Waiting. Waiting. Waiting.
Waiting as I’m watching my mother die.
Lord, it ain’t easy. It’s gut-wrenching, much harder than I thought it would be, not that I ever figured or anticipated it to be calming or comforting.
Death, in this case, would bring more calm, more comfort — for her, for everyone who loves her, and there are many.
As I write these words on Sunday night, Mom — the person who taught me a thousand lessons, including good reasons to love sports and competition, in general — is in bed, on hospice, her withered frame not moving an inch, except ever so slowly and sporadically taking small figurative steps, short literal breaths into the eternities.
Her heart rate is 28 beats per minute, blood pressure is 52 over 44, percentage of oxygen in her blood is 30. All of those numbers change minute by minute, bouncing higher, bouncing lower, like the basketball she used to dribble when she was back in school. That was a long, long time ago.
Father Time is edging in, taking over, imposing his will.
This is the final paragraph of the last chapter of a long book. And, damn, the last sentences are tough to write and read.
Wilma Mooring Monson is exactly 97 years, five months old as of right now. That’s a whole lot of life exiting her mind and body. And what a life it’s been.
Maybe you’ve seen a loved one pass, right before your eyes. And you can feel the pain, still feel the pain, too. Now I feel mine and yours.
Absorbing the loss of a family member or a friend is nothing new. I lost my father 23 years ago, my wife’s parents 37 and seven years ago. Never watched their last breaths, though, not firsthand, not as I’m doing now.
For 25 seconds, there’s no breathing, then 13 consecutive big heaves, then 30 seconds of nothing, then 10 heaves, then 35 seconds of terrifying quietude … and then …
And then.
A handful of us are in the room. My oldest sister says a prayer. Then other sisters start in on the stories about Mom, how she had a quick wit, a quicker laugh, how she was the life of any party, how she was both honest and a manager of truth, balancing candor with criticism, boldness with bluntness, open-mindedness with fierce opinions, honor with humor.
A nurse enters the room with a dose of morphine, a dose of Lorazepam.
The stories continue. The time she broke her own finger by accidentally stepping on it — herself, guffawing at her clumsiness. The time she promised each of us young kids a full-size Snickers bar out of a large bag of Snickers when we got home from school, but while we were gone, learning reading, writing, arithmetics, she was home devouring the entire bag by her lonesome. “Hey, Mom,” my sister said when we came through the door, “where’s our candy bars?” “Oh, hon, I’m so sorry, but I’m so full, so sick, so sorry, the Snickers are in my belly.”
The time when Mom and her good friend, Donna, got out of the pool from their daily swim at a YMCA, went into the women’s locker room, and after they showered, while they were blowdrying their hair, a naked man, an exhibitionist, entered the room. They shrieked. As they reported the incident to a police officer, he asked, “What did the man’s face look like?” Donna looked at Mom, Mom looked at Donna, and Mom said, “I don’t know, we never looked at his face.” The time she broke down and bawled, while attempting to console the rest of us at my father’s funeral.
There are a thousand more, like the time she saved us from capsizing by single-handedly reaching down and pushing our snagged raft off a rock in the middle of big rapids on a family river trip. The time I held a two-foot iron cannon (unloaded but filled with black powder that boomed when the lever was switched) pointed at the door, then knocked on it, firing it off with a loud ka-boom when she swung the door open. What I, as a dumb kid, thought would be hilarious, she, even with her great sense of humor, did not think was funny, not at all.
I once, along with my young friends, got picked up by a K-9 officer for a dirt bomb fight we had on the front steps of our elementary school, digging into the flower beds for ammo. The officer saw us, stashed me and my friends into the back of his Jeep, along with his police dog. When the officer and I came through my family’s front door and into the entryway, the law informing my folks what had happened, my dad was beyond angry, looking as though his head might spin off, at the idiocy of his dopey son. My mom? She just turned away, busting up in uncontrollable laughter. That’s when she blurted out, “All the things I did wrong when I was a kid, and you got busted for a dirt bomb fight?”
That was my mom, a strong-minded, strong-bodied, quick-witted, fun-loving, God-fearing woman who was smart, caring, and everyone’s best friend, including mine.
She enjoyed sports, playing catch with her only son, teaching me how to swing a bat and how to handle swinging and missing, how to properly throw and catch a football, how to rebound from screwing up, instructing me along the way on the rudiments of solid competition and the mental toughness associated with them, and, most significantly, giving support and encouragement as I played games and, later, even more, as I wrote about them.
She coached me to study things out and develop and not be afraid of discovering and expressing a point of view, about sports and about life, come what may, even when she disagreed with my POVs (about half the time).
As I write that sentence now, sitting next to her bed, Mom, asleep and drugged to ease the pain of her conditions of age and attendant infirmaries, takes a deep breath and then one more … and then … one more … and then … nothing. Silence. I hold her hand and sing her praise. But she’s gone, her face drawn, her body defeated, her spirit … gone.
Whew.
Gone to a different realm. Gone, as I believe it, now into the arms of my dad and other departed family and friends, in a better place, at the feet of God. The struggle she’d fought through in her last year now removed.
Believe that if you want. Don’t believe it if that’s the way you roll. To each his or her own. But for those who have watched a loved one leave this terrestrial existence, right before our eyes, faith brings a powerful peace, a strength in knowing there are others, fellow believers, who are right there with us, believing in a life in a great beyond, somewhere in a heavenly home that’s better than what we see and feel and skid and carom through in this life.
Some say that’s the reach of the weak and the desperate, the hope of those who can’t handle real life and real death. I say it’s the emboldening and enabling prayer of the faithful in real life and real death. Choose for yourself.
Discover and express your own point of view, unafraid, come what may.
In those last months, Mom lost her eyesight, her hearing, at the end, her ability to communicate and think crisply and clearly, the way she once could. But now she can see, she can hear, she can think. She can laugh.
She can laugh her way through the eternities.
I believe it. Maybe you believe it, too. If you don’t, you do you. But if you do believe, consider yourself fortunate for the solace that comes hand in hand, even straight into the act of grabbing a cold hand and saying goodbye.