My Story

About a week and a half before Momma died, I went to the CCD congress in Anaheim, CA with her and Daddy, and we met up with Viv for dinner and a few classes.  It was a great weekend. Momma was so weak by then, and jaundiced from liver failure, that she was in a wheelchair.  My job, in coming to congress, was to push her around for the weekend.

She was a trooper. She was cheerful and loving and really seemed to be enjoying herself, despite her exhaustion.  I wheeled her around to each of her classes, and she listened attentively and we discussed them together. I pushed her through the "den of booths" where she bought several gifts for people, including a congress t-shirt for Daddy (he gets one every year) and a long-sleeve shirt for me (it's one of my favorites now, actually).

I brought along The Fellowship of the Ring so that I could start reading it aloud to her and Daddy.  I thought they would enjoy it and it was such an important story to me that I really wanted to share it with them.  I intended to record the rest of the story for them and email them the files so at least Momma could listen to them while she was resting at home (she had stopped teaching in January due to a bad case of pneumonia).  Together that weekend, we made it through the Old Forest and right up to the threshold of Tom Bombadil's house "and a golden light was all about them."  Fitting.

I remember massaging her feet and calves, because they would go to sleep in the wheelchair. They were always cold, too, so she wore down-filled "tent booties" all the time.  I wanted to touch her as much as possible--y'know how great it feels when someone rubs your shoulders or your hands? all those endorphins? I wanted to send those little feel-good healers all through her body.  But I knew it wouldn't work.  She had told me a few months before that she didn't get those "shivers" of endorphins anymore. Maybe her nervous system had been affected too greatly by the cancer, but she said she just didn't get those feel-good ripples anymore.  That was perhaps the saddest thing for me that weekend.  We are such physical beings that it hurt me, physically (made me want to cry) to know that my touch didn't "work" on her body anymore.  I knew that she was thankful and appreciative that I was rubbing her and hugging her, that emotionally it was supportive, but it was hard to accept that the lack of connection between the physical and spiritual was the beginning of the end...

I remember so much from that weekend, the food we ate, the restaurants we visited, people we met. I remember how the wheelchair would vibrate if I pushed it too quickly along the sidewalks.  I remember sitting in the sunshine with my sister and parents, eating a brought-from-home lunch together.  My skin was hot in the sunlight. I took a picture of a little girl pushing her dolly in a play-stroller.  I asked Momma and Daddy to pose for a picture. The last one I have of them together. You have seen it before--I use it often. I am always struck by how Momma's jaundice was lessened in the sunlight, and how Daddy looks a little more pink than "normal" next to Momma.

Sunday that weekend we packed up our things at the hotel and loaded it all up in the car.  We were in my grandmother's Blue Van. She had been in a wheelchair for the last several years of her life and she picked that  van because it had a big space in the back for the chair, without having to collapse it.  Strange that Momma, who inherited the van, now found its original functionality so useful.

We stayed at Vivian's apartment that night.  She was on the second floor of a building with no elevator, so Momma had to climb the stairs.  Daddy asked her "how are you going to get up to Viv's apartment?" and she said, frankly, "I'm going to go up once and come down once and that's all."  It was hard for her--it took all three of us supporting her as she labored up each step, clutching the railing of the stairs. I think I slept on the couch that night and Viv slept in her roommate's bed.

In the morning, Momma and Daddy had to pick up Uncle Greg (Momma's brother) at the airport.  Momma climbed down the stairs again, two of us in front of her to lean on and one behind her for support, and walked the 15 or so feet to the van.  She was so weak, so tired. I hugged her goodbye, without bursting into tears, and Viv and I helped her up into the front seat of the van.  She blessed us and told us she loved us.  That was the last time I saw her alive.

I spent the rest of the day hanging out with Viv, visiting some of her "haunts" in the area :)  I flew back to Boston on the red-eye and had a busy busy week and weekend, with family visiting and house guests and work schedules and crochet class and an under-the-weather husband.

