i am going to try to not get in my way here - i just came back from yoga - she asked for us to think of our intention for the class - and my mind was free;the word "comfort" came to me - and i fought tears for the next 1-1/2 hours - and now they're here making it difficult for me to see the monitor - this is the post that has been fighting in my gut - too kind to say out of my heart, but out of my stinking gut - no thought getting in the way here
comfort - i have been thinking of ways i could have been a kinder daughter to my mom in the months leading up to her death. i was abrupt with her in hawaii - we didn't fight but at times she was my impediment, my stone, my chain, the thing that made it so i wasn't having the time of my life in paradise - i told people that this vacation had turned out to be more of a working holiday for me. what a fucking ungrateful brat - i owed her comfort. did my voice, my actions betray this to my mother? she was a very smart woman and she did not say everything she thought; she tried all her life to have me be the same, but i never was so good at walling off what i felt. did she feel my impatience? i thought i hid it well .. but people who suck at this delude themselves into feeling they're masters at it. and this is what i fear - i was not a comfort to her until her final hours of life. i was a total ungrateful shit. i was in hawaii and wanting to be somewhere else - i wanted her to NOT SMOKE in my presence - what a fucking, self righteous prig i was. i wouldn't share her nightcap. i left it to the strangers to do this. what RIGHT did i have? well, i had no right and if i could take back this last year i would, in a heart beat, my heart beat. (these tears - they are scalding my cheeks - i wish they'd leave a permanent trace; stigmata).
her final hours - here we go-we're going to wallow deep in that pig shit - hang on
finally, did god/grace allow me to make up some of what ground i had lost?please god please god. i saw her in her emergency room bed - i had not laid eyes on her for about 10 days (another occasion for guilt; why had i not? i'll tell you why - too much into my own thing) and this is what i saw - a dying woman in that bed - my first thought - she looks like a cassidy, a dying woman, she looks like her dad, my papa (oh god oh god somebody else i ignored in his final months until hours before he died, the very night before he died - i hugged that man to my chest the night before he died;i can smell him even now). my lips on her brow, her lips cracked, her breath foul, her breast bone struggling to make it out of the skin that covered it. momma, momma. and this is how i comforted her - please god make it count
#1:her poor tailbone - there was just a sheet on top of hard plastic hospital bed - i found a blanket to put between her tailbone and that hard surface (this was loosened up in my yoga class; we have soft blankets for our comfort). i rocked her body to mine and the nurse slipped that blanket between her precious skin and painfully hard surface. her body weighed nothing against my own.
#2:her cracked lips - she was so thirsty (god your son knew this) and her lips were cracked. they have these swab things with moisture on them and i kept ripping open the packages and rubbing these things against her poor dried lips - she was so grateful for what little moisture she got from these swabs - and what did it matter;she'd be dead in hours - but it gave her comfort
#3; i kissed her brow and held her clawed hand - her hand was cold; i told her how i loved her. my son came in and the look on her face - i'll hold that look forever. please.
#4; i told her when she was being taken away to surgery that she would love anesthesia -i told her she would just fall into sleep and to just fall into it -momma did you just fall into it? - and that i would be there when she woke. she never awakened but i was there 7 minutes before she died - god gave me that grace if grace that was.
#5; i closed her dead eyes - they were open and clouded and dead;they did not close on their own - i had to hold them once, twice and then they stayed closed. momma momma it was so hard to leave you there - but i knew you were just the shell at that moment - "there's nothing sad about a shell" - what i loved was gone.
please all who read this pray for me, a sinner
christine
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Dear Christine, you are not a sinner. You are just (and were just) being human. You know how hard it is just to show up when someone is getting ready to pass, but you were there. I recall my own mother saying almost the same things when her mother died. You knew deep down how difficult it would be to go on without your dear mother; your mind couldn't help distancing yourself from the pain it knew was coming. Remember what Joan Didion said about not being able to participate in any meaningful way when her parents were dying. (I can't put my finger on the passage at the moment.) This is what it's like; this is what will happen or has happend to all of us at the single most earth-shattering thing that's in most people's destiny, surviving the death of one's mother. You did good things for her. You gave her comfort. What you weren't able to face, she understood. She will tell you so herself one day.
ReplyDeleteSweet Christine! Remember way back in RCIA classes when we talked about the sacrament of penance? The confitior at mass says "for what I have done and for what I have failed to do." We all have the same failings, all of us. I haven't treated any ongoing relationship in my life without some kind of cruelty or forgetfulness. It's how we are. I remember when my mom was in the throes of alcoholism and she could barely speak a coherent sentence, and I slapped her! Slapped my own mother! And the day she died I held her wedding ring in my hand and sobbed on my bed for three hours. I could have been a better son, I should have been a better son, and today, now that I'm an orphan, I am a better son.
ReplyDeleteWe do what we can and good people like you and I make the best decisions we can with the resources we have at the time. And pray God, we learn through all the pain that we can do it a bit better next time with someone else we love. Your grief has brought you remorse, Miss Plum, and only God knows what is next on that grisly agenda. I hope a little breather.
Go have a sugar cookie, take a walk in the crisp cold air, watch The Meaning of Life ("the salmon mousse! But I didn't eat any of the mousse!"), take a nap, bake something for me, read your favorite book. Your sanity will return, at least momentarily, from this magical thinking.
Pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death...
I love you,
Kurt
thank you my sweet friends - your words do help. Much love, christine
ReplyDeleteYou know we are thinking about you and praying for you.
ReplyDeleteXOX,
B
Hope you're feeling better today!
ReplyDelete