The Closing Chapter

A Flower for Mom

We are being told that Mom has 24 hours left with us. We know. We knew. And it doesn’t make it easier to let her go.

For me, the comfort comes in knowing that I was able to spend a few weeks in total service to the woman who gave me life. Not by birth. But better. She gave me her heart and soul not because she bore me, but because she and my father wanted a child so badly and could not conceive, that they reached out to adopt.

The cancer that made her sterile 56 years ago at thirteen is the thing that brought us together 39 years ago. It is also that same cancer that now takes her from this world.

“Will you sing for me? At my funeral.”

“I will, Mom, if that is what you want.” I answer her with my heart aching and my throat closing. How will I sing? I can hardly breathe at even the thought of it.

“I want you to sing something light, something beautiful,” she says softly, “something that will let God know I’m at the gate.”

“He’ll know,” I say, holding her hand. This is the way she prefers to fall asleep now. Her hand in my father’s or mine. Her need for our touch, for forgiveness, hope, miracles and letting go all come to the forefront as the sun disappears each day.

“I’m not afraid,” she told me over and over in the past few weeks, “I’m ready to go to God.” And God shall have her. I only pray that he will open his arms to her and love her a fraction as much as the people she leaves behind.

“Do you think God is a man or woman?” she asked me in one of our late-night conversations.

“Both,” I say.

“Must be,” she responds, “I think they like good food. And good colors.”

“Colors?”

“Everything is so beautiful! The colors are bright and rich and I can feel them and taste them all!” she grins with all her teeth in a child-like glee. “They designed things together. They had to. Because if He had designed the world alone it would have been in browns. Like your Dad. She added the greens, pinks, purples, reds, blues and yellows!”

And then she was asleep, smiling and dreaming of the richness of her world. Her grandbabies, her children, her husband, her siblings and her God.

Her last weeks have been filled with family, friends, creamsicles, popsicles, Jell-O and Mrs. Lee’s Chinese cooking.

She has vividly recalled her history and others, sharing her memories with pleasure and sadness. And in the darkness, just us, she says night after night, “Elizabeth, you will write this. You will be the one to tell my story. Please tell my story.”

I will write it, Mom. This is part of the closing chapter.

It is Sunday, October 25^th, 2009. It is one month to the day that we brought Mom home from the hospital and set her up in the living room. At 3:14 this morning Mom’s heart beat for the final time. My sister, father and I were all holding her as her soul left her finally still physical form. She is no longer in pain.

I bathed her face and combed her hair, moderately covering the wound on her head. In her green medical gown (the one she preferred) she was quiet. No more labored breathing or restless movements. No more medicine, frustration or pain.

When the coroner came to remove the body, no longer her vessel to navigate, I covered it with the green blanket she had complimented, caressed and “tasted” over the past few weeks. More than anything throughout her life, she had feared the dark, the cold and the wet.

Bundled now, clean and dry, she will never fear the darkness again.