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February 12, 2007
Expectations
“This has been a difficult letter to write,” my mother told her friends, “and I've started it many times. I wanted to be able to tell you some wild and exciting tales but there are none to tell.”
April 1950 – Fairbanks, Alaska. After spending years looking for adventure in pre- and post-war America, Mom settled in Fairbanks where she met Dad. She traveled across the country, worked in Las Vegas before The Strip, and piloted a plane over the Artic Circle. Always on the move, Elizabeth Jane Brown expected the next adventure to be close-at-hand.
February 1997 – Bainbridge Island, Washington. The therapist says I have a right to expect my mother dead by now. Of course, these feelings, and my Catholic guilt, drive me to the therapist’s office this cold day. The fact remains -- my mother is not dead. Let me make this clear. I love my mother. We’re best friends. I just never imagined taking care of her. This is not how my life is supposed to be. I want my own motherhood. Martha Stewart meets Mary Poppins meets June Cleaver. In this version of my life, I want my mom healthy and not dependent on me for her social and emotional life. Isn’t that what every child expects of her mother?
After Dad died unexpectedly, we thought Mom would move to Florida with Mary, my sister. But everyone expects to retire to Florida. Unfortunately, the assisted living homes worth residing in charge exorbitant rates. All the other homes are not worth getting out of the car. So Mom moves to Bainbridge Island and begins the next phase of her life -- the one she’s not supposed to be living.
June 2000. The effects of Parkinson’s take over. Confined to a wheelchair and unable to speak, this once wildly adventurous woman now lives in an adult family home where she patiently awaits my daily visits. Her eyes twinkle when her grandsons describe their soccer games and school activities, their Halloween plans and who’s coming for Thanksgiving dinner. By Christmas she stays awake for only an hour at time, has no control over he own body, and seems somewhere between living and dying.
“Go. Enjoy your vacation. We’ll take care of your mom. You know we love her.” Debbie, Mom’s favorite caregiver, hugs me and waves as we drive off to a ski resort five hours away.
I try to relax but I cannot stop thinking of Mom. Each time I enter our hotel room my eyes go to the message light on the phone. When it is lit, I fully expect it to mean a message from Debbie. “Elizabeth, I am so sorry. We tried to keep her going until you got home, but she passed away this morning.”
But each time the light flashes red, I hear the voice of Jim, our friend and fellow vacationer, “Hey, the kids want hamburgers for dinner. Meet us down at the Wolf Creek Grill at 5 p.m.”
When we return home, I expect Mom to be on her deathbed. Instead, she rallies. She has some color in her cheeks and is aware that I am with her. We watch old movies together. Hold hands. She hates to be touched by anyone other than me. It hurts her too much.
One Sunday shortly after our return, I arrange for a special bus to take the two of us to Mass. The church volunteers no longer bring my mother communion after 10 a.m. when she is alert. She dedicated her life to the Catholic Church and I am surprised at their inflexibility – not at all what I expected.
This Sunday we sit in the back of the church, my mother in her wheelchair. We both relax in the familiar surroundings and age-old traditions. I hold my mother’s hand that is now boney with arthritis, ghostly white, colored only by the purple bruising and the blue veins. I lean over to kiss her cheek. Even as she nears death, her olive complexion is smooth and delicious to the touch. Her white hair reminds me of silver silk. Her eyes twinkle as they always have and I sense that her life is complete with me by her side.
The following Sunday I arrange for the bus again. This time Mom falls asleep ten minutes into the ride and sleeps through the church-going adventure.
Monday night I sit through a tense school board meeting. The board is split on a difficult decision. Tension is high, tempers are only slightly controlled, and the office phone keeps ringing. Who calls a school at 9 o’clock at night? Wrong number we all assume as we continue our debate. Finally, we take a vote, the phone still rings, and I walk out of the school building to go home.
My husband Scott meets me at the door. “I have to tell you something.” We stand in the doorway. “Your mom died.” I expected to hear those words years ago but when they finally come, I feel my heart crushing and my stomach turns to lead.
Why I felt it necessary to go to Mom’s at that late hour still escapes me. Something Scott said made me think they expected me. If she’s dead, what else should I do? Is there some formal identification that needs to take place?
