
Waiting for Death to Rescue the Dying
“…One short sleep past, we wake eternally. And death shall be no more;…” from John Donne’s Holy Sonnets — Death Be Not Proud
We sit together on the velvet sofa in the living room, my sisters and I. It’s the house my parents brought me home to as a baby. I’m praying for peace and comfort for my Mother who is propped up in her bed with the plush quilted headboard behind her and framed pictures of family all around.
The sofa’s lime green. It’s too garish for Mother’s stately house, but in thirty years she never changed it. It’s the one across from the wood burning fireplace, next to where the ten foot tall Christmas tree stands when DeDe spends hours erecting and enhancing it. We’re on the sofa we all piled on at Christmas with our little children and Nanny waiting to tear into presents and see what Santa brought. Now it’s where we wait when we leave Mother’s bedside.
For days, Mother’s head is back, her mouth is open, when her morphine and ointments are keeping panic and anxiety at bay. But when her eyes pop open, her determination takes over and she’s climbing out of that king size bed and onto her spindly legs.
I feel like I’m running under water as I take long steps to her side and become locked in an arm wrestling match. “Mother, you can’t get up! Stay there. … Nurse! DeDe! Andrea! Somebody, we need help!” They come running — the ones who have lived in her house from the beginning and tended to her every need.
A frail dying woman, Mother is Strong. Always a lady, yet she’s feisty. Tilting at windmills. Fighting for her life against demons only she sees. With help she is subdued.
Nurses tell us she is in her final days. Digestive track is taking in next to nothing and putting out the same. The night nurses juggle her medicine to keep her comfortable, yet alive, until her body makes the final decision to release her.
We’re told her skin will get modeled. Her fever will go up. We’ll hear a “death rattle in her lungs.”
That’s happening, and “It’s all as it should be,” they tell us and I want to jump up and yell No! As it should be, Mother should be standing at the terracotta counter in the kitchen, the one they put in after the fire when we were in elementary school. She should be making bread, or packing fried chicken for us to go to the lake. Italian music should be blasting through the house while spaghetti bubbles on the stove. And my Daddy should be singing and sipping wine at her side, not lying in his grave.
Death rattle or no. All is Not as it should be. Damn the death rattle. Where is life going?
And yet, I wait for Death to rescue my dying mother. I want her to wake eternally, and death will be no more. Until then, my mind freewheels through the good times, and I pray hers does, too.

Carol McClain Craver
Thank you so much to those who clap. It feels like a pat on the back. Words and gestures are small, but they pull our spirits together. Kindred spirits are our greatest gifts. Click the link below SHADOW OF THE FINAL STORM to read more about it. — Carol


