12 - My Mother's Death

Before I get back to where I left off in the narrative of my "initiation," I feel like telling the story of the second of my three glimpses of what I call the divine dimensions.

In my second blog post, I said that I've had three experiences that felt like the veils of normal reality had parted and I got a glimpse of More. I've written about the first ("the face in the sky") and the third ("the tree and I.")

The one I haven't written about yet, happened in between the other two.

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In January of 2004 my mother decided she needed to see what was going on with the shortness of breath that she was experiencing. X-rays showed some masses in both lungs. Maybe it was tuberculosis.. maybe it was cancer. Yikes. By early March, a biopsy had determined it was lung cancer. She had never smoked. She had always been relatively healthy and ate well and walked a mile every day. She was 69 years old, which was 10 years younger than my dad, and he had been having more health problems than her.

I spent a couple days with her in mid-March, taking her to an oncologist appointment, and to her first radiation treatment, and helping around the house. She used oxygen some, but was otherwise in good spirits and had pretty good energy levels.

This was happening during the period that I described in my post # 6, when Ed and I and Justin were living in Glencoe. My life was busy, I was full of my own concerns, and my parents lived 6 hours away. I didn't get back to see my mom til my 40th birthday on the 1st of May. In the meantime she had finished the radiation treatments, which wiped her out, and had spent a couple weeks in the hospice wing of the hospital. In my mind, she was in hospice so she could recover from the radiation. When I went to see her on my birthday, she was very easily exhausted, needed oxygen all the time, and she was not her usual bright and cheery self.

I didn't  really know anything about cancer, the stages, or what a normal prognosis might be. I took her exhaustion to be a sign of her body dealing with this disease and the treatments for it, but didn't think it would be the end of her. After all, it had been less than two months since the diagnosis. One of her sisters had been there helping my dad take care of her, and was returning later. I felt she was being taken care of very well. I didn't even stay a whole day.

Shortly after my birthday visit, she returned to the hospital, and was again in the hospice wing. I really had no idea that this was where people stayed when there was nothing left for the doctors to do besides keep a person comfortable. On May 9th, I got a call from another one of her sisters who was there with her. She was quite angry with me and said, "You know your mom is DYING, don't you!?"

I still couldn't believe it, especially because this particular aunt had seemed like a hypochondriac my entire life, and had always spent lots of time on the phone with my mom, talking about all the things that were going wrong with her health and the health of her family members. But I realized I should go see my mother in the hospital.

When I showed up at the hospital the next day, I was shocked. She looked like she had aged 20 years, and she was no longer eating. I didn't realize then that when people are dying, their body doesn't need or want to eat. I and my dad were trying to get her to eat. I asked her if there was anything that sounded good to her. She said she'd like a hot dog. So I went out somewhere, I think to a gas station, and found a hot dog for her. When I got back to her with it, she took one bite, I think mostly to please me, and then she wouldn't eat anymore.

Her feet were swollen and blue because her lungs and heart weren't working properly. She was on morphine for the pain in her feet. There was a rattle in her lungs from the fluid building up.

I had a conversation with her oncologist, and he made it clear to me that this was the end for my mother. They'd tried what they could, but it hadn't really slowed down the progression of the tumors in her lungs. It began to dawn on me that I had been in denial of the possibility that my mother might die from this, for the entire two months since she was diagnosed. As difficult and shocking as it was, I realized I had to face the impending death of my mother head-on.

My dad was looking lost and confused. I could tell he was having a hard time with the reality of the situation, too.

She was in a rather strange state of mind, which I attributed to the morphine. She would refer to my dad as "kind sir." And she was very sweet to me and I could tell she knew who I was and that I was very dear to her, but she wasn't into conversing, which was not like my mom at all.

I was consumed with guilt. I had always been unable to bear the thought of my mother dying. I knew she loved me fiercely, but for some reason I had always felt a sort of emotional wall between us. There were things I had been wanting to say to her, that I had never been able to bring myself to say. I knew this was the last chance I was going to get.

She was in and out of sleep. I had always wanted to tell her that there had been a couple times in my life that I had considered ending my life, but that I never got very far with those notions, because I knew that if I died, she would be devastated, and I couldn't bear the thought of hurting her like that. I wanted to let her know how much it meant to me that I had felt her love. I tried to begin talking about that, but she was falling asleep. I gave up, and the cloud of regrets began growing in my body.

I spent the night lying in a recliner in her room. At one point early in the night, she asked me if I wanted to get into the bed with her. At the time, I thought it was because she thought I was uncomfortable in the chair. Now I'm not so sure that was why... The head of her bed was raised up so that she could breathe better, and the bed was not really wide enough for two people, but I squeezed my body in alongside hers..

(I had to take a break from writing just now, to let the weeping and shaking take over my body, as I am remembering how sweet it was...)

It felt like God was there with us. I think now that I was feeling the oxytocin from the love flowing between us. It was such a gift to feel that connection of sweet love flowing between us. I don't remember ever feeling that with my mom as an adult... I wanted very much for her not to die... but lying there next to her, feeling the big presence of love, I trusted that if she was supposed to somehow miraculously come through this, that she would. And if she wasn't meant to live, she wouldn't. I felt a peace about it lying next to her, trusting God, (the God I had seen smiling in the sky a couple years earlier,) to take care of her in the way that was best for her.

