I’m pretty sure my mom died on Sunday morning, March 10.
“We have to leave now!” She said, no more than ten minutes into Mass. These days, my mom’s thoughts are like a child’s bubbles blown into the breeze. I figured I’d just wait for this one to effervesce. Dementia, like a Halloween’s blunt pumpkin-carving spoon, has scooped out the better part of mom’s long and short-term memory. I’ve learned in moments like these to redirect her with a kind of playful improv. It didn’t work this time. Slumped in my hands in the main aisle, without detectable breath or pulse, her open, unseeing eyes indicated that…yes, indeed…she had to leave…. “Now!”
Strong, Good Samaritan hands transported her to a discreet location in the back of church. Knowing mom’s advanced directives, I knew enough to wave off the AED resuscitator. It didn’t occur to me to wave off another unexpected form of resuscitation. My mom has always been the most affable, loquacious human being ever to receive God’s quickening breath. Stimulating arm rubs, and friendly entreaties, (E.G. “Barb, stay with us;” “Barb, your son is right here with you.”) had the effect of inviting her back into her body to join the party. A minute later, she was busy joking—Barb Wagner style—with “the nice boys” who came in the ambulance (a parishioner must have dialed them up).
A Sunday in the Emergency Department revealed what we’ve known for a while. Mom is a ninety-one year-old woman with progressive dementia. Her intermittent refusal of food and fluids resulted in her metaphysical field trip. Sooner or later, this kind of fasting will provide the carriage that will kindly transport her to a new home address in the “Sweet Bye and Bye.”
Taking my mom to Mass is literally a no-brainer. The ancient rituals of the Sunday liturgy are etched into her muscles and bones. Robbed of so much else, here’s a place where a functioning pre-frontal cortex is not a pre-requisite for participation. Parishioners regularly chat her up as she weavestogether enough phrases and gestures to simulate a conversation. As if she were a slice of buttered toast, and they were a soft egg yolk, mom will soak up the sight of small children and their antics. She savors every last drop of them.
For my part, every time I sit next to her at Mass, I’m busy asking her mom (my Grandma Mary Lou) to “please escort your daughter home as soon as possible.” Like every aging person I’ve ever met, this is not the script for which my incredibly active mom had auditioned. Despite my ongoing conversation with her mom, when I thought Barb had passed, there was nothing celebratory inside me. It sounded more like this, “So this is how it goes down!” After a day in the ER, and finally getting her settled into bed, I was surprised by how fragile I felt. I remembered my friend, David Flemming, after the death of his 102 year old mom saying to me, “I can’t help but feel that it’s too soon to say goodbye.” The irony was not lost on him or me.
Speaking of irony, it occurs to me that this article will drop on Easter Sunday. It seems to me that my fragility, and David’s quote, may have emanated from the same source. Despite the inevitably of our passing, there is something about death that somehow feels foreign to us all.
If Easter is all about ginning up some pastel painted feelings, while leaving our real-world concerns on a kickstand outside the church doors, then by all means avert your gaze from this article, and my mom, and all of those things that worry and sadden you…for at least twenty-four hours anyway! But perhaps Easter is less a set of evanescent feelings, and more a conviction issued forth from that undying place inside the human heart…without regard to religious tradition. Perhaps it functions like Mary Oliver’s “shining thread” in the Minotaur’s cave. It’s that thing you hold onto when it gets so dark you can’t see straight. It’s that hard-edged knowing that says, my poor attempts at love were not merely a child’s bubbles blown into the wind. It’s that deeply held intuition of Being that proclaims from within…like a sacred doxology: Love endures. Love endures. Love endures!
Dialogue
Was there someplace in your own life that this article transported you to? Get in touch with, and tell that story.
What helps you locate that “thing to hold onto” when it gets dark? Can you try to find the words to describe your experience of this?
If you are Christian, just for fun, tell the story of a cherished Easter memory.
If you aren’t Christian, can you tell the story of your family’s celebration of a favorite high holy day?
If you come from a family with a more secular approach, what was a yearly experience in your family that you hold as a very special memory?
Dr. Tom,
I came to you for counseling about ten years ago. You won’t remember me, but you commented I wrote well when I composed a letter to one of my children and spouse.
Anyway, I have to tell you I loved the buttered toast analogy in your recent article. Not that it’s the same, but that was my comfort food when I was a sick kid. So I was sort of soaking up the love of my mom.
Always enjoy and find comfort in your articles. Thank you.
Joy Galluzzo