A Softer Side of Death

The day to honor our mothers has come and gone and my thoughts have dwelled upon my own.  She has been absent from my life for eight years and eight months.  I miss her every day of my life.

In the course of my job, I am exposed to the inevitable, final drama of death frequently.  When one works with the senior sector of the population, there's no avoiding it.  I have worked in a convalescent hospital and currently work in an assisted living facility where I've been employed for seven and a half years.  The "assisted living facility" is a fairly recent option of where mom or dad can live when they're not safe to live home alone but not quite ready for that last stop; aka, the nursing home.

I have seen many people come and go in my combined years at these two places.  Some move on to other facilities, some move back in with their families when they outlive their savings and many die.  Prior to this second career of mine, the only experience I had with death was my grandmother who died at the age of 93 a year after I got married.  I loved her, of course, and was sad but we weren't so close that it affected me all that much.  I was still emotionally untouched by the visitation of death.

I have cared for the terminally ill, kept company and held the hand of those in the process of dying.  I have tended to and cleaned the body that remains after the soul, that spark of life, whatever you want to call it, has left.  Like so many people, I used to fear death.  Through these experiences, however, I learned that death can be a welcome thing, an end to a long and happy life that many are ready for and wish they could hurry along.  I get asked countless times, "Why am I still here?  Why don't I die?"  Or a variation on the theme, "I wish I could go to sleep and just not wake up in the morning.  Can you help me?"  Now, these remarks and this request used to really throw me for a loop!  Years of experience have since taught me to say, "that's one thing I can't help you with; tell me something else I can do for you!"

My parents were always older than my friends' parents.  They were almost 40 when I was born.  This was back before it became a trend to start your family in your late thirties, early forties!  This is one of the big reasons why I didn't want to be left behind on the east coast when my parents retired to the west.  I knew they weren't going to be around forever and I didn't want to be so far away.  Fortunately, opportunity knocked at my and my young husband's door which we opened and welcomed in, resulting in our moving across the country just about one month after my parents' arrival, but that's another story.

I was blessed with the pleasure of my mother and dad's company for 19 more years.  At the age of 81, my mother was admitted to the hospital for elective surgery of a second hip replacement.  The first one had been most successful and it was time to take care of the other side.  Considering how well she did the first time around and anticipating a brief hospital stay, I did not visit my mother and decided to wait until she came home where my oldest sister would nurse her back to health as she did before.

She didn't make it.  Still thinking everything was going along well, I answered the phone one late afternoon.  It was my dad who said very quietly and simply, "she's gone."  "Gone?  Gone where?  Who's gone?" I asked.  My mother died during post-surgery physical therapy due to a detached blood clot; a fairly common risk of this type of surgery.  This was a fact of which I was completly ignorant.  I was devastated and totally unprepared for this possibility.  I was 42 years old and this was the first time a death affected me deeply and personally.  I existed in a downward spiral of depression for a long, long time.

Over the years, I have come to realize that this way may indeed be the better way to experience a cherished person's death.  Much better than watching a loved one die by inches as weeks, months even years go by.  I've watched so many families who've been left to deal with the results of terminal illness, Alzheimer's and a multitude of diseases that have ravished their parents' body and mind.  What could be worse than your parent not recognizing you as their child nor retaining any memories of an entire lifetime? 

Because of my mother's sudden demise, I was spared those miseries.  It's taken me this long to be able to even put these thoughts down on paper.  She was such an interesting, vibrant, different sort of mother.  I've yet to meet anyone quite like her.  The shame and regret I feel for not going to see her following her surgery are burdens I will carry with me until the end of my life.