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My mother died in my arms...

Shameslaya said Jan 18, 4:15 PM:

following a 14 year battle with skin cancer….she had shrunk to 4 stone and rested in my embrace, a boney, etiolated woman barely recognisable as the sprightly woman with impeccable hair who wryly slipped an extra couple of quid into my allowance because she knew how badly I wanted that new Todd Rundgren album…the secondaries had caused multiple lesions in her brain and she had stopped smoking for these past five weeks so her smell was unrecognisable because she had always chainsmoked and stank of stale tobacco…there was now a curious odourlessness about her…something absent beyond the odour of cigarettes…

She lay in my embrace for more than 17 hours on the hospice bed….her frame was light and I would switch sides periodically to rest the supporting arm….in my other hand I carried and periodically read from Franchesca Freemantle's commentary on The Tibetan Book of the Dead…I have done extensive work with Menla, the Medicine Buddha and had a puja-charged set of mala beads which I held with the book…from time to time I would internally repeat the Menla mantra…om bekendze bekendze maha bekendze radza samugate soha…

My father was there until nightfall; being elderly he wandered off to bed at eleven….I had another six hours alone with her…the hospice nurse looked in regularly but mostly left us alone…she sensed my groundedness in the process…I breathed deeply into my heart chakra and stayed with my mother and with myself…I felt sad, but I also knew that I was going to facilitate a good death for my mum…as the Book of the Dead advises; when we die, the departing causal body has not yet shed its subtle counterpart and can get freaked in an emotionally-charged atmosphere…lose its way…I had prepared for this last process for many moons and was allowing myself to stay with my grief in an open, clean space….

This was not easy…my mother was good enough, yes, but I carried issues with her…at root I had never felt that I knew who she really was under all the fear, the anger, the agoraphobia….and I reckon she didn't know either…

But here's the rub….Three hours into Cheyne-Stokes breathing, she was ready to draw her last breath…I placed the mala beads on the pillow above her crown and looked deeply into her eyes…

And I saw recognition there for an instant…her eyes flashed deepest blue and she raised a single eyebrow, something she would often do at social occasions as if to say conspiratorially (sometimes to me) “Well s/he's an asshole but there you go”…this last time she did it, I felt like she had gotten beyond all of her history and was saying to me “Well that's it for this time, thanks for seeing me out” and in that I felt closer to her in that moment than I had ever done before…

And she smiled and breathed her last. I watched her go.

My mother looked like Audrey Hepburn and was one of the finest Ladies Hairdressers of the region…she carried a miniature sarcophagus containing a mummy you can extract from the casing….got it in Egypt decades ago…silver…a lifelong Christian Scientist, she felt drawn to Egypt and believed she had lived there many times before…I may have been the only person she ever told this to but she intuited that i would not laugh at her and, told this at thirteen i did not…I was gobbling up the Lobsang Rampa books with relish at the time…

I carry this little sarcophagus in my wallet, and her bracelet of indian silver remains in a transparent pouch in my filofax…they will remain there until my own final breath…

You know the really fucking hard part in the aftermath of her death was not holding/expressing my grief as cleanly as possible…I have good internal housekeeping as a longstanding psychotherapist…no, the hardest thing was remaining honest and congruent at the funeral….my mother had a good death and I was in a state of rapture around having actually really met her in her final breath…and…at the funeral… others…working/middle-class northerners….many of them simply could not understand me in my reaction…some were silently hostile…I looked in the mirror and saw someone radiant and joyful…felt myself to be this inside…I had met my mum…

I fear death. Although I have managed a deepish realisation in my meditation, I do not know what it would be like casting the lower vehicles off permanently like the lower stages of a Saturn V moonrocket newly out of the ionosphere….I fear the unknown because it is unknown…not as a state but as a permanency….and I intend to lie on my deathbed knowing that i have loved well.

Thanx for reading this. Jon x

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Re: My mother died in my arms...

HummingBird said Jan 19, 10:04 AM:

Precious sharing, thank you Tantricksta
walked with you as I read your frank, open words
Wishing you ever growing awareness
so when your time comes, as it surely will
you feel you have lived fully and are prepared

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Re: My mother died in my arms...

