The Night Shift Diary
my mom’s departure, 2014
10/23/14
Entering a sacred space with my mother. I’m home now in my childhood town, where I know the streets like the back of my hand. The mattress on which my mom rests is the same one as thirty years ago. Not much has changed. Except my mom, who was ever present, is leaving.
The idea of my mom never loading the dishwasher again makes me cry. It was her post, rearranging the plates and cups, her endless task. Remembering her in the kitchen, frying a hamburger into oblivion or gently caressing the sink with a Scotch-Brite sponge.
Her drawers are full of unworn white turtlenecks; her jars of Trader Joe’s condiments in the kitchen cabinet will never be opened.
I have these moments where my eyes well with tears.
But at night I am here and awake as she makes her way from this place into the next. I am seeing her crossing over right in front of me. Fading, ever so gracefully and with elegance, leaving this world. She says she will see me again and I believe it.
I hold steady her small body as she navigates to the bathroom with her walker. I wait for her outside the door and call to her, “Everything okay?” I stroke her hair as I never have before; it was always she who did this for me. I retrieve clean underwear, I offer her sips of water, I position her pillows, I coax her through her pills. She is my mom, she gave me life with her body, and I now am charged with guiding this same vessel to the other side. If such a place exists.
All that matters is this time with my mother. I listen for her call at night: I will go. I will be next to her, just like her kitty who sleeps alongside her faithfully. He will be lost, as I will when she is gone.
The classical music we’ve listened to has been so poignant. Mahler, Handel, Finzi, Satie, Ravel. I didn’t know the composer Finzi, but now I will get acquainted. My mom wants one of his pieces played at her memorial. “Ecologue.” I will be a wreck. But I need to hold it together, for my dad, for my mom.
Everyone has been so kind, showering us with food, which is how people show love and care. My mom can’t eat, but my dad and I are working our way through the offerings, becoming satiated with high-calorie pies, casseroles and the soups that neighbors drop off. Our meals are accompanied by red wine to help alleviate our pain.
I must turn off the light now so I rest and can get up if Mom needs me.
10/30/14
Each day on this journey with my mom is its own poignant chapter. We have arrived at the last few pages before the conclusion, nearing the final sentence. The end. Mom loved her books.
Mom is breathing in a morphine-laced sleep, hands folded in a prayerlike position with her ever-present Kleenex clutched between her fingers like a rosary. Almost as if she were waiting for someone to come — an ancestor or angel perhaps? — and deliver her from here, out of the old bed, to a clean, new, soft place where there is no pain.
Over the past weeks, I have joked with her, reminisced. We’ve looked at People magazine while she sat on the commode, waiting for something to happen. Her poor bowels are a wreck. She is apologizing and saying “please” and “thank you” in a weak, soft voice. It breaks my heart. Then she said she was afraid she wasn’t “being very brave,” trying not to impose on us, her lifelong way.
My brother — who left earlier — was incredible. I felt as if he and I were one, seamless in taking care of our mother. We learned to anticipate her needs as well as each other’s. He brought me coffee when I was helping Mom with the personal things (as only a daughter can do) and spent hours sitting with her, showing her pictures, talking with her about her grandchildren, doing laundry, helping her up when I napped.
My dad has been retreating into his own routine more and more, and it seems his hearing is worse and worse. Perhaps it is deliberate. He cannot hear the phone when it is the doctor, or me. When I tell him repeatedly the last sense to go is hearing — so “stop talking so loudly about burial arrangements” right over her head — he’s chastened. But overall he is okay and will be, I think. He is eminently practical, meeting with friends who are widowers, planning trips to visit grandkids; he may even get a dog, he states. I worry about him, but I think he will manage.
In two weeks my mom has changed drastically. The first week, she was looking at mail with me, reviewing songs she likes, trying to cheer me up, making jokes, entertaining visitors and feigning polite interest in conversation even when tired. Now she is a frail little sparrow, resting against her “husband” pillow, brow knit intensely, unable to talk anymore, opening her small mouth to receive the moistened sponge, then falling back into her labored breathing.