After about a half hour, she said that I could get up and sleep in the chair. It wasn't really comfortable for either of us to be squeezed onto the bed together...

I spent the rest of the night in the chair. The next morning she was feeling more pain in her feet and the nurse wanted to increase the amount of morphine she was getting. She told me that if she did that, then my mom would become unconscious. I didn't want my mom to lose consciousness, because I knew that she wouldn't ever get it back after that, so I resisted the idea of upping the morphine.. the nurse couldn't understand why I didn't want my mother to be comfortable... I was annoyed, because it seemed obvious to me that a person would have a hard time saying a permanent farewell to their mother..

But I relented. I knew there wasn't anything more we would say to each other, in the condition she was in anyways..

By mid-morning she had lost consciousness. I spent the rest of the day with her. Other friends and more sisters came, and my dad stayed the day and went back home that night. That night she was still hanging on. Instead of sleeping in the chair again, the hospital gave me a guest room on another floor. I remember crying a lot that night, which I hadn't been able to do while in the room with her.

The next morning I returned to her room, and she was still breathing. My dad and I went and had breakfast in the cafeteria. My brother came. My husband and son came for a while and then left again.

That afternoon my brother and I were sitting in the family lounge area when one of her sisters who was sitting with her came and told us that she was probably nearing her final breath..My brother and I went back in her room and sat next to her. I held her hand. Her breathing had slowed dramatically. After each labored breath, there would be a long pause and suspense.. then she would take another breath.

Then there wasn't another breath.

There was a shift in her countenance, like every little muscle in her face finally went totally slack.

I began to weep...

Suddenly, I felt an opening,

like a shift in dimensions,

behind and above her head near the wall..

it felt like a void appeared,

a void that felt dark,

but at the same time I could feel a beauty

and love

within that void

that felt infinite

and intimate

at the same time..

and those feeling of beauty and love

felt bigger and more Real

in that void

than any of those feelings felt in ordinary life..

I knew in my body that this was where my mother was going!!

It lasted for an instant and then it was gone, but oh! the feeling of elation it left in my body!!

I stood up and felt so bright and joyful! All the other people there felt sad and heavy, but I told them what I'd "seen" and I felt like I was shining like the sun!

My dad had gone home to take a nap earlier in the afternoon, so he wasn't there when she left. My brother and I decided to go pick him up and bring him back to where my mother's body was, to say goodbye.

The elation stayed with me on the drive, and when we had to stop for gas, the young man behind the counter asked me how I was, like I'm sure he asked every customer who passed his way, and I told him, with a huge smile, that my mother had just died and I had gotten a glimpse of where she had gone, and it was so beautiful! I couldn't keep it inside! It was a bright internal glow that had to come out and be shared with the people around me.

This glow lasted for several days. It lasted through the funeral three days later, where 200 hundred people gathered to honor the passing of my mother. During the funeral program, I gave a little prepared talk, about learning the importance of appreciating and expressing love to the people in our lives while they are here, and I also shared the experience of seeing where she went when she died. Afterwards, one of my friends told me that she had come to support me in a difficult time, but what actually happened is that I had made HER feel better!

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In the days and weeks following the funeral, the elation subsided, and I was feeling more and more regret and shame and guilt for the way I'd been unable to express to my mom the things I appreciated about her while she was still here. It became a heavy weight that I didn't know how to lift off of myself. I missed her so much and wished she would come back so I could say the things I wanted to say, and let her know how much I loved her. I hated myself for not having had the sense or the courage to get over my own shyness and say those things while she was alive.

One day a few weeks after she died, I had a vague feeling that she was nearby, trying to comfort me. This was very vague and I didn't know if it was real.

Soon after that, Ed got home from work one day and sat for a rest in our recliner for awhile like he often did when he got home from work. Then he got up with a look of amazement on his face, and told me what had just happened as he was resting in the chair.

He had felt my mother come and call him out of his body,

so he left his body and went to where he could see her.

He saw her as though she were looking at him through a window, and behind her through the window he could feel the amazingly beautiful place where she was now, though he couldn't really see it.

She had a message she wanted him to give to me...

She wanted me to know

that she understood everything now, and she just wanted me to be happy...

When Ed said this, I knew that she was referring to my agonized regret and shame about not expressing my love to her.

I felt a sweet relief washing over me, and I'm sure I was crying...

I could feel the way that she could see everything happening on earth from this new perspective where she was now,

and how she could feel the way I'd been feeling.

I felt her love pouring into me and washing away my shame and self-hatred...

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I still miss my mother. As I learn how to allow love into my body, and learn how to share it openly with other people, I wish so much that I had been able to do that with my mother, both verbally and physically. I wish I had had many more moments to feel that sweet love flowing between our bodies the way I did that night in the hospital. I know that I will see her again. But it hurts that I can't have her here in her body right now, while I'm still here on earth in mine.

I have learned to let that love flow as wailing, like I did when Mr. Cheong died, and I know that she can feel my love for her when I do, and it's a relief to have a way to share that love with her.

I have a lot more to say about love-as-grief. All in good time. Right now it's intermission time.