adchick

I watched my mother die a week ago.

She fell down a flight of stairs, broke her neck, and they didn’t get her heart started quickly enough.

A respirator is no way to live.  But it did buy us some time.

Time to wrap ourselves around the reality. Time to get her 95 year old mother into the Trauma Center to say goodbye. Time to get the minister in from their tiny church almost two hours away. As the machines were turned off, we held hands as the Pastor sang Amazing Grace. As he finished, she took her last breath. It couldn’t have been choreographed any better.

I’m an only child, so there is no one else to pinch hit.  In the emotional haze, I heard stuff like:  ”Do you think your mother would like this casket?  I don’t know about the gray, this deep brown one is pretty and would look good with her dress.” “What sort of jewelry are they wearing in Heaven?”  ”We’ll need you to bring some undergarments for your mother.” Really?  Like she needs underwear, hose and a bra NOW? In my version of heaven, there will be NO bras, and certainly no hose.

These are devout, rural, “guns and religion” people. I always joked about how I had to have been adopted because I am so different from my mother. Yet, she was a creative person in her own way: arts & crafts, volunteering at a local nursing home, active in her church. She loved me without question, even when I made some poor decisions and was not always as respectful to her as I might have been.  My grandmother, 95,  has been a rock solid, stoic presence. When I grow up, I want to be  just like her.

The small town funeral features regular drop-offs of a wide range of foods with mailing labels attached to the container in order to find its way back, eventually, to the presenter. There were rolls, cheese balls, pies, soups, salads, vegetable trays, hams and cheeses, cakes, and chips. I have never seen so much fried chicken in one place.

People came in, took a seat, made small chat, asked how it happened, speculated about this and that, then, another knock on the door. The first group leaves, the new folks find a seat and the same round of chat begins again. “I can tell you’re her daughter, you look just like her.”

I’m not sure she really understood what I do for a living as it is so very far from her reality. But I think she was proud of me. And I’ll try not to screw that up.