LOSING MOM - Part 11
“I love you,” Mom whispered as I bent down to give her a kiss while we waited for the elevator to arrive.
“I love you, too, Mom. I’ll see you in just a bit.”
Squeezing her gnarled hand as it gripped the blanket pulled tightly up against her chest, I stepped back from the stretcher, forcing a smile to push back my tears. Her cloudy blue eyes, though heavy with fatigue, looked briefly into mine with an intensity that made me lean quickly back over to give her another kiss.
“Don’t worry...Lib’s going with you," I reassured her. "Sal and I will be right behind. Next time I see you we’ll all be back in Perrysburg!”
She nodded slightly and closed her eyes just as the elevator doors opened. I stepped aside to let the EMT’s push the stretcher past, then gave Lib’s arm an encouraging pat as she followed behind.
Watching the doors slide shut, I stood for a moment lost in thought. I was remembering another time when I’d seen a similar look to the one I’d just shared with Mom; the last time I’d kissed my dad goodbye.
He’d been sitting in a wheelchair in the hospital, finally out of intensive care after undergoing emergency surgery to remove a blood clot, and was waiting to be taken to his new room. His hospital gown was loose around his neck and shoulders, his skin pale and freckled. Seeing my dad so fragile broke my heart, but he was upbeat and smiling which was a relief after the past few worry-filled days.
I was on my way home to Connecticut after having been in Ohio to help Mom while Dad was in the ICU, and had just bent down to give him a kiss goodbye. As he’d reached up to give me a hug, his pale blue eyes caught my own, and something in his look gave me pause. Something so fleeting I easily could have imagined it, and in fact, kept telling myself that I had as I hugged him one last time before turning away.
He’s fine, I said to myself, walking down the hall toward the elevators. He’s out of the woods, going home any day. He was just saying goodbye, Peggy, stop making something out of nothing.
But I guess I hadn’t been making something out of nothing, because a couple of days later, while still in the hospital, Dad died from a sudden heart attack.
Even now, some twenty odd years after the fact, I can still see that look he gave me. Maybe he had some sort of inner knowing that he wouldn’t see me again, that this goodbye was a big one. In hindsight, it was almost as if he had been saying, ‘Pay attention, Peg! Look at me! This is important!’
And though the circumstances with Mom were quite different, I promised myself, as I walked out of the hospital for the last time, that I would make sure to pay attention. That I would be as fully present as I possibly could in whatever moments I had left with her.
But in order to have any more moments with her, I had to be with her, so hurrying to my car I made a mental checklist of the things I was going to pick up at her apartment before heading over to Hospice. We had decided earlier that Lib would go with Mom in the ambulance, I would go to the apartment, and Sal would head to Walgreens to pick up the poster of ‘Mom’s View.”
Although, I have to admit, even though it had been my idea for Lib to go with Mom, I was feeling a bit jealous that she was in the ambulance and I wasn’t. What if Mom died on the way? What if that look she’d given me was, in fact, her way of saying goodbye? What if I never saw her again?
What if. What if. What if.
The closer I got to the apartment, the more worried I became that Mom might actually die without me. In an ambulance. On her way to Hospice. With just Libby.
That wasn’t how I pictured it at all! In my mind, we were all together, Sal, Lib and me sitting lovingly by Mom’s bedside as she peacefully drew her last breath.
And though I’m pretty embarrassed to admit this because I realize it’s taking sibling rivalry to a ridiculous level, but I wasn’t sure my inner-middle-child could handle it if one of my sisters got to be with Mom at the end, and not me.
Even worse, what if they were both there, and I wasn’t?
As the middle daughter of three girls, I had often felt like the odd one out when we were growing up. For instance, Sal and Lib both had Elizabeth in their names, but I didn’t. Their bedrooms were on one side of the hall, mine was on the other, next to our parents. They sat next to each other on one side of the dining room table, while I sat alone on the other side.
Silly things, I know, but important enough back then to imbed in my psyche a real fear that I was somehow separate from my sisters. That they might share things that I wasn’t part of.
And if somehow one or both of them were with Mom when she died, and I wasn't, would that mean she somehow loved them more? That she felt safer to let go with them than with me?
My inner child was terrified.
So with all these crazy thoughts swirling through my head, a sense of urgency to get back to Mom as quickly as I could took hold, and I pulled into Swan Creek maybe a little faster than I should. Grateful to see a parking spot right near the main entrance, I quickly parked and then walked briskly through the sliding doors to the lobby.
Oh no! I realized too late that it was almost 5pm when nearly every resident was making their way to the dining room for dinner. The lobby was a sea of grey hair all heading in the same direction. Some were in wheelchairs, others with canes, but the vast majority were pushing walkers, which they parked side by side across from the dining room entrance, like so many cars in a parking lot.
And just like cars, they were all a little different. Some big, some small. Some had baskets, others had name cards hanging from the handle bars. Red, green, blue, black…no two were alike, but they all looked the same.
Kind of like the people who owned them.
When Mom had moved in the year before, she had scoffed at the idea of needing a walker, taking great pride in the fact that she could still get around well enough on her own.
“Oh, I don’t need one of those, yet,” I overheard her tell a neighbor, just after she’d moved in.
“Give it a month, dear” the neighbor replied. “Everyone gets one once they move here.”
And though I can’t say for sure, I don’t think it took more than a month, maybe two, before Mom became the proud owner of a metallic maroon walker, with hand brakes and a pull down seat she could sit on if need be.
Mom loved that pint-sized walker the way I remember loving my first Schwinn bicycle, proudly and possessively.
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I was buzzing with nervous energy as I weaved through the throng of dinner-goers, my mind more focused on where I wanted to be than where I actually was. Maybe there was something in my aura that kept people from approaching me, but somehow I made it to the elevator and up to Mom’s apartment without being sidetracked by any of her well-meaning friends.
It was pretty hard to be in the midst of them all without feeling Mom's absence. Like she had somehow drawn the short straw, so had to step out of the game, while everyone else got to keep playing.
But I guess that's pretty much life, though, right? Eventually we all end up with the short straw.
Anyway, wasting no time, I grabbed a bag from the hall closet and started putting things in; her favorite nightgowns, a well-loved blanket she kept folded at the end of her bed, some family photos, and, at the last minute, the needlepoint pillow of a great blue heron that Libby had made for her after Dad died.
Ok, I thought to myself, glancing around the quiet apartment. Do I have everything? Jammies, yes. Pictures, yes. Blanket, yes. Anything else? Hmmm…I wonder how Hospice feels about wine?
Deciding it was worth the risk, and might actually be just what the doctor ordered, at least for Sal, Lib and me, I threw a bottle of chardonnay and a corkscrew into the bag. Cocktail hour had always been a big part of my family’s life, and Mom had especially loved her glass of wine when she sat down to watch the 6:30 news every night.
I’m sure we won’t be the first ones to sneak a drink at Hospice, I thought to myself as I headed back out to the car. God knows, if there was ever a time for a drink, this would be it.
Ten minutes later I pulled into the Hospice parking lot, and my heart began thudding hard against my ribs. Despite having been a Hospice volunteer for many years, I had never actually spent any time in an actual Hospice facility, always having visited patients in their homes.
It was a little scary, actually, to think about all that was happening inside those walls. So many people facing the end of their lives. Or the end of the life of someone they loved.
It was even scarier that someone I loved was now inside those walls. And that I had to go in.
The building was low and non-descript, with a main entrance set in the middle of two wings. There was an ambulance parked in front under the awning, and I wondered as I passed by if it was the one that had brought Mom.
A receptionist greeted me with a warm smile when I walked through the door, but my attention immediately fell on an enormous golden retriever sitting in the middle of the hall.
“Oh my goodness!” I crooned, bending down to pat his big head. “Hello! Who are you?”
“That’s Juno,’ the receptionist replied. ‘He volunteers here Monday thru Friday.”
What is it about dogs that's so grounding? As I stroked Juno's long, soft fur I could feel my jangled nerves unwinding, my breath returning to a more normal rhythm. His big, brown eyes looked at me as if to say, 'It's okay, Peg. You're safe with me."
‘He’s a bit of a character,” the receptionist explained, ‘But everyone loves him. He has a heart of gold.”
Giving him one final scratch behind his ears, I stood back up and asked for directions to Mom’s room.
“Sign in here,” the receptionist pointed to a notebook on the counter. “Your mom is in Room 102 which will be down that corridor,’ she pointed to the right, ‘and past the nurse’s station. She’ll be in the second to last room on the left.”
Following her directions I started down the wide corridor. It seemed that all the rooms were on the left, and next to each semi-closed door was a name plate with the patient's first name and a little flower drawn beneath it.
So pretty, I thought, but wow - so sad. So many really sick people and I don’t have any idea who they are. But here I am with them.
I felt like I’d just become a member of some horrible club that no one wants to belong to. Ever.
Certainly not me.
Up ahead there were two women standing in the hall in deep conversation. One appeared to be a nurse, judging by the stethoscope hanging around her neck, while the other I guessed to be a family member. I turned my head as I passed by, trying to give them some privacy, but couldn’t help but overhear the nurse say:
“If you are meant to be there, you will be there.”
Wait, what? Her words reverberated through my brain, and I repeated them to myself as I continued down the hall. If you are meant to be there, you will be there. If you are meant to be there, you will be there.
Could she be saying what I think she’s saying? I wondered. Could it really be that simple?
It had never occurred to me that it wasn’t up to me, or Sal or Lib, to orchestrate who was with Mom when she passed. It had always seemed that we would, of course, be there, holding vigil, no matter how long it took. We'd been through so much together, it felt impossible that we wouldn't be there with her at the end.
Could it possibly be true that it had nothing at all to do with us?
I decided in that moment to trust those words. To trust that I heard them for a reason. I mean, what were the chances that I would be in that particular place, at that particular time, to hear those particular words?
Probably because I really needed to hear them. Or my inner child did.
In any case, we both breathed a deep sigh of relief.
I stopped outside Room 102 and smiled when I saw 'Kay' written on the nameplate, with a little piece of ivy drawn underneath.
Mom always loved ivy.
*Note to Reader: This is a story in progress, so I am sharing it as I write it, as a way to spur me on. If you're interested in following along, here is the link to the others I've written so far. Thanks!