Tag Archives: family

sunday rerun

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lunapic-122921891283600

I was thinking about Julie today and her husband’s sudden death and I remembered a post I did on my old blog. I had a tattered copy laying around and it being a lazy Sunday afternoon and all I decided to rerun it. I did the neat old movie animation on Mr. bookbabie’s photo at LunaPic.com, a fun online photo editor and animator…

On our way home from Whole Foods today, my husband and I saw an accident just minutes after it happened. A large SUV had run off the road, hit a ditch, and smashed into some trees. Several cars had already stopped to help but the police hadn’t yet arrived and we saw that someone had opened the driver-side door. Inside, a woman lay slumped and unmoving over the steering wheel. She had short blond hair like me and she was wearing a red coat with a fur collar. Maybe she was out running errands we said, or maybe she was on her way home from a holiday lunch. We tried to convince one another that she was “just” knocked out from the force of the airbag, that the front end of the car really didn’t look that bad.

As we drove, one, two, three police cars sped past us, lights flashing and sirens screaming. Then two ambulances and another police car passed us and we suddenly realized that she probably wasn’t alone in that big SUV, maybe she had a car full of friends – or children. As we opened the trunk at our house we could still hear the wail of sirens in the distance and I turned to my husband and said, “Every day when I hear you…” and that’s all I got out before the tears started and the words caught in my throat. But what I wanted to say was this, “Every day when I hear the door open and I hear your footsteps coming into the house, and I hear your tired voice call out ‘hello’, that’s the best part of my day, that’s the moment I would choose to have back one more time if anything ever happened to you.”

soul sisters

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Julie and me, 1970

At my mom’s memorial two weeks ago my cousin Julie and I found a quiet corner in the living room and talked for a long time about aging parents. She was worried about her own mother and wondering what is was like for me having to say goodbye to my mom. Julie and I were very close growing up, more like sisters at times than cousins. Yesterday my aunt called to tell me that Julie’s husband Rick Bach died suddenly Monday night of a massive heart attack. Me and Mr. B  just got home from the service. The chapel was packed with friends and family who spoke lovingly of Rick and his passion for life and sports, one of The Four Tops sang a beautiful a capella song, and my little cousin Jules is simply crushed. Before she left the day of my mom’s party we all promised to get together soon for dinner and Julie gave me a CD of a band that records at the studio she manages. I found one of their videos on youtube, hope you enjoy it.

afterglow

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The party for my mom’s memorial was Saturday and we had a wonderful time. We had over ninety people at the open house and we were fortunate to see friends and family from far and wide that we don’t often get to see anymore. We caught up on each others lives, looked at photos and videos, and it was very healing to hear people say so many kind things about my mom.

The day before the gathering I had asked my dad if he was looking forward to the party and he said no, he was afraid that it would be too emotional, that there would be too many “sobbing people”. I reassured him that it wasn’t going to be that kind of memorial and it wasn’t. While a few tears were shed, there was mostly laughter and hugs as we all came together to honor my mother’s seventy-four years of a life well lived. The photo above is of my sister Carrie and her daughters, Emily and Jenny, and their little dog Lola. They flew in all the way from warm sunny San Diego so we ordered them up some snow for Sunday…the day after the party;)

In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on. ~Robert Frost

missing mom

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My mom’s dog Ellie on her perch keeping watch

For many months now my family has been struggling to understand why my seventy-four-year-old mother was so sick and what we could do to help make her better. She has a somewhat rare form of COPD called bronchietasis, the cause of this illness is not well understood and unfortunately the treatment for it has been limited and unsuccessful. For quite some time we have been walking that heartrending line that those with serious illness and their families must walk, that difficult path where hope and acceptance meet and retreat then meet again. My mother has grown weary of the dance. She has stepped over to acceptance and she is asking us to do the same and so we are going to begin hospice care.

I sit and talk with her about her death now. She wants to know how long it will take. I tell her I don’t know but we will do everything we can to keep her comfortable. She says there are things she wanted to do, get organized. I tell her that she is still here and we can still do them. She says she wanted to write each of her children a goodbye letter. I tell her that she can dictate the words and I’ll write them down for her. She says she wanted to clean out the desk and throw away old bills. I reassure her that my dad will take care of that. She told me that her little dog Ellie is going to miss her and I said, “Yes, you’re right mom, she really is going to miss you.”

