Listen to post:
How do you process your own mortality, perhaps our greatest
fear?
Last week, when a doctor delivered some extremely
pessimistic news to me about my mother, which has not proven yet to be true, it
hit me so hard that when she dies, so will a piece of me. In his arrogance and
unruly bedside manner, I think he has prepped me for when the time does come.
Well, as much as one can be prepared. There’s something so basic about losing
your mother. I’ve been so fortunate to have mine over 50 years.
What, exactly do we lose?
• Our identity.
• The one person that has known us longest.
• The one person who has always cared for us even in times
it made us crazy.
• One of the few people who truly knows us.
• Our innocence in being able to be childlike with someone.
• Our ideal of invincibility.
• A connection.
• Someone who will love us no matter what.
• The person who came before.
• The person who carried us.
• Our daughters’ grandmother.
Life becomes more important when exposed as fragile. We take
it for granted less. We pay closer, more careful attention. We live more in the
moment. We become more grateful.
We also get stressed, begin to grieve, get caught up in care
needs, tend to the other’s spiritual needs, sometimes neglect our own, pray,
storm at God, are amazed at her power and deflated by our human stamina.
It’s such a tangled web, this web of transition. Through it,
however, I am realizing I am more afraid of dying than death. The suffering, to
me, seems worse than the escape. I understand not all dying is filled with
pain.
Then I look at my mother who, admittedly, on paper, appears
sicker than she is. Her cardiologist agrees. This is the fourth or fifth
hospital stay in three or four years, yet the first real time I felt her life
was in danger. But, maybe I have forgotten. I have never received such grave
news from a medical professional. Fortunately, he is NOT her regular
cardiologist. One week exactly after his awful phone call, the nurses who
shepherded me through that difficult spot were elated at the change. One even
said, “We do know Who’s really at work, don’t we?”
The day before her release, a nurse assisted my mom to some
physical therapy steps as she said her thighs were getting like jelly from
being in bed or sitting so long. She tried to do some fancy steps and even
pretended to kick me. “She’s baaaaaaaaaack,” I joked with my sister.
She’s back – for how long I have no idea, but do any of us?
– and I am ever so grateful. I will try not to take her presence for granted.
• When have I been
confronted with death?
• What reaction did is
trigger?
• What has (or would
be) such a pivotal loss been like in my life?
• What has life’s
fragility taught me?
• What has facing, or
contemplating, death taught me?
one day
she’s driving my
11-year-old on errands
the next,
fighting an
infection in the ICU
never losing her
verve, also not
knowing the
pessimism
her seeming
innocence
buoyed her spirits,
convincing us
all of
God’s
loving power
and our
fragile
existence
