then pause and repeat. She had no energy to take my hand so I put my hand gently on top of hers. I told her I loved her and that it was my birthday. I thanked her for having me.

She had had no visions, no dreams, no visits from family or friends who had departed before her. There seemed to be no comfort for her, or for me. This was all a great surprise because she had been a Unity Minister and had at one time taught Transcendental Meditation, and had a strong sense of God and Reincarnation. I kept asking if she had seen anything interesting or unusual, and she said, “Nope, everything’s blank.”

As I sat beside her bed, I slipped into a reverie. I found myself walking up a gentle incline with a little girl with a big smile, sparkling blue eyes and ringlets in her brown hair. I recognized her immediately as my mother, having seen lots of pictures of her all my life. We were having a wonderful time on a bright sunny day with blue sky above us and flowers in full bloom all around us. There were hummingbirds and butterflies visiting the flowers and I saw a creek flowing beside the path.

My Mom had suffered from an unquenchable thirst for weeks, so I thought she  still might be thirsty. We stopped at the creek,  splashed our faces and drank the cool clear water. When I was a child my mother took me camping in the mountains where the water was pristine. I still remember the feel and taste of that water, and that’s what the creek was like where we stopped. As I straightened up after drinking, I wondered what the little Emily would be wearing, and I saw that she didn’t have a stitch on! She was laughing and dancing with her arms up in the air, wiggling her little butt, and then she broke away from me and ran away laughing.

At that point, my reverie was interrupted by a phone call, and there I was sitting at the bedside of an ancient woman who could no longer talk or laugh, or breathe easily. I knew that she was already on her way. Soon after, I took my leave and drove to my birthday party. On the way I stopped to get helium balloons. I picked one very special white one with glitter stars for my Mom.

After the party, I took a card that said, “You Make a Difference” and on the opposite  side wrote, “God Speed Emily.” Then I tied the note to the balloon outside and let it go. We watched it go until we couldn’t see it anymore. It was the best that I could do.

My Mom died at 7:00 the next morning. She had the good grace to wait to pass until after my birthday. Bless her.