My mom was daignosed with ovarian cancer about a year and a half after my marriage. My husband and I (who had been on the verge --literally planned within the next few days--of signing the papers for a new home we were buying--our first home)-- instead gave up those plans, got out of our apartment lease, and moved back in with my mother (I was her only child) to care for her.
I had NOT wanted to go.
My daddy had passed away some years before---after a very sudden illness that only lasted one month, he went into the hospital on the day of my 18th birthday, and was gone exactly a week later. I had adored my Daddy---idolized him---but my relationship with my mother---well, the best word I can used for it was "strained". A more accurate word might be "toxic." Let's put it this way--I cannot remember her ever -- ever-- giving me a compliment or praise (except once she said I could beat her making cornbread)--and she made many very hurtful statements (which I have mostly deliberately tried to forget)--such as accusing me, about two months after my beloved Daddy's death, of being the cause of his death because I had "worried him to death" with my teenage rebellion and argumentativeness. (I wanted to do evil things, like go off to college, and drive my own car while there--things like that).
So I wasn't exactly excited about giving up my life--my newfound freedom with my husband--to go back to my mother's home, the scene of so many bad memories, to stay with her as she grew weaker.
Yet I knew, this was the RIGHT thing to do---she was my mother, she had adopted me and cared for me and done her best to raise me right, and if she went overboard trying not to "spoil" me---well, I sort of understood that, knowing a bit of how she was raised, and in what a dysfunctional family. Besides--I knew it was what my Daddy--and my Heavenly Daddy--would want me to do.
So we moved back in (in fact, my husband was more proactive and taking the lead about this being the only right thing to do than I was---I knew it was right, but dreaded doing it), and I mentally and internally tried to gear myself up for what I knew might be months of nursing and caring for her.
But after only three months--in the cold days of February--it became clear she didn't have much longer.
During this time of waiting, one of my mother's best and dearest friends--Bessie Williams--suddenly passed away. I didn't tell my mom, so she wouldn't get even more depressed on top of all she was dealing with. But her brother (who I practically had to DEMAND to get over there to see her--in fact, I had to tell his wife to tell him "If you want to see your sister alive again, you'd better get over here, NOW!") told her. I remember the pitiful look on her face after he told her as she turned to me and said, "Is Bessie gone?"
Later that same night---
We had friends who came in and sat with her at night, so I and my husband could get some sleep. One was a nurse, who had told me she had often witnessed patients having "visions" of the other side when they drew close to passing.
That night, she woke up, with one of her frequent nightmares. This night, she was SURE she had clothes out on the clothesline and it was coming up a cloud, and she HAD to get out there and get the clothes off the line. I heard her, and realized the nurse couldn't calm her, and climbed out of bed to go to her. I went into the room, and pulled up the blinds to show her it was night, and said, "See, Mama? You just had a bad dream. There aren't any clothes out on the line. You wouldn't leave any clothes out on the line at night. It was just a bad dream."
After that, she calmed down. I helped the nurse get her settled down in bed again, and asked her if she wanted anything--a glass of water? I brought her the water, and she drank it quietly, then stopped and calmly asked, "Who is that lady?"
I thought she meant the night nurse, and so I said, "Mama, you know her--this is xxxx, who comes to stay with you every night."
Mama answered, "No--I don't mean her. I mean that pretty lady sitting over there--" --- and she pointed at the empty chair her brother had sat in when he visited her earlier in the day.
I looked across the bed at the nurse--and she looked across the bed at me--and both of us I'm sure were bug-eyed. I felt the hair rising on the back on my neck. But I didn't want to frighten Mama, so I just said quietly, "What lady, Mama?"
And again she pointed to the chair--the empty chair--and said, "That real pretty lady, sitting right over there." (She sounded a bit aggravated at my slowness for not seeing the lady).
I said, "I can't see the lady, Mama. Can you tell me what she looks like?"
And Mama, calm as a cucumber, said, "She's a real pretty lady, and she's wearing a real pretty white dress."
I looked again at the (empty) chair, at the nurse, and at Mama, and just said, "I can't see her, Mama."
My mother seemed not at all perturbed by this; she simply finished her glass of water, and calmly lay back in bed again to sleep.
She sleep peacefully the rest of the night--a great change from her usual pattern of waking up with nightmares every hour.
A few nights later (I think it was 2 or 3 nights later) she passed.
We had had to take her to the hospital, because her prescribed opioids were no longer enough to tamp down the pain, so her doctor had her re-admitted and put on strong morphine. She sank into a deep sleep from the morphine, and at first I thought with relief, "Ok, I can go back home and get the first good night's sleep I've had in months!" I was SO exhausted--but the nurses realized she was much closer to passing than I had realized she was, and they strongly encouraged me to stay, so I did.
I sat by my mother's bed, holding her hand. Her grip became convulsively stronger as she held mine--even under the morphine--as if she were holding on to me like a lifeline. The nurses told me I needed to tell her she could let go, that it was ok to go, which felt strange to me to say to her, because she'd always been the person who had had to be VERY MUCH "in control"--but I told her that it was ok, that I would take care of her home and her things and her cat--that she didn't have to worry about anything, I'd take care of it--and my husband in the room with me assured her he'd take care of me. They didn't have a cot, but just a little reclining chair that was too low for me to hold my mother's hand without holding my arm bent up at the elbow. Problem was, every time I drifted off to sleep, my hand would grow so heavy I couldn't hold it up any more and my arm would drop down. Then I'd wake up and re-grasp her hand, and her fingers would wind around mine as tightly as before.
Slowly, her breathing turned into the "death rattle" and we knew she didn't have long. The nurses were coming in to check her about every hour, at which times I'd wake up and re-grasp her hand.
At some time in the early morning, I had dropped off to sleep again, but I was still aware of her loud, rattling breathing. At some time, in my sleep, I realized the sound had stopped--and something in my sleep-fogged brain tried to make sense of that fact, the but rest of my exhausted brain just sighed with relief and prepared to relax into a deeper sleep--when suddenly a strong wave of heat seemed to pass right through my body---warm and comforting, like a wave of energy had passed THROUGH me, that had enveloped me like a warm blanket--and then it was gone. I sighed and sank more deeply into sleep--but then the nurse came in to check my mother's vitals again--and when she did, I woke up fully and realized my mother was no longer breathing.
The time was 5:15 am.
Hours later, when my husband and I got back home from the hospital, I went into my mother's bedroom, and saw the alarm clock I had bought her, that she always kept on her dresser.
It had stopped---at exactly 5:15 am.
I've always wondered if the "pretty lady" mama saw (and so calmly!) was her recently-passed friend (only she never seemed to recognize her or call her by her friend's name) or if she was an angel. I've also always wondered what would have happened, or what I would have experienced, had I walked closer to that chair, or even passed my hand over / above it.
But I've always believed my Mama saw something, from the other side, that comforted and strengthened her that night.
