Reading these posts has brought back a lot of emotions for me. I was with my mother when she died of colon cancer, after a long illness. I later wrote a book about it, a sort of catharsis for the always complex mother-daughter relationship.
When I saw your question, I went looking for what I had observed and contemplated during her dying, which was slow, and ended in a coma that deepened for the last week or so. Here are a few excerpts- it probably doesn't answer anything at all, because- well, there are no real answers.
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"Penni, I'm frightened of dying. And I don't seem to have a choice about it."
"None of us does, Mom."
"Oh, but we think we do. We think we do, somehow. Only we don't. And now I'm dying. I know I am and I can't do a thing about it. And I'm frightened because I can't imagine not- being."
I took my mother's hand. It was true. You can't really imagine yourself dead. Because to think about yourself dead took awareness. And death was lack of awareness and you couldn't get there from here even when you knew you were staring it right into the abyss. So I could take my mother's hand and walk with her to the edge of that awareness, but she had to go the rest of the way alone. It was the way we came in and the way we went out. I had never felt so helpless. I held my mother's hand, stood at the edge with her, and said nothing. Her eyes closed.
She slept more and more; sometimes her mind wandered. If she moaned in her sleep, I gave her more morphine. I remember early on when she had asked me if I would end it for her and I thought, oh God, don't ask, please don't ask. She never did.
The final stage was like the brutal sacking of a city after the people had surrendered- the cancer plundered and raped and destroyed a body until there was nothing remaining but the fragile framework on which the structure had rested, all the luxuries gone.
Mother lay in what seemed to be a permanent position, on her back, her mouth slightly agape, eyes open. As I watched, she stopped breathing. I began to count; thirty seconds went by. She breathed again. I took her hand, and it was cool to the touch, as if the life were already slipping from the extremities. Maybe it was. Hours. Only hours left. Was my mother's spirit floating above us now, watching the end, dispassionately, already gazing down some brightly lit tunnel into another reality.
I spent the next few hours at her side, putting drops in her eyes, brushing her hair, holding her hand and talking, but it was as if no one were home. They should put a sign on her. Body for rent. No. More like- This Building Condemned.
I tried to examine what I was feeling, but I couldn't get my mind around it. It kept sliding into the third person. Here is the dutiful daughter sitting by her mother who will be dead in a day. Here the dutiful daughter is brushing her mother's hair for the last time. I wanted to think and say memorable things, somehow sum up all that had been, but I felt silly. Just in case anything was left, I played some Garrison Keillor and some Mozart.
I tried to sleep for a few hours while Gertrude sat with her. It was useless. I walked back into the bedroom, where Gertrude dozed, a gleam of spittle on her chin. I sent her home. When I got back to the bedroom, Mother was just taking a breath. I visualized a chain of red and green inhalations and exhalations, like the paper links the boys had made for Christmas and hung on the kitchen door, tearing off one link at a time, the chain growing shorter and shorter. How many breaths still to be torn off?
Her breathing changed, no longer the long, separate agonal breaths, but quicker, harsher. I knelt by the bed, telling her it was time. It was ok. I loved her. My brother knelt on her other side, holding her other hand, saying the same words.
A harsh intake of breath, noisy difficult. Was this the death rattle you read of in books? I was terrified. I had never seen death. I pictured it sneaking into the room, furtively, unsure of its reception, but determined, knowing, sliding over to the bed and easing its cold hand around my mother's heart, silent, unnoticed.
My mother's eyes widened slightly. She seemed to focus. She looked directly into my brother's eyes. One last breath- the last link- I felt it- felt the ending- the tearing- the leaving.
We waited, endless seconds. There was no exhalation. It was over. |
