Saying Goodbye To My Mother

May 9, 1998

Bryn Mawr, PA

It was Thursday night and I have to head home. I live two hours away and have to be up early. So, I leave around 8PM. I kiss my mother on the top of her head and say, “I’ll see you tomorrow Mom and if not, I will see you in the next life.”

“I’ll be here tomorrow”, she says sadly and wearily. She is exhausted and ready to die but overwhelmed with guilt about the dark days ahead for the rest of us. The hospice nurse predicted that she would die last week. But she is hanging on by a thread. So, every day is a heavy blessing.

I call her in the morning, just to check in. My sister answers the phone and says that Mom could not speak to me. 

“Is she asleep?” I ask.

“No, she can’t’ speak anymore”, my sister informs me. 

I don’t comprehend exactly what she is trying to tell me. But I don’t have the courage or the energy to ask for more details.

So, after work, I drive two hours back to my mother’s house. She is confined to her hospital bed as she has been for the last 8 days. And when I see her, it is clear to me that the cancer has now gone to her brain and she has lost some functions: the ability to close her eyes, her speech and other muscle controls. She is in some sort of altered state, a semi-coma. One look at her and an avalanche of grief and panic surge through every nerve in my body. She has slipped so far away from us in just 20 hours. She senses that I am upset, and she takes my hand and kisses it repeatedly. I try to hold back the tears, but that is next to impossible. This is it. This is the end of her tiring four-year battle with cancer.

On Saturday morning, my sisters and I sit around her bed. Patricia, a nurse, takes her pulse. “It won’t be long”, she says with a stoic voice of professionalism. “We should get Dad.” She gets up and calls my father out of the bathroom where he is shaving.

“Dad, it will be any minute now.”

So, he calmly wipes the shaving cream off his face, and he joins us around the bed. There is no sound in the room, just silence and heavy, heavy anticipation.

I have thought of this moment so often in the last few months. My friends, who have been with a parent at death, have told me about the peacefulness of this looming moment. They talked about how grateful they were to have been at this moment when a parent takes that last breath. So, I sit here, waiting for the calmness. This is the moment when I surrender my mother to her death.

Patricia takes my mother’s pulse again and announces, “She’s gone.” She sobs and we sit in silence. The moment isn’t calm. I am not even sure when the moment of her death was. But it doesn’t matter now. It is over. I am filled with sadness, relief, bewilderment, disbelief and emptiness.

Someone calls the funeral director. We call other family members and we move around the house with heavy hearts. All of our actions and conversations are labored. We cry and then we regain our composure. We try to be positive. After all, we all saw this coming. And she is no longer suffering. So, we try to focus on this. But the loss is still too great.

The doorbell rings and it is two men from the funeral home. They are dressed in black suits. One of them has a body bag discreetly tucked under his arm. As they enter the house, they nod to all of us and we all nod back.

“Where we at?” one of them asks loudly, “we upstairs?” He is cracking gum. His loudness and poor grammar offend me. He is getting on my nerves. Or maybe I am just looking to fight with someone today and he is such an easy target.

“If you are referring to my mother” I say in an indignant voice, “She is upstairs” and I point to the steps. They start up the steps and I follow behind them. One of them stops and turns to me and says, “You’ll want to stay downstairs Miss. This isn’t nice to see.”

“No”, I tell him adamantly, “I’m coming up with you.”

We go into the bedroom and he lays the body bag on the floor. Both men look nervously at me. They are not sure if they should get started while I am still in the room. We come to a standstill. Finally, I break the silence. “I know this is your job. And she is not your mother, and you have to be indifferent in order to do your job. But this is my mother. And I am going to make sure she leaves her house with all the dignity she deserves.” 

My voice is quaking, and I do everything I can to hold back my tears. I really feel a need to appear so strong in front of these two strangers.

Both men nod to me respectfully, “Yes Ma’am” they say quietly in unison. And then we begin. We walk over to her bed. The men stand on the sides and pull on the bottom sheet. On the count of three, we left the sheet and her. They hold the side of the sheet and I hold her head. I am stunned at how heavy she feels. She weighs only 75 pounds, but it is a struggle for the three of us to carry her that short distance to the body bag. We lay her down and one man begins to zip the bag. He pulls the zipper up to her chin and then he purposely stops. He isn’t comfortable in continuing.  I kneel down and take hold of the zipper. I kiss my mother on the forehead and then I finish the job. I pull the zipper over her face.

“Okay” I tell them, “you can take her now.”

They nod and each one takes a handle at the end of the bag. As they descend the stairs, I see my father and sisters looking on. No one says anything. The two men proceed out the door and I follow them to the car where they put the bag in the trunk, just like a bag of groceries. Now, this package of my mother looks so, so small. It is as if she shrank just in that short period of time.

The two men close the trunk and they get in the front seat. They’re already chatting and laughing about something. As they take off, I watch and am amazed to see no visible trace of my mother. She is now gone. Forever.