Sitting Beside Our Loved Ones as They Pass Away

The first time I sat beside someone I loved as they passed away was my adoptive daddy. He was dying of heart disease--something that had eaten at him the last decade or more of his life. I watched him pop nitro-glycerin tablets as if they were Pez candies.



But sitting beside someone in an ICU unit is much different than allowing the dying process to enter your home.



Mother and I were let in hourly--for ten minutes at a time. We sat in the orange vinyl chairs, or hovered over his hospital bed rail. I never felt as if I could get close enough.



And the nurse came and got us, told us he was going, and we stood by as he gasped his last breaths.



Sad, I know, but this too, is a part of life.



My mother's passing was different.

She passed away in my home. I sat in a recliner next to her bed. There was carpet, and although she was in a hospital bed, it was still homier. I had weeks to watch her die. Yes, it was excruciating, but it also gave me chance to climb down the mountain with her.



I've climbed mountains, real mountains, and I've learned it's not the uphill, the incline that's so hard. It's the decline when your quads are shaking, your balance is wonky, and you feel completely off kelter.


I wrote every day my mother lived with us. It kept me sane, helped me work out the enormous pressures and concerns I carried in my heart.

I allowed my family to keep living--going to swim practice, to part-time jobs, for my husband to go to work.



Life doesn't pause much, not even for death. But I sat there, that late spring, and I allowed dying to take up residence.



I wrote in my book, Mothering Mother:



Where are you, Mother? What’s going on?



I’m tired, but I’m more worried than tired. You won’t eat and it’s hard just letting you lie there not eating. The hospice nurse said not to force it and it felt fine when we were talking about it, but it doesn’t feel fine now.


Are you dying? Is this it? Are you taking those final steps or is this just another dip and turn? I don’t know; maybe it’s not for me to know. I’ve been back to your room two dozen times this morning. I can’t stay,



I just keep pacing, adjusting your pillow and cover like it’s going to help. I brush your hair back and look into your eyes, wondering if I’ve lost you for good.



I'm ironically grateful for this experience. I've sat beside my mother. I've read her Psalms, moistened her lips, bathed her hands and forehead. I didn't know if I could do it--sit there like that--but I did.



It's not even as painful to think about now as I thought it might be. It's soothing in a way. It's closure.



As a caregiver, you have to eventually realize that your loved will eventually die. It's tough to face, I know.



I hope whether you're in a hospital, in a hospice facility or at home, that you too, will have the priveledge of sitting in the quiet and experiencing life--and all that it has to offer.



Carol D. O'Dell

Author of Mothering Mother: A Daughter's Humorous and Heartbreaking Memoir,

available on Amazon and in most bookstores

http://www.mothering-mother.com/

Mothering Mother--The Truth Behind the Book

Mothering Mother is my first book. It's my first book published, not the first book I wrote. Like most writers, I have a couple of "dry runs" in the desk drawer. Mothering Mother was published first because I needed to understand myself and my role as daughter, mother, wife and woman. And if I needed it, I knew others did as well.
After seven years of writing and publishing, my own artistic journey was put on hold as my mother moved in. Caregiving is all encompassing and I didn't have enough brain cells to create fiction. So, I did what an artist does.
I turned my surrounding, my present condition into my art. Artists have to create. Boundaries create channels for energy. What I thought was a set back to my writing and my artist self turned out not to be a set back after all.
It wasn't easy either. Writing (or eating, bathing, having a life whatsoever) wasn't easy around my mother. She could suck the air out of tornado. I had to fight for any moment for myself.

I wrote in snatches for over two years--I'd run to the computer and type in a few lines. I'd write on the back of an envelope and stuff in my pocket. I wrote in my thoughts. The irony was that I was too tired to edit my thoughts. I told the truth--the raw, honest, gutsy, imperfect truth. Because I was too exhausted and frustrated not to.

Artists struggle with how to create art in the midst of life and reponsibilities. We struggle with how to tell, to show the truth. We struggle with how to be authentic and how to create beauty, clarity, flow and insight. We do that best when we don't (or can't) get in our own way.
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