5

About this time 5 years ago, I was standing in a hospital room holding my mom's hand, waiting.  The doc said it was only a matter of time ... an hour, maybe less.  When he came downstairs to the surgical waiting room he'd told us: We can't put her back together, and I remember thinking he was talking about Humpty Dumpty, only he was talking about my mother. I know the docs busted their humps to make things right, going to great lengths to save her, but she was tired and there had been one complication on top of another, and meanwhile, the cancer was still quietly doin' its thing. 

One of the interns cried when he saw me come upstairs to the room where they'd moved her; he'd fallen in love with my mom (as many did) and like so many others who loved her - he was clinging to that slim bit of hope, even though he later told me I shouldn't have; I knew better. 

I was alone with her when she died; my father and brother had gone downstairs to wait for my sister to arrive, and even though Mom wasn't awake, I talked to her, just in case she could hear.

That morning she'd asked me to come to the hospital early; she wanted me there before Dad and Bean arrived because she knew she might not make it out of the surgery and she wanted to talk.  We had always talked a lot, and there had been plenty of conversations about what might come after we'd shuffle off this mortal coil, even before she got sick.  That morning she told me that she wasn't concerned for herself: If I wake up dead, I wake up dead, she laughed; it's all of you that I'm worried about.

But we'd be OK I told her; not that we would like it, but we'd be OK.  I said it that morning, and I said it again in that room with the curtains drawn.  And we are OK.  We miss her; her absence is always felt, but we have done OK. We keep on keepin' on; what else are you going to do?   

And while I thought about it today (hard not to on the anniversary), I wasn't overcome with huge waves of sadness just because it's the day.  Sometimes I get sad about it for no particular reason, but today it just hung around like a mist.  It's there, but you can still see through it.

And I guess it helps that I get something in a way that I've only fully gotten it since the sun rose on March 31, 2004: That until the day when you wake up dead, you wake up alive, and you get on with it. 

 

Comments

[Lauren]

Hi Deb -
This is really beautiful - blessings to you as you go on your way,
Lauren

[Sue]

Thank you so much for sharing. When you open your heart and share something like this, it is such a precious gift to those who read it.

Thank you too for the gift of that powerful reminder at the end. So many of us wake up alive and yet walk around like we're dead. I needed to hear that today. Needed to be reminded that I need to get on with it. I needed to remember that every day I wake up alive is a gift, not some painful torment I'm being put through by the cosmos. I REALLY needed the reminder.

much love