On Love, Death, and Life’s Final Stage
Notes after the last curtain falls
November was a horrendous month for me. My mom died suddenly on Veteran’s Day. Eighty-nine years old with Alzheimer’s, but otherwise in stable health. She lost, in small stages, her ability to walk, to read, and for the last five years, the ability to speak. Her death was expected eventually, but came as a numbing shock all the same. My dad followed her three days later, a random point in his long, slow, steady decline. The three days between their deaths and my knowledge that neither knew anything about the other’s last days and years has been both mystical and reassuring in a “presence greater than us” kind of way. My clergy called it a blessing and a sign that their souls left together for reasons best known to our Maker. I took comfort from that comment as they had led separate lives these past forty years.
My mom loved to talk. She befriended most everyone she met. She would strike up a conversation with anyone who sat next to her on a bus, a train, or an airplane. She brought home stray people from all walks of life; some at the top of their game and some just struggling to get by. Back then, I thought it somewhat awkward, but in retrospect, I learned about the great diverse universe of people from the comfort of our dinner table. Those were the days before Hatebook, Google, and Amazonian amounts of data compromised our sense of security and most importantly, our sense of trust.
When you break bread with someone or enjoy their hospitality in their tent, it is much harder to demonize or dehumanize that person into a digital abstract point of hate. Road rage evolved after individuals left the self-contained bubble of their automobile, protected by an armor of steel and glass, and brought their fringe behavior out in the open. Social media is the new bubble of human isolation that allows anonymous bullying to occur through the perceived armor of distance and digital disconnect. Neither provides invincibility against pain or death for its victims.
Shake hands, share bread, look someone in the eye from mere inches away and our human frailty steps to the forefront. Mutual trust is needed to escape the uncertainty of life and assuage the inevitability of death. Proximity reveals the commonality of human experience. Birth, life, and death are our common bonds. I am reminded of the simple message of the book Three Cups of Tea: sit down with someone over food and drink, walk in their shoes before forming opinions, and only say nice things. My mother would have supported that message. We are all foreign, different, and a stranger until we sit with and learn about another person up close.
And so, my formative years were filled with strangers of all shapes and sizes and I went off into a sales career, knocking on doors, because I was thrilled at the thought of being paid to be curious and explore who and what waited behind any given door.
These memories stick with me. They show me the ways we humans are more similar than dissimilar. They launched me into the world ready to meet, greet, and befriend a wide array of people. Kindness and our commonality were and are the entry points of admission to friendship.
When my mom lost her ability to walk and then later, lost her ability to speak, her world changed. Her friends deserted her. She became that stranger in their midst, someone to be feared. They could only remember what was; a woman known for her gift of gab, her frequent day-long hikes, her writings that included a monthly newsletter for her walking club, and her work at a startup magazine. They could not adapt to or fit within her new reality.
Yet, the people who cared for her at the nursing home loved her and cared for her deeply. They accepted her as she was. They developed nicknames and titles for her like “my lovely” and “my beauty,” and they became her fan club and rallied around her. I felt good being challenged by the one caretaker who only worked on Sundays, the one day of the week I rarely visited. Only after I proved myself worthy, did she welcome me into her protective circle of Sunday visitors of “my Rita,” as she called my mom. That’s all any of us really craves, right? To feel belonging within our human family.
My mother’s caretakers and I shared a mutual love and respect for this woman, my mom, whose personality and calmness surfaced above the disease that robbed her of her former self. Mom was exposed to religions that were not her own and meals that were not of her making. The place where she lived looked like the United Nations of the past, but functioned like a large extended family of care and concern for all within its gates.
It’s just a few months after my parents have passed. I’m traveling on an Amtrak train with my young granddaughter to see the Ruth Bader Ginsburg exhibit in Philadelphia. The Notorious RBG is the living embodiment of what her great-grandma might have been.
In Newark, a woman boards the train who lights up the car with her banter and friendliness. She is a too happy stranger who causes some uneasiness in the other riders. They bury their faces in their newspapers. She joins my granddaughter and me. Of course, I don’t yet know this woman’s name, but it doesn’t take us long to become friends. She’s an Amtrak first-timer going to visit her daughter in our nation’s capitol. We share a cup of tea and learn about our mutual devastating losses: my parents and her husband. We both recognize the importance of connection. That which we share in common becomes more binding than that which is superficially different.
My granddaughter takes all this in stride and invites her to tour the train cars with us. We delight in the end-to-end adventure of cars and lives in forward motion even as we scamper back and forth. Within minutes, we are some eight adults and one young child in the cafe car. Most notable in common is our gray hair except for the conductor who lifts his cap to show off his bald head, and then one other outlier who shyly admits that she colors her hair (but has not fully eliminated the streaks of gray). I remember most the laughter and the sweet smiles on everyone’s face and I am reminded of my mother and the lessons learned:
The fearlessness of face-to-face interaction.
The joy of friendships far, wide, and deep.
The sorrow of loss and the sweet memories left in their absence.
Equality. We are all human even if we are not all humane.
My true colors were established long ago in an inclusive childhood similar to my granddaughter’s. We are always on stage, audience or not. And before we go, we all have the opportunity to open our lives to wonder and joy with something as simple as a smile or an outstretched hand of welcome.
