I last saw my mother in April of this year when I went home to Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia to see her after many years of disconnection. It was a happy but painful homecoming because she was, at the age of 72, dying of breast cancer. After I returned home to Vancouver, I called her often. After so many years apart, I was eager to bond and stay connected to my mother. After all, I knew my time was limited…
The months passed and now as I look back, I wonder what I was thinking was happening to my mother in my absence. Did I really think nothing was changing even though it had to be?
I called several times a week, every week, and checked in with my brother for updates as to her condition. It was always a struggle to understand my mother on the phone as a secondary condition was affecting her ability to speak. Some days her voice was reasonably clear; other days her speech was so garbled I couldn’t understand a word she was saying. But I listened hard, tried to understand, told her I loved her and cried when I hung up the phone. I sent her dvd’s to watch; I sent her specialty chocolates; whatever I thought she might enjoy – I sent. Small pleasures during a terrible time…
By October, talking with her was getting more and more difficult. She was having good days and bad days but what did that mean, really? I wasn’t there to be able to see her deterioration. She was on one side of the country, and I on the other. I relied on my brother to give me the truth of the situation but even then, I couldn’t see it. Her medication was adjusted; more often than not she wasn’t feeling a lot of pain. But what was I thinking? That the cancer wasn’t still killing her?
At one point she asked me if I could find her a coat for the winter. I thought this was a good sign. She would still be up and about and obviously going to the doctor or grocery shopping with Jimmy so she would need a warm coat. Shay and I went shopping for something that would be just right. I found something I liked and boxed it up and sent it to her. I asked Jimmy if she liked it, if it fit… he put her on the phone but I couldn’t understand anything she was saying.
I finally woke up one morning the first week of November and realized it was time to go back to Nova Scotia to see her. I started making plans for the end of the month. Then, a couple of days later my brother called…
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
Jimmy told me my mother hadn’t been eating or drinking anything for the past couple of days. She was just sleeping a lot. The doctor told him that her body was beginning to shut down… they had sent a nurse who would spend the night with him since my mother needed to be given some medication every 4 hours and they knew he needed some rest. He wasn’t sure how he would feel about having someone in the house overnight but he was willing to try it for one day and then see how he felt. I told him I was going to come home immediately. He told me not to rush. There was no hurry…
When I hung up the phone, I called my daughter and we decided we had to go asap. Thanks to her very lovely boyfriend, we were booked and on our way to Cape Breton Island by 10:00 pm that evening. It would take 3 planes (Vancouver to Toronto, Toronto to Halifax, Halifax to Sydney) to get us to the other side of the country but we would be there by lunchtime the next day. Everything went smoothly. I felt such a sense of urgency; I wanted to get there before she disappeared from my life completely.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
We made it to Toronto; changed planes. We made it to Halifax. Shay told me to call Jimmy and let him know we were almost there. I turned on my phone to call him from the airport to tell him we’d be in Sydney in about an hour and a half. I kept getting a busy signal… I kept trying… busy, busy, busy… I kept trying. Shay was buying a smoothie from a stand in the airport when I finally got through…
She was gone.
My brother was weeping as he told me she had died early in the morning – around 6:30 am. While we were flying to Toronto, she had passed away. I fell apart in the airport...
My mother had died in her own home, in her own bedroom, in a hospital bed with my brother at her side. He was devastated… and so was I. I was too late…
I told him we would be there soon. They had already taken her body away and he told me he had asked the undertaker to hold my mother’s body so I could see her before they took her away to be cremated.
We got on the plane and flew to Sydney, grabbed a cab and 20 minutes later I was walking in the door of the house I grew up in. My brother, my daughter and I wept and hugged and then immediately got in another cab and headed for the funeral home.
The funeral director (Basil) was so kind and gentle and lovely. He took us upstairs to his office where the walls were adorned with charming paintings of winter scenes (done by his father I believe). His family has been in the funeral business for generations. We sat quietly while he chatted with us and walked us through the formalities of death. I didn’t want to do that yet; I wanted to see my mother.
Basil took us down to the basement (2 floors below) to a room at the end of the hall… an antiseptic room obviously used for the preparation of bodies and there, lying on a table beneath a sheet, covered from the neck down, lay my mother…
So still… so peaceful looking; she looked healthier in death than she had in life. I touched her face, her hair (she had lost so much of it), her cheek; I kissed her and told her I loved her… And then I just stared at this woman who had been my mother, my adversary, my enemy, my protector, my jailer, my defender, my savior, my mother…. My Mother…
Shay and Jimmy left the room but I couldn’t. I had missed the last 7 months of her living, her dying. I had arrived too late to say my goodbyes and now she was gone… but still there. I stayed alone in the room with her… I just didn’t want to leave her lying on that cold table in that barren room, under a sheet, all by herself… even though I knew she was already gone. I told her over and over again that I loved her; I touched her skin; I kissed her cheek and forehead; I stroked her hair and I stared at her…. And stared at her… I found it so hard to pull myself away but eventually I just had to. The funeral director was waiting quietly at the foot of the stairs and we headed back up to his office.
We spent the next little while composing her obituary, dealing with the business of death. Shay went back down to see her again and I stayed close to Jimmy. I knew this was hardest on him. She was his whole life. He had never been away from her in his 57 years of living. He took care of her through her illness until the end and I don’t know that I could have been as strong or done as magnificent a job as he did of caring for her. When all was said and done, Basil offered to drive us home (only in a small town). We got into one of those long black cars and went home. He told us he would return in a few days with my mother’s ashes. The obituary was in the paper the next day. We opened the newspaper the next morning and there she was… more tears… more tears…
Thursday, November 10, 2011
Unlike my first visit back in April, I didn’t spend my time writing about the experience of being home; I was too busy living the experience that was the aftermath of my mother’s death. For the next couple of days I kept myself so busy I could barely think. I went through all the things my mother had accumulated and kept in her bedroom. The first thing I started with was all of the papers. I was searching for her will because we didn’t know if she’d had one and it would make Jimmy’s life much easier if there was one.