Gemstar said Jan 19, 10:26 AM:

Thank you for sharing your journey here with us. It touched me deeply. Both of my parents passed away last year - my Dad's passing anniversary is in a few days. I was not given the opportunity (because of distance, and they both deteriorated too fast for me to get there on time) to be with either of them at their passing, and that has been difficult for me to handle. So I am so grateful for you, that you did have the strength, courage, and blessing of being there for your Mom.

Don't be too concerned about the expectations of others, regarding how you do or don't show your grief, or your elation and understanding of the experience you had as your shared your Mom's final moments. I've learned over the past year that grief, missing them, and the many emotions that arise, sometimes out of nowhere, are all part of what keeps us connected to them, and at the same time allows us to accept our own impermanence as a physical being.

Allow the tears and emotions to flow if, and when, they come - we all handle this differently, and there is no hard and fast rule of how long it should take you to find “normal” in your life. You will recognize it when it comes, and you'll always remember her in the manner most appropriate for you.

Blessings and Peace,

Gem

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Re: My mother died in my arms...

Diosa said Jan 19, 12:40 PM:

What an amazing journey for both of you. I was rivoted to the words as they so fully expressed your feelings with great intensity. I felt a part of your process.

I walked the cancer journey with my Grandmother.  I am so grateful to have been able to be with her along with my sister. Her transition allowed my sister and I to bond closer at the heart than ever before.

One day at the grocery store, I found a sympathy card that really resonated with me so I bought it for myself. I keep it on my wall.

It says:

Perhaps they are not the stars, but rather openings in Heaven where the love of our lost ones shines down to let us know they are with us.

I send you love and am grateful to have had the opportunity to read your reflections.

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Re: My mother died in my arms...

HummingBird said Jan 20, 12:03 AM:

… this journey of togetherness… thank you

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Re: My mother died in my arms...

Leah said Jan 21, 5:04 PM:

I have to admit when I first read Jon's post, I felt  his courage and openess to share his personal heartfelt journey, it resonated like an arrow, straight to the core of my heart….I was overwhelmed with tears and emotion… We all deal with the experience in our individual ways…it teaches us so much about life and about meaning and purpose.

We ask ourselves why in the complexity surrounding loss and grief and ,as I am now, when it feels there is a sense of 'safety' to allow raw feelings to re-emerge that just are sleeping… …is it cathartic ..does it allow a sense a emotional freedom..or does it somehow permeate a once traumatic memory ……… bear with me as I write.

Today, I  share a little of my story and let the 'pen' tell what it wills me to release…my mother after a long 9 months of treatment and invasive chemotherapy had little strength , to continue to battle the all consuming cancer that had pervaded her, once vital body and she took her very last breath, lying together, as one, next to me, in her own bed, at home, holding hy hand..   It's the emotion I would like to share with you all, that I still feel now,12 yrs on. I somehow knew in that dawning light the time had come to let her go,

I pleaded with God  countless times through the long night , that he couldn't have her yet….. in a quiet voice I spoke out loud in this space of darkness. I had no idea what lay ahead… The more I struggled to find a peace, the more I saw the struggle surrounding her. I knew my mum's needed to hear my words of release and I enveloped her with all my love as she was now,ready to leave this earthly plane. It was her time to have etertnal peace. It's as if, the unconditional love that this beautiful woman's heart had always given to me .I now, could give her, from the depths of my own heart  ( ……My mum gave me a plaque to hang in my bedroom when I was all but, five years old, it read…” you did not grow under my heart…but, in it” . I was seven days old when my parents and I became a family.)

The fear I felt those minutes before her final passing, was replaced with a feeling of grace that can not be described in words…I looked at my mum's face,ther was no sign of suffering, her skin was smooth and it glowed. I saw her aura that was now, pure beauty. … she had gone to the eternal love of the Unseen.

I miss her more than life itself somedays…….

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Re: My mother died in my arms...

