Monthly Archives: November 2013

“The worst of it is over now,

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kensal angel
Kensal Green (c) carole craig
“The worst of it is over now, and I can’t say that I am glad.   Amy Hempel, BG, SL TOG, INC, CONT, REP 

I don’t know how to grieve. Perhaps I lost the knowledge when my daughter was very ill and there were times, many times, when it wasn’t clear if she would live or die.  I would come back from the hospital, lie on the bed, and wrap my arms around the dog.  After awhile, I would get up and go on with the inconsequential tasks of living. I believed, egotistically, and probably erroneously, that if I went down into the pit, fell into the abyss, if I didn’t keep going, my daughter wouldn’t either.

With my mother it is different, of course.  My daughter lived, my mother died.  Since her death I’ve filled time with the things to be done: papers to find, papers to sign; her cremation and her wake (yes, in that order),  papers to send, papers to examine, her garden to save, her house to repair, her memorial to plan, her plants to water, her friends to find the right words for. “It was a good, long life, a triumph,” I say.  “She was herself until the very end.”

It is not that I don’t recognise that something is wrong.   I talk too much. I don’t call my friends. I say the stupid things and have to apologise often.   I take the dogs on the short walks only.  I can’t sleep.  I don’t play with the cat. I can’t clean my mother’s room. I sleep too much. I can’t clean my own room.  I almost remember my dreams.   The basement is full of dust.  I don’t cry.

I hoped the Day of the Dead might me teach something.  In the Mission,   people whose faces have been painted white like sugar skulls follow Choc Mool.  When the line arrives at the square, brimming with its alters, its photographs, its candles, it as though some darkness has been conquered, the zombies smothered in a blanket of love. Next year, I think, maybe, I can put something there for my mother there.

But I don’t feel any different and I get on with the jobs.

There is a meeting to plan my mother’s memorial.  We discuss the tickets and who will perform.  What is needed and how to get it.  These are intelligent, competent people.  They loved her. She will enjoy her memorial and I can leave it in their hands.  When the meeting is over I walk out into strange, dark Berkeley and realise that I have now done everything for my mother I had to do.  There is nothing left.  For the first time I am profoundly empty. I am bereft.

Hold on to my hand…

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Holyhock (c) Carole Craig

Hold on to my hand
even when I have gone away from you.  – Pueblo –

My mother liked to live in denial and found life comfortable there.  There were no final farewells from her, no imparting of the wisdom earned by  98 years of hard graft. Ten days before she died, when she was bed bound but still afraid of falling, she insisted that if I would just let her get up and exercise,  ‘just walk in front of the house’, she would be fine.

We couldn’t live in denial with her.  My daughter, her dearest friends, and I all knew what was coming.  The hospice nurse told us.  The nurse, a tall man of  indefatigable good humour and a love of Impressionist art, took her blood pressure and listened to her heart one afternoon and said it won’t be long now, perhaps hours, at most days.  I had grown so used to the way things were: the sanctuary of  the hospice, the visits and the visitors, leaving after dark and walking along Castro Street with its blast of libido driven life force.  The news came like a bucket of ice.

A friend was there to chant Buddhist prayers; she changed to gospel songs and had a lovely voice.  I emailed some others, another emailed me and three of us did vigil by the bed. We held her hand, rubbed her feet, stroked her hair and told her it was okay to leave.  We went through the list of everyone  she loved and told her the ways in which they would be all right.  I called my daughter and held the phone up to my mother’s ear. Late evening we were hungry and had a small feast of my mother’s favourite food.  We sang some more and sometimes I cried.

The evening nurse found my mother improved and we decided it could be days, perhaps even weeks, and everyone else went home.  I sat by the bed and read to her:  poems and prayers from all the religions I could find  — Hindu, Sufi, the Lords Prayer, some Psalms, African, Native American.  I slept on the floor wrapped in a comforter.

In the morning her breathing sounded like an ailing machine.  Others came back and a fourth person joined the vigil.  We touched her, held her hand, sang, told stories and laughed until late evening.  Someone found Pete Seeger’s version of How Can I Keep from Singing and played it.  I think it was the last song she heard.

Her grip on living was so strong, so firm, we thought that she would stay through another night, so only two of were there.  Half an hour before midnight a Filipino nurse came in.  He felt her feet.  She was growing cold; it was staring.  Open the window, he said, turn on a light and don’t let your tears touch her. At midnight, my daughter rang.  She was telling my mother how much she loved when my mother’s breathing stopped.

A nurse,  bless her,  found a large purple hydrangea – I don’t know where at two am in the dark – and put it in my mother’s white, folded hands.

Hold on to what is good
even if it is a handful of earth.

Hold on to what you believe
even when it is a tree that stands by itself.

Hold on to what you must do
even when it is a long way from here.

Hold on to life
even when it is easier to let go.

Hold on to my hand
even when I have gone away from you.

– Pueblo –