Time to Say Goodbye
The dreaded phone call came just like I had imagined it would one day. At 3:40am
on February 21, 2003 my phone rang and I knew who it was before I even picked up the phone. My
mom was dying. How soon could I get to the nursing home??
All I could say to Donna the midnite nurse was, "Please promise me that you will
not let her die alone. She is soo afraid..."
The rest of the conversation is mostly a blur. I got there within 20 minutes. All
the way there I shouted at the top of my lungs, "Mommy don't die without me being there! I am on
my way"!
When I walked into her room two midnight aides I had never seen before were sitting
on each side of her bed, gently stroking her and softly speaking to her.
My God! Where did my mother go?? There was no way that this wasted away skeleton
on the bed before me could be my mother! I had just been with her hours ago and she did not look
like this!
She lay on her back as still as a corpse, her eyes now closed, breathing so
heavily, never moving, never speaking. The sound of the oxygen machine was the only sound now in
the room.
As I moved closer to the bed I noticed that the oxygen mask seemed to swallow her
up and cover her entire face. How could she have shrunk seemingly overnight?
Once the dementia began mom began to drool and she was soo ashamed. Now the oxygen
mask kept filling up with tiny bubbles..millions of tiny bubbles..which I kept wiping away..
She was dying and I did not want her to feel ashamed....
My heart wanted to SHOUT out my true feelings! "Mommmy please don't leave me! You
cannot leave me here all alone! I still need you! Please don't go!" She and I had made a
solemn promise to one another years ago that we would never leave the other behind.
Then I remembered something mom had once told me, "Be careful what you say around
those you think cannot hear you because they can."
God gave me the strength and courage to say what she needed to hear...instead of
saying what my heart needed to say...and I went and sat next to her. I whispered to her softly
that I was there by her side and that she did not have to be afraid. I told her I loved her and
that I knew that she was tired and longed to go home to be with God.
I did not want her to struggle because she was afraid of what would happen to me
without her...so I said to her what my heart told me she needed to hear..."It's ok mommy, you can
go now. I will be alright." All I wanted was to ease her fears and help her to go gently into
the night.
The more I spoke to her the more she gurgled. To me she sounded just like a tiny
kitten purring! I know that more than likely what I was hearing was fluid build up in her lungs,
but I would like to think that there were no more monsters for her now...and that she was purring
like a little kitten because she was no longer frightened and was content...
We had four and a half hours together. The room was soon filled with so much love!
Staff crowded around her bed in shock at this sudden turn of events. They came to pay their
respects one by one and to say their final goodbyes. I felt so very proud!
Mom had made me promise her that I would have a priest give her the Last Rites if
I knew that she was going to die. She had felt so badly because she could no longer remember how
to say the rosary which she so had loved. I told her that God knew what was in her heart and
that is the only kind of prayer that mattered to Him.
The nursing home found a priest for me and he had me pray with him as he
administered the Last Rites...annointing her forehead with the Holy Water she so loved.
We both told her it was alright for her to leave us now, and I leaned over and
gently kissed her forehead which was still warm.
I whispered in her ear, "It's ok mommy...it's ok..you can go home now..."
Within a few minutes after the priest had left her room she took her last breath
and went home to meet her God.
My faith in God had dwindled once mom became afflicted with Alzheimer's. However,
this wonderful woman gave me a most beautiful gift at the moment of her death. She allowed me to
know that He did exist because there was no doubt in my mind by the peaceful look on her face
that she, indeed, had just seen the face of God!
I sat for over an hour by her side as I waited for the undertaker to come and claim
her body. I kept kissing her and holding her hand and telling her how very much I loved her. I
could not take my eyes off of her open mouth...and watched as the tiny bubbles soon began to
disappear.
Although her skin began to turn blue her body never began to feel cold. Perhaps it
was because I kept touching her...trying to keep her warm. Perhaps it was due to the fact that
even in death this precious woman still was filled with so much warmth and tenderness... It was
as if she was trying to keep me warm as well, on this frigid winter's day.
I walked out of the room beside the gurney, still in shock and unable to accept the
fact that my mom...my entire world...was now enclosed within that zippered sterile body bag.
Before the door opened and she was to take her last ride, I kissed her goodbye and
told her how very much I loved her as I did before I left after every visit.
However, this time it was different because she was now leaving me behind.
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