It was strange to be rooting through her every private nook and cranny – something that would never have happened if she were alive. I tried not to think about the fact that she had died in that room only the day before. I didn’t sense her there; I didn’t feel her there. Perhaps my brother did but not me. I simply saw what she had left behind.
Bags and bags of stuff were thrown out and lots of stuff was found ( the will for example ). After I had made my way through all of the paper stuff I set my mind to organizing my brother’s finances. I called agencies and canceled accounts, notified them of her death, talked to the undertaker about cremation expenses, got household bills put into my brother’s name… all the while trying not to lose control while complete strangers offered kind words when I told them my mother had just died. I just swallowed the pain, wiped away the tears and kept doing what I knew had to be done.
I wanted to make sure that in the days ahead, my brother would have to contend only with his grief and not with the business of tidying up my mother’s end of life. I made him detailed lists and put everything in a notebook for him and explained what I was doing.
Friday, November 11, 2011
The next day, the 3 of us sorted through her clothing… there was so much of it – much of it she hadn’t even worn. Bags and bags were filled with clothes and shoes that would be donated to charity. I was a woman on a mission. It was a daunting task but I didn’t want my brother to have to do this on his own. I just kept moving and tried not to think. Jimmy told me about the coat I had sent her. Of course, she’d never got to even try it on. He had told her about it and put her hand on the sleeve so she could feel it with her fingers…
More tears, more tears…
Pretty soon we had the bedroom tidied and organized to a degree. Then we had a treasure hunt… at least that’s what I called it. We looked through all of my mother’s jewelry and boxes and drawers. Since I was little, I’ve always been fascinated by my mother’s ‘jewels’. The truth is, most of what I liked was just costume jewelry and knick knacks but to this day I love it all. When I would find something I liked I would then ask Jimmy if it was ok if I took it. Shay did the same. If it was, we set it aside; if he showed signs of distress, we left it where it was. We respected his wishes because it was his ‘treasure’ too.
And so I collected my ‘treasure’. What did it consist of?
An old locket that played the theme from Love Story when you opened it;
a carved and painted matchbox holder;
a lipstick container with filigree work on it;
a tiny perfume bottle,
a tarnished silver compact (which I have since polished to a gleaming shine),
several old brooches,
a thin gold and silver band (I’m wearing that ring), a pair of earrings…
(When I returned home I put my treasure on shelves in my bathroom so I can see them every day and remember her). My brother gets everything else and I’m fine with that because I have my treasure…
We talked, we remembered, we cried, and I did my best to be the strongest I could be for Jimmy while I got stuff done for him. My mother wouldn’t have liked strangers going through all of her private belongings and so I made sure they would never have to. I took my daughter out walking - around the town, to my old high school, and down to the ocean that I love so much. We ate, watched movies and cried some more. And then Basil called to tell us he was bringing my mother’s ashes to us.
It was raining and cold when he came. He was so gentle and polite and kind. He brought paperwork we needed, copies of her death certificate, a printed list of condolences from their website.
And then, after chatting for a bit longer, he said:
“I have your mother out in the car. I’ll bring her in now.”
And he went out and returned with a canvas bag. Inside was a velvet drawstring bag and inside that bag was a beautiful urn and inside the urn was my mother’s ashes… my mother…
We cried as we received her. And after he left we cried some more.
The urn was beautiful.
Saturday, November 12, 2011
The weather cleared up on the Saturday and the sun came out. My brother’s childhood friend came to visit and arrived in time to join us as we headed down to the ocean to scatter my mother’s ashes into the Atlantic. And there we were… the four of us or rather, the five of us. Jimmy and Anthony in back, Shay and I in front, arm in arm, while I carried my mother to the sea.
We walked to the crumbling cliffs and climbed down to the sea and went to the spot where we used to swim as kids – nothing but slabs of rock (that was our beach) and a churning sea.
We walked to the edge of the rocks where the waves were racing in and I gave the bag to Jimmy.
He took the urn out of the velvet bag and undid the lid so he could empty her ashes into the waves. The waves swept in and flowed over our feet soaking us but we didn’t care. We huddled close to him and watched as he poured her ashes into the ocean, but we didn’t say anything. There was no need. We cried; we said goodbye and then it was done.
The sun continued to shine; the cold wind whipped at our cheeks and chased away our tears; the crashing waves scooped up my mother and raced her out to sea where my father’s ashes had been waiting for several years. They were reunited. We were devastated.
We put the urn back into the bag, climbed back up to the top of the cliffs and made our way back home.
Shay and I stayed several more days and then I had to return to my home. We made our tearful goodbyes.
When I last saw my mother in April, she asked me to watch out for my brother and that is what I am now doing. I feel like I’ve just found my brother after 50 years. Now we’re talking and communicating and saying ‘I love you’ to each other which is something we never did while my parents were alive. Until her death, my mother effectively stood between us – an insurmountable obstacle. But now, with her no longer there, we flow easily and naturally together. I find I am fiercely protective of my older brother. I finally get to be a sister.
What seemed so earth-shatteringly important, what alienated me from my family for decades, now seems like such a waste of precious time. We wish we could have this wisdom in the moment and stop ourselves from doing things that only bring harm and grief to ourselves and others. We wish…. But our arrogance and egos, and need to be right, rob us in the end. And we can’t turn back time and do it all again. Such is life.
Today, our lives go on without her. My mother’s door closed but a door opened between my brother and I and for that, I am truly grateful.