I could add a few words of wisdom about now, something about it all being okay because it’s the natural cycle of life, or she’s crossing over to a better place, or she’s had a good long life. And sometimes that is how I feel. But the truth is, most of the time it’s not okay. My mom is dying and any way you look at it…it is simply unacceptable.

*I wrote this post the day before my mother passed away. It’s been two months now and I just came across it while cleaning up my draft files on WordPress. This Saturday we are having a big open house in honor of my mom and I really do look forward to seeing family and old friends we don’t often get to see anymore. I’m still searching for those words of wisdom that will make everthing okay, but the thing is I want to lay my head down on my mother’s lap, feel her stroke my hair gently, and hear them from her.

sweet dreams

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I went to a baby shower for a friend’s daughter on Sunday. At first, as I watched the radiant mom-to-be open one cute pink gift after another, it made me happy. But I have to admit that by the end of the afternoon I practically ran out of that room. While slipping into my coat before I made my great escape, I overheard another friend say that she had just finished addressing her own Christmas cards as well as her mother’s cards. I had just finished addressing the invitations to my mom’s memorial. My own granddaughter was due on September 7th, my mom died on September 30th. As I drove home under a canopy of golden autumn leaves, I had one of those moments that sneak up on you, that suddenly wash over you just when you thought you were doing really great handling the trials of your life. I let the tears fall freely and I remembered a dream I had when the kids were still pregnant.

Two weeks before Andy and Meagan found out that the pregnancy was in trouble, and three weeks before they lost the baby, I had this dream. In the dream we had a house full of family and I was scurrying around like I do when I suddenly saw this little baby sitting in a highchair at a table. The baby wasn’t part of the crazy dream, it was slightly transparent, blond and blue-eyed with a faint glow surrounding it. I sat down across from the baby as the rest of the dream paused and fell away. I asked the baby if it knew what the sex of the coming baby was. The baby looked at me, smiled, and answered, “Can’t you just be patient and wait two more weeks until they find out?” I said, “No, can you tell me?” (not at all surprised that the baby, who looked to be about nine months old, was talking to me). The baby giggled, a sweet, sweet little laugh like the sound of peeling bells, then it looked down shyly and said, “It’s a girl.”

Of course, now I wish I had asked the dream baby if the baby in my daughter-in-law’s belly was healthy, if everything was going turn out okay. After they lost the baby (it was a girl) I was angry that I’d had that dream because a part of me was hoping that the baby in the dream was the baby that I would be holding in my arms by my birthday come September. If I could ask for any dream right now it would be one where I see my mom, young and healthy, her arms cradling a blond, giggling blue-eyed baby girl.

lullaby and goodbye

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Two weeks ago today I was sitting in a darkened room in a hospital ER, my hand gently holding my mother’s wrist, my index finger feeling for her fading pulse. As the fragile beats grew more distant, then seemed to stop, I glanced at my sister who was sitting next to my mother’s head stroking her hair. My sister is a nurse and I looked to her like a child looks up at their mother after they fall down to see how to react. Was this it, was she gone? My sister didn’t say anything though, so we kept talking.

I don’t remember now what we spoke about that afternoon, it doesn’t really matter. I think me and my sister and my father just wanted to erase the sounds of the hospital and fill it with our own hushed voices, a lullaby to a dying mother, wife, and grandmother. Sometime later a nurse floated silently into the room and quietly asked us if we needed anything. My sister shook her head no, then she said that mom had passed away about ten minutes before. So that was it then – no trumpets blaring, no final gasp, no last words, no dramatic goodbyes. Unlike the spectacle of birth and that fierce first breath, there was just sleep for my mother, deep and peaceful, a measured crossing on a whispered river of words.

my mom

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I had written a post about my mom Carol for September 30th, saying that we were going to have to begin hospice care for her, but before I could post it my dad phoned and said that he had called 911, that she was having a bad morning. When we got to the hospital they were not able to stabilize her breathing. We dimmed the lights and they initiated comfort care right there in the emergency room. She passed away peacefully hours later with my sister, my dad, and me by her side. We are saddened yet relieved that she is no longer suffering. We were also blessed with a hospital staff that was kind, caring and respectful. It was heartbreaking, powerful, beautiful…I think we felt just about every emotion possible that afternoon. I made a memorial website for my mom. We have a busy weekend of family bonding ahead of us so I don’t know when I’ll be back to blogging:)

Time is not what you think. Dying? Not the end of everything. We think it is. But what happens on earth is only the beginning. ~Mitch Albom