Enlightened.thinker said May 11, 4:12 AM:

This was beautifully written Jon. Riveting. A deep and intensely personal share that held me in the palm of your hand.

Some relationships can be summed up in precise moments that offer us a deeper knowing.
I thank you for your share. It was beautiful.

Bowing…

Aley

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Re: My mother died in my arms...

HummingBird said May 12, 10:10 PM:

Leah, thank you for this precious gift of your journey
You went through such a painful time
and found your way to peace with her passing

aah and you miss her…
how one can miss the presence of our loved ones who will never return as we once knew them!
Its not about healing
- more about how to learn to travel with this new companion
which has entered your life; the loss of a beloved

love
HummingBird

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Re: My mother died in my arms...

ohmsmom said May 11, 4:48 AM:

thank you for sharing this here. shared with such honesty and grace, it really touches my heart.

love to you,

shirley

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Re: My mother died in my arms...

Ane Lis said May 12, 12:13 PM:

This was a very touching story and I came to think about my mothers death five years ago. I was very close to my mother and her leaving became very traumatic for me. She had some troubles with her arms , felt so strangly tired, and we related it to the heart, but there wasn´t any understanding of this from her doctor. I followed her to many examinations with different doctors. One said that she had the permission to be tired !!!??? Another one gave her tablets for inflammation in her arms ?? She had a little stroke three years before she died, got tablets for enhanced blood pressure, tablets for blood-dilution… But no further explanation of her heart !! One day, she became sick. We all thought it was a gastric flu, and she usually got very sick of this sort, and she was susceptible to this too and no alarm bell rang ! I stayed with her, helped her, carried a baby-sitter so I could hear her whenever I was in another floor. I had been away for an hour or so, went down and found her dead in her bed. In a way I am standing by her bed still !! Every thing went so fast. I had to try resuscitation and did everything wrong. I had to call for the ambulance. I had to find my brother, and I had to think about my father who sat in his wheelchair in another room. Two ambulances arrived, seven assistents, doctors whatever… This shock….. they ascertained that mother was dead and left us. We didn´t know what to do. In the evening we contacted the firm for undertakers and they laid her in a coffin. I didn´t manage to sit by her, I didn´manage to look at the coffin. One day earlier she was walking around in the same room. I have very difficult with the feeling of guilt. I din´t call the doctor… I didn´t hold her hand !

When I read your story Jon I just could feel a sort of envy. You managed to stay by your mother, follow her trough this gate into another dimension. What a great thing to do and to remember..
But sometimes life offers us tasks that becomes too difficult to handle.

You also mention your appearance in your mothers funeral. Despite the difference in our stories i too was strangly enough very calm in my mothers funeral. i think it was because of the shock, it was very unreal, and I also inherited the responsibility of my father who is 100 % disabled by Multippel Sklerosis. I had to lead him through his loss and grieving, and I have. My own grief follows me still and will always…..

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Re: My mother died in my arms...

HummingBird said May 12, 10:02 PM:

Dear Ane Lis
Thank you brave heart for sharing your deep loss and pain with us.
You are still struggling with so much…
wishing things could have been different
wishing your mother could have been diagnosed by doctors and saved from her pending death.
…wishing you and others had done more at each turn of events
Now you have your father depending on you
and you are still trying so hard!
In a sense you have been feeling so much for others
you have hardly had the time to experience your own feelings…

Love have you read the post in this pod:
the stages of Bereavement?
Many find this helpful.

Ane Lis
the one feeling I am left with after reading your post is
how fortunate both your parents were having you
so caring and loving you have been for both of them
they certainly have been aware of this
in their troubled times

We all walk our paths alone
but not all are fortunate enough to experience this love you have in your heart

Love, at some time you may wish to lay down the burden you carry
of feelings that you aren't enough

much love to you on your precious journey

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Re: My mother died in my arms...

Julia said May 12, 5:12 PM:

THis is beautiful Jon. TY for sharing it. I only hope that someone would love me enough to do that for me when it is my time. What a wonderful way to pass into the next dimension…you are an amazing person Jon in so many ways. xox

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My mother died in my arms...

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