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After Christmas, I had told Momma and Daddy I could take time off work to be in CA and help out (thank Heaven for employee benefits).  On Wednesday the week after I returned from Congress (after our last house guest had left), I got a call from Daddy in the afternoon.  In a very calm, but very sober voice, he asked me to come and stay for an indefinite period of time because Momma had taken a turn for the worse.  I could hear the emotion and tears catch in his throat as he continued, "She doesn't have much time."  I told him I'd come soon and Taylor and I booked tickets for Saturday, intending to finish the week at work and settle things with them about my leave. I went to my crochet class that evening, still thinking I had time...

Later in the evening, my sister Bethany called me, also choked up. She told me, "I don't know if Mom's gonna make it till Saturday. You've got to get here sooner."  Panic set in. But at that point in the evening, the next available flight to CA was early the next morning.  We had to wait.

So we packed our bags and I wrote a letter to my employers letting them know I was taking a month of family-related medical leave--I didn't care what they said. I'd sort it out later. I was going to CA.  We went to bed at 11, thinking we should at least be rested for the next day, since there was nothing else to do but pray.

Sometime around 1am my phone rang. It was my brother; he was crying.  It's always hard to bear when men cry, I don't know why that is. He said, "Mom died a little while ago." and he told me that he got to see her, just in time. She was conscious and lucid and recognized him when he came in the room.  Then Summer got on the phone and told me Daddy was still in the room with her, stroking her arm. She was crying, and she said she had to go take Giulia in to say goodbye to Grandmama.  They told me they loved me. I told them I loved them too and said something like "I'll see you tomorrow."

I hung up the phone and woke Taylor up. We cried together, hard and loud. Even then, in that moment, as we held each other in bed, I could feel Momma there with us.  I knew she was there. Right before my brother called, I was dreaming.  I dreamed about Momma's last moments. She was lying in bed with all her children around her and giving last bits of advice (or prophecy).

We sent emails to our closest friends and family, letting them know Momma had died, and we went back to bed.  A few hours later we woke to our alarms and piled our bags into the taxi, went to the airport, spent 6 dry (both in humidity and in tears) hours on the plane, picked up our rental car, got In-n-Out (well, Momma would have wanted us to, and we were hungry!), and drove the three hours up to Inyokern.

Hospice had removed Momma's body by the time we got there, in the afternoon.  We were the last to arrive. Daddy took Taylor and me and sat down between us on Momma's inherited (from her mother) antique couch and told us about the Valentine's day poems they had written each other, about her last moments.  We cried some more.

Madeleine Peyroux, one of my favorite vocalists, sings a song called Prayer.
This is what I imagine Momma's last thoughts were like...
Lord, I must be strong now
I don't belong now
In this world anymore

I'll say a final prayer for
Those I care for
Who've kept my company

My destiny is clear
I'm dying to have you near
To me

Lord
I don't belong now 
If you are waiting
I am not afraid to die

I'm prepared to go
Divide my body and soul
Won't you

Lord
I won't be long now
If you are waiting
I am not afraid to die

Have mercy, Lord
I'm told it's paradise
To have and to hold

Lord
I must be strong now
I don't belong now
In this world anymore

Lord
I won't be long now
If you are waiting
I am not afraid to die

We had arrived. We were there in the house without Momma, but she was still there.  We were face to face with her death, which we had been anticipating for months, but never expecting.  A year ago today, as I sat on that couch with Daddy between Taylor and me, quiet grief set in. The rush to make it home was gone. The busy-ness in Boston had been left behind. Hurry vanished. There was only "after" left. And all there is to do with after is let it linger a while, keeping company amidst the tears.  

Today, it seems to me, the after has departed, as gently as it came: like a mist in the trees that settles in the night and is burned away by the bright morning Sun.  There are still tears of course, dripping from the dew-laden boughs of memory.  Mist still lingers in damp depressions under trees. But the Sun is definitely shining. It's a brand new day.