I drive the eight-minute trip to the family home, careful yet oblivious. Too late to call Mary in Florida. There’s nothing to be done now.
Cell phone rings. “Ah, Elizabeth, I need to tell you something. Ah, your mother is not dead.”
“What!” I pull the car to the side of the road.
“There’s been a mistake. She’s not dead. Do you want to come back home?”
Though the lead in my stomach was short lived, I still feel the crushing of my heart and now a sense of relief. “No, I’m going over to the house. There’s still time to say good-bye.”
I expect to walk into my mother’s room, give her a hug and kiss, say my goodbye, and declare that she can go now. She feels clammy and looks as if she is sleeping rather than dying. The nurse takes me aside. “We’re so sorry about the mixed-up message. The end is very near though,” she tells me in the dark hallway, all the other residents asleep in their rooms. “Maybe you should call your sister to come out, but I don’t know if your mom will last the night.”
I wait until 4 a.m. to call. It’s 7 my sister’s time and her husband will be up for work. “It’s not a convenient time for Mom to die. I have other things I have to do this month. April would be a good time to come out West,” she informs me.
I concur. Scott and I plan to go on a short trip – just the two of us. “We both need the break,” I tell my sister, and we laugh at our thoughts of dying as an inconvenience. Our laughter mixes with our tears.
As my sister makes plans to fly to Seattle, I call the relatives. Hospice visits but is reluctant to begin the process. The nurse doubts that Mom will last long enough to fill out the paperwork. The priest comes. He doesn’t expect her to live through Last Rites.
My second cousin, Heather, arrives from Seattle to spend the day by Mom’s bedside; a close friend does the same. A couple of days pass and Mary appears. Hospice agrees to provide comfort to my mother’s caregivers who appear more grief stricken than I am. Both my sons sit with their grandmother. They say their good-byes.
My sister and I continue to sit at her side through a rainy Saturday and a cold Sunday, perfect for watching the NFL playoffs. How poetic for Mom to die during a football game, the game she taught us girls to love. We watch the game, make comments, and hoot and howl as if Mom is an active participant in our bedroom tailgate party. Mom offers me a stiff, somewhat painful smile when I kiss her cheek. I tell her I love her. I touch her hair and tell her it’s okay to go now. “We’ll miss you but we’ll be fine. Dad is waiting for you Mom.”
She shutters violently. The bed rattles and I revise my statement. “Okay, not Dad. Someone else. Aunt Elizabeth. Yes, Aunt Elizabeth is waiting for you.” Mary reminds me that Dad is probably on the other side waiting – impatiently.
Mom doesn’t die during the football game. Nor does she die the next day when I sit by her bedside, conducting business on the phone. Mary has no more time to stay. She expected mom to die during the week she spent here. We all did. Scott returns to his business and flies to Los Angeles. I return to my inbox and expect to resume my daily schedule. The boys go back to school.
“May I suggest a good night’s sleep in your own home tonight,” says Joyce, a caregiver and a Hospice volunteer. “I’ll stay with your mom.”
Like Dad before her, my mother dies peacefully without her family hovering. As I dress early the next morning, the phone rings. No more expectations. This time I know she is gone.
She lies peacefully on her bed. Death allows her a dignity that dying did not. There is no life in the body but there is presence, feeling, indescribable yet the essence of my mother. At first, this feeling surrounds only me. Then it begins to grow. I sit by the bed, my head resting on her still warm body, as her presence fills the room. I cry softly, talking to her all the time. “I know you believe in heaven Mom. I hope it is everything you expect it to be.”
“Alaska is so very much different from what I expected,” my mother wrote in a letter to her friends. Death is very much different from what I expected, I tell my friends.
January 2007 – Six years go, I expected to miss my mom when she died. I did not expect to miss her every moment of every day.
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Comments
You have my sincere sympathy. Thanks for sharing some about your Mom's life and her death.
Posted by: n.b. | February 12, 2007 6:26 PM
I came to your blog, via 'Mama Says Om'.....and I am profoundly touched. What an amazing post. I know that feeling of missing your mother every moment of everyday. You found the words that I've been trying to say. I'm so sorry about the loss of your Mother....it is a very difficult thing.
Peace and love, Tara Marie
Posted by: tara marie | February 17, 2007 10:10 PM
