Flying Fearless
We understand death only after it has placed its hands on someone we love. ~Madame de Stael
This piece is in memory of my wonderful mom, who was born on the fourth of July, and was a little firecracker in her own right.
“What’s taking so long?” she whispered.
I’m trying, I said, easing Mom’s petite frame off the hospital bed the hospice team had set up in our library. Spasms nagged my lower back—the strain of lifting someone too frail to help herself.
Our eyes locked and I realized she wasn’t talking about my delay in getting her out of bed.
She meant: why is it taking so long to die?
I loosened my grip and sat on the edge of the bed. Was she asking for permission?—because I wasn’t the one in control here. If I were, I would have smashed the oxygen tank into shards and willed her lungs’ saturation rate to a perfect 100%. She seemed only to be asking for my blessing.
I gave it.
“Whenever you’re ready, just go. All those who have gone before you. They’re waiting for you.”
She nodded. “I’m not afraid,” she said, her blue-grey eyes brimming.
~~~
I had no choice but to ride it with her. Some days she caught the wave and stood strong—perched in her leather chair, propped up by a million pillows, sipping a strawberry milkshake and laughing. Other days she missed the wave entirely, tumbling down, weak and worn, sipping iced water from the tiny paper cup I held to her dry lips. Her tiny body smelled of peat and sweat, a result of nighttime sweating episodes that left her weary. That the very definition of peat is a decomposing matter was not lost on me.
On her final Thursday morning, I held her hand as she exhaled one last time. Then came the silence—so thick it peeled from the walls, permeated the room.
I sat with it.
When I rose to shut off the oxygen tank, it hissed and groaned with displeasure, a final release of breath. There were no tears—none left, maybe. But they came later in strange, quiet places. When I saw a hummingbird. A thrift store. Folgers coffee.
At dawn, I woke my father to tell him. He sat up, rheumy eyed, his body shaking with sobs as he fell into my arms. Words didn’t help—they made no sense—so we held on until we could stand.
Later, they came to take her. They wrapped her small, withered body in the sheet—left side, right side, one final tuck over her head. I watched from the corner of the room as they shifted her onto the gurney and rolled her out the front door.
All done in hushed tones, with such quiet solemnity, I half-expected them to ask me to quiet my own pounding heartbeat.
Is there some rite of passage that takes us from child to adult the moment we sit beside someone we love and watch them leave this world?
Would my own loved ones sit by my side one day as I make my own way out??
Would they know how much I loved them?
How deeply they changed me?
How much better I became—because of them?
Today is the best day for me, and for you, to let those we care about know how much they matter.
Because we all know how this ride is going to end.
And, just at the moment when someone says, "There, she is gone,"
there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices
ready to take up the glad shout, "Here she comes!"-Henry Van Dyk
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Breathtaking, my friend. Perhaps an odd choice of words considering, but it's true. What a beautiful tribute to the relationship with your dear mother and to the moment when the final veil obscuring the great mystery opens before us. It's a memorable moment and one worthy of remembrance. Well done!
Crying while reading, You have my deepest condolences. Flying Fearless is a great title. As I get older, my perspective on dying changes. In the last few months, I have this image in my mind is on repeat. There is a series of reels on social media like "I was 100 years old when I died." Then the reel scenes change to different milestones in that person's life.