Helping My Mother to Die

[Roberta Grimes]

I have told my mother's story here, but it bears repeating now - it is a cautionary tale for anyone who might want to keep pushing off that wonderful moment of graduation back into real life. My mother was afraid to die. No matter what I said to try to teach and comfort her, she always would say, "Well, I like it better here." No tale of the Summerland and glorious reunions with long-dead family members could tempt her to think beyond her core-deep fear.

Then, five years ago this summer I got "the call." I had to fly from Austin to Boston immediately if I wanted to see my mother alive. When I arrived, her doctor explained to me that she was in "terminal end-stage heart failure" which could end only in her death, and soon. So I sat by Mother's bed with my sister, and we talked and told stories. She was 88 years old - a good old age - and while she had been relatively well, she was physically weak and becoming confused. A great time to die, Mom - you planned this well! Only, my mother didn't die. She came out of her coma. And as she became lucid, she said to me, "I saw my parents, you know."

This perked my ears! "Oh? Tell me about it."

My grandparents had been dead for fifty years. Nevertheless, my mother said that they had come into her hospital room, and her father sat down in the chair beside her bed and talked with her and said it was time to go now. To hear my mother tell it, she told him that she wasn't ready yet. She refused to go with them. So eventually her mother said, "Then you'd better take your medicine!" and they walked back out again.

This was amazing to me. In decades of doing afterlife research, I had never heard or read that it was even possible to refuse to proceed with death once your visitors arrived! But was that actually what happened here? It turned out that yes, indeed that was. About six weeks later, my mother was in rehab. I went in to visit her one morning, and she said in a self-satisfied way, "They're going to let me stay longer."

"Really? How do you know that?"

"The man told me."

My mother said that the previous evening a tall, glowing man had walked into her room and said, "We've decided that since you want to stay we're going to let you stay a little longer."

I was flabbergasted. She had no idea who that was, but when very advanced beings appear to us on earth this is just the way that they generally look: very tall and thin and glowing. For years, as my mother's body decayed, I felt guilty that her horrible reprieve had been for my benefit - so I would know that we could refuse to leave, and could see what happens when we make that choice - but now I am not so sure that her foolish choice was rare. The nursing home in which my mother finally graduated four hours ago contains other people so old and feeble that I wonder now whether her choice might not be common.

Please don't make my mother's choice! Each of us plans two or three exit points into our lifeplan that our higher consciousness can choose to take once we have learned all that we can in this lifetime. Had my mother taken her last planned exit, she could have died at a good old age after a brief period of declining health, but with most of her body and brain still functioning. At the age of 88 she had lived a long life to the full, and she could now exit neatly. But because she was afraid to die, she clung to a life that suddenly had no end-point other than the literal moment when her 93-year-old body could no longer sustain life. It was merciful that her brain withered as her body did, since by the time she was 90 she seemed not to have much awareness of her body's decaying condition - she was saying until the last weeks of her life that she wanted her car back because this place was boring. In a wheelchair, in a diaper, unable to stay awake for long or even to feed herself, she insisted that of course she could walk if she wanted to - what on earth was I talking about? For those who loved the strong, accomplished, witty and wonderful person that she had always been, it was horrible to watch her die by inches. Years before it finally happened, my sister and I were telling ourselves that it couldn't get much worse - of course she would go soon.

When I arrived in Boston ten days ago for a normal week of seeing clients, I found her much worse than I had left her in June - but that was normal by now. I would generally forget between visits how bad off she was, so I was always shocked at my first visit to her bedside. So then I would read psalms and poetry and read from The Fun of Dying, and my mother would always mumble, "I'm not ready to die yet." What was new this time was that her mumble was barely audible and unintelligible, and she was