Author: Kelly

Mom has slipped further away. Her breathing is more apnea than oxygen, and we have spent the evening upstairs, the three of us talking, giving her space. Following after Tracy, I pick up a photo album to flip through, to select pictures for the memorial/reception. The first two photos in this album are Dad, sanding a white crib in a backyard that looks familiar. The clothes scream the 70s, and my eyes drift down the page to the third photo, a photo of my mother.

A photo of my mother, very pregnant. Very pregnant with me.

We’ve circled around Mom, the chaplain leaning over her whispering words of comfort and encouragement. Words of God, eternalness, the something after that we cannot define but attempt to anyhow, that we all believe in, in our obscure ways. We carry on. We continue.

I am across from him, Tracy and my father at the foot of the bed. Tracy is standing; Dad is sitting in the family-carved rocking chair, watching. The air is thick, palpable with Others. We don’t know who her visitors are, but they’re there. Molly, my sister’s cat, sees them. She’s clearly seeing people, responding to people we cannot see.

The chaplain finishes his prayers with a soft song, and Mom is smiling. She’s reached out, several times, and Tracy and I have taken her hands. But after a minute, she withdraws from us, and holds out again – holds out to someone else. I wonder who she’s seeing?

We sit, quietly around her. In order to sit down, I shift to the end of the bed, in a small rocking chair. I am directly in line with her (and if you take the cat’s reaction as gospel, sitting on someone we can’t see), and can see her chest rise and fall as she barely breathes. I find myself unconsciously mimicking her apnea, matching my breathing to her own, holding my breath without meaning to. I take a breath through my mouth, as she does, and hold, hold, hold, until my breath flows out of me. Hers does not – she stays, not breathing, for another few seconds, and there is that pause, that wonder, if this is it.

Tracy and I firmly believe she will die when we are not in the room. We’re turning off the baby monitors, and no longer spending our time around her bedside. We’re giving her space, as part of our permission, our love, our letting go.

Today Tracy and I told stories over Mom – somehow, we got to talking about Christmas, and I told her stories she didn’t remember, about Christmas in Arizona before the drought, with giant geese chasing me around the pond, Grandpa taking me out at night to hold newly hatched baby ducklings, my brother and his bad eyesight mistaking a cactus for my grandfather, with disasterous results.

Mom smiled and held our hands.

I don’t know what’s harder – talking to her when she starts talking about needing to get up and leave, to walk, or saying she can’t go and telling her she can, or saying goodnight to her in the evening, knowing this might be the last night I hold her hands between mine, feel them pressed against my cheek, smell her scent – still so strongly her, even through all of this – the last time I will kiss her cheek, run my hands through her hair, say “I love you” and see the small twitch of smile of her lips, the most she can muster in acknowledging hearing me.

This afternoon she told Tracy and I we needed to help her get up, she had to walk away, and Tracy told her we couldn’t help her with that, she had to do it on her own. Mom asked where she was going, and Tracy told her somewhere better, that she would be in heaven watching over us. Mom was straining to lean forward, grasping hard to both of our hands, and Tracy just kept reassuring her that it was okay, we would be okay, Mom would be okay, and it was fine to go. That Mom needs to do what’s best for her, we all want her to be comfortable, and we know she’ll be there, always watching over us.

I took over running my spare hand through Mom’s hair and told her Tracy was right, and it was okay to go if she wanted to, and we would be okay, and take care of each other, and that Tracy and I had already made a pact to make sure we both remember to eat. And I told her that since she’ll be watching over us, that my house will be cleaner than it’s ever been – I’ll even have to scrub behind the toilet, since she’ll be able to see it all. And my clothes will always be washed and folded. Once more, I was rewarded – she gave me a beautiful smile, a smile that might very well be the last I ever receive.

Mom, in the last 24 hours, has started to occasionally say that she can’t go. Yesterday, she was sitting up, with the help of Tracy on one side and me on the other, gripping our hands tightly – mine so tightly she left half-moon shapes in my skin. And she started saying, over and over, that she couldn’t go, she can’t, she can’t, she can’t. It became a mantra for a few minutes.

I’m sitting in my room (okay, my sister’s room, but it’s mine temporarily), listening over the baby monitor, and just heard Mom say she has to go. And Tracy told her yes, she does, and it’s okay, we’ll be okay.

It’s time for her to go.

My sister is amazing. She has been my mother’s constant caretaker, day and night, for a month, watching one of the most painful things I think anyone can ever watch – the physical and mental decline of a parent. And she still manages to be cheerful, strong, calm, and collected.

It’s all her years, of course, working in oncology, at RMC, even at CHOP on the transplant project. She’s mastered that art of the distance, of the shield. Me? I’m an emotional wreck. I lost it this morning, and then when my brother started crying tonight, well, that set me off, too.

I cried into Mom’s hair as I wished her good night. I kissed her forhead, I ran my hands through her hair, I told her how much I loved her, and she told me she loves me – and I couldn’t leave. I was choked up and crying and breaking the no hard sobbing around Mom rule, but I kissed her head again and smelled her hair and told her again how much I love her, and then I told her to sleep tight and not let the bed bugs bite.

She repeated that last bit to me, don’t let the bed bugs bite, and then she rewarded me with the most treasured of things, she laughed, what passes for a laugh now, and smiled.

Tracy, though, deals with it all – and does it with amazing skill and grace. She came upstairs to sit with me, hold my hand and comfort me, and talked for a while about her thoughts about going into palliative care, and as strange as it is to picture for me, it was like bells going off at the natural fit. My sister has an amazing gift with the dying – of strength and patience and boundless love.

I envy her for that, and the stillness that seems to be necessary to do this.

I am the restless one. The one who’s job is to hold Mom’s hand, to let her know I’m here, to comfort, to assist Tracy in whatever way I can, and most of all, make Mom laugh. I’m the one thinking forward to funerals and relatives and details, things that keep my hands and mind busy. I guess it’s my own way of having an emotional shield.

I spent a lot of this last year being jealous of Tracy, and a bit resentful (and yes, she reads this blog, and yes, she knows this – one of the things I love about my sister is the fact that we actually do talk about this stuff). She got to be here, be close to Mom, doing all the things she’s done… but finally? I’m not. Not because my back hurts, or my arm, or that I’m tired, or stressed about work, or any of the numerous things. But resenting Tracy her ability to be here is like resenting a sunflower for moving as the sun arcs across the sky – she is just doing what her innate gift is.

We all have our innate gifts, and they are unique to each individual. Being upset and jealous over the fact that my sister managed to have just the right gift is just… silly. In fact, I am, more than anything, grateful. I’m grateful, and thankful, that things have worked out that my family has been able to be my mother’s caretaker. As she has gone through this process, of illness to the dying process, she has not been in the hands of strangers. She has never been in a hospital for long. She has always been taken care of by her family, and fiercely protected by them.

And I’m also grateful, and thankful, that she understands that it’s important that we – Timothy, Dad, and myself – are as involved as we can be. That we can give her water, help to move her, hold her hand. That Tracy doesn’t have to do everything, she just has to be the General leading the rest of us.

She is an excellent General.