I want her to go while I am here, go before it gets worse, while it is still October, the most beautiful month of the year in New England. October was when she had some of the best times in life; in the fall she went to Smith College and lived in the Happy Valley and had her dear friends Hermine and Maisie, and met my dad, and studied art history and English and picnicked next to Paradise falls on the college campus beneath the brilliantly colored trees.
“Go, Momma,” I keep telling her, “it is okay — you don’t need to hold on anymore. We will see you again. I will be in the same place as you someday and you will wait for me.” I don’t believe in God, but we don’t know everything and in that mystery there is some hope — we will all feel the love from those who have come before us and those who will follow.
Sleep, Mom, I will miss you incredibly. There is no other like our mother. I am so lucky I had you this long and so lucky you were mine.
11/2/14
She is gone. The cat sits in the window expectantly. The room is quiet, the bed stripped. The cat’s meows, plaintive. What a weekend. My brother left three days ago, understandably, to go take care of his family and be there for Halloween with the kids. My dad and I encouraged him to do so. Mom slowed down and shut her eyes for good soon after. The ministrations of the hospice nurse were so kind and compassionate, and Mom fell further and further into a dark and small space, receding into her pillow. Her body and face took on that corpse-like demeanor. I felt her spirit had left.
Those last few hours she breathed hard and it seemed she tried to keep going, her heart was so quick in her chest. I lay next to her the first night, her rapid breathing and feverish brow keeping me watchful and only dozing. The morning nurse came and helped me change and position her. She was incontinent and losing all her fluids, the nurse said. This is part of the letting go.
In the afternoon, Mary, the home-care aide arrived, and gave her her last sponge bath. She gently washed her, applying lotion and powder to her body so painfully thin and vulnerable. She told me about her own mother who had died earlier this year, and I knew she treated my mom the way she would treat her own: with utmost respect and care.
Then, the night before she died, Mom seemed restless. It was just the two of us, for twelve hours or so, on our own. Her breaths were more forced and her skin became blotchy. I worried she was in pain even with her medications; I called hospice in the middle of the night for guidance. I felt all alone, just me and my dying mother. My dad was snoring — he couldn’t bear to see the way she was now and hadn’t really entered the room to do more than ask me how she was in two days — and my brother was far away.
I was the administrator of the pain medicine, the by-default night nurse, and I felt conflicted. I wanted to give her relief so she would slip away without pain, but I followed the instructions of the hospice nurse I had called: a drop on the tongue. I did as best I could in the wee hours when she was hovering: I gave her more medicine at one in the morning, and then I was supposed to get up at five and do it again. I thought of sleeping next to her, but I was exhausted and frankly her countenance scared me. The November rain started.
My mother as I knew her was not there.
I retreated to my bedroom down the hall and slept very fitfully, setting my alarm for five. When I woke, the house was still. I could feel she was gone. I got up, and it was true.
The cat, who had been constantly at her side, was in the hall.
She lay waxy against the pillow. I kissed her head, but the mom I knew was somewhere else. My dad was sleeping and I decided not to bother him so early; he needed sleep too. I called the nurse to come to the house to pronounce her dead. I spoke with the funeral home. My dad asked if he could remain on the third floor when they came to collect her, the two very professional gentlemen from Bell-O’Dea. I watched as they took her tiny body out on a stretcher, zipped up in a bag, as gently and discreetly as they could. I patted her frame as she went through the door, accompanied by her wedding ring and watch, for the very last time . . .
She had died at home, as she had vowed she would for many years, and left “feet first.” Considerate as always, she died the day before my dad’s birthday, November 3rd. She would never want his day to be marred by being sad about her.
2024
Ten years later, I wear her wedding ring. My dad is gone now too.
I was so lucky to have them both, to be the child of such loving parents.
© Margaret Kramer 2024
