The Dance

Holding you, I held everything
-Garth Brooks

I took today off of work and spent it with my Baby Girl. A lazy mother-daughter day after her return from studying abroad. We drove to a town about half an hour away--a nice drive down back country roads. Then we wandered through shops on Main Street in this small town, mostly antique shops and gift shops. We found a nice little restaurant for lunch. Then we headed closer to home, to a shopping area where we had appointments at a local spa for massages. We do that every once in a while...go for massages. When I went into the massage room, the masseuse asked me if I wanted any aromatic oils with my massage. I told her that was fine as long as it wasn't lavender. I associate lavender with my mother dying. The hospice nurses told her it was calming and she had her bedroom scented with it. So we stayed away from the lavender and just as I began to relax under the hands of the masseuse, a piano version of "The Dance" started to play through their piped-in music. And that song, more than anything, reminds me of my mother dying.

Sometimes, if I'm tired and missing her, it makes me cry when I hear it.

My mother was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in the fall of 2001. My dad noticed she was looking jaundiced and so she went to the doctor. They referred her for further tests. I was with her at the appointment when they gave her the news. It was one of the few times in my life I ever saw my mother cry.

Pancreatic cancer is a quick cancer--and it's untreatable. Doctors don't even bother. The only thing they can do involves re-routing your whole insides and they don't usually do that unless (they said) you have something extreme you're shooting for like the wedding of your only child. So instead they set my mother up with folks from hospice who would work with her to manage her pain and make her as comfortable as possible. My mother was adamant about wanting to die at home. Mostly, I think, so she could be with her family.

My sisters deserve most of the credit for taking care of her. I was dealing with my own difficulties at the time and couldn't be there physically or emotionally for her--or them--like I wanted to. When I was at my parents, I let my girls be there as much or little as they needed to be. My older girls weren't very comfortable with all that was going on. My youngest seemed to need to be there a lot. I don't know if she needed to be where I was, or needed to be near her Grandma, but she was there a lot. Somewhere in the middle of all that was going on, I had one of the premonitions I have from time to time...this one was that my mother was going to die in my arms. There's no good or bad or emotion attached to these premonitions. They just are. They're an overwhelming sense of already being in the situation and I recognize them for what they are.

Things degenerated for my mom over the coming weeks and months and Christmas was especially hard for everyone. She insisted on going to the Christmas Eve party at my aunt's that we always went to and we staggered everyone's time with her so she wouldn't get tired. Most of the cousins and relatives knew it was their last time with her. One night in January I had been over there and things were particularly bad for her and as I drove home, a part of me worried that she might go in the night when I wasn't there, and at the same time, feeling this wasn't the end if I wasn't there to hold her.

I went back the next day, and my Baby Girl was with me. All of my immediate family was at the house and so was one of my aunts. My sister said Mom had had a really bad night and the hospice folks said Mom was really close to the end. My sister and I took turns sitting with Mom. My sister was laying with her and then I just knew it was time. I asked her to let me lay with Mom. She got up and I lay down next to Mom. I slid one arm under her and then cradled her in my arms telling her over and over it was okay. Mom had been heavily sedated with morphine for days but suddenly she started to try to speak. Something very deep within her was trying to get words out and my sister, who is closest to Mom of all of us, intuitively knew what she wanted. "She wants us all in here."

She went out of the bedroom long enough to get our dad and the rest of our siblings. I continued to cradle Mom and they all lay their hands on her. She could not hear us--she had been deaf her whole life--and even so she was heavily sedated. But I know she could feel us all holding her. Mom's breath became very slow and very ragged. It is a very powerful thing to hold someone as they breathe their last breath, as the life goes out of them. Especially when that person is someone you love. It's a feeling I still carry with me. But just as firmly as I believe babies should not be left alone, I believe our elderly should not die alone. As traumatic as it was (and still is) for all of us to lose Mom like that, there could not be a more loving way for her to end her life--being held by the people she loved the most. When I had to tell my aunt and Baby Girl that Mom was gone, the three of us just stood in a hug for the longest time. It was almost 3 months to the day of her diagnosis.

She was a fantastic mother. She loved us all unconditionally. She was fun and funny. She spent time with us and we loved spending time with her. She was tiny--we called her "Little Mom" and her head stone says "Our Beloved Little Mom" -- but there was nothing tiny about her spirit. She overcame her disability beautifully. She was strong, determined, and a phenomenal role model for us. To this day, all four of us siblings miss her terribly and struggle with our loss. I really do feel that "holding her, I held everything." I have a photograph of her on my desk at work, of her in the house she grew up in, with that line inscribed below her picture. I treasure that photograph....

For a moment all the world was right
How could I have known you'd ever say goodbye
And now I'm glad I didn't know
The way it all would end the way it all would go
Our lives are better left to chance I could have missed the pain
But I'd of had to miss The Dance

Love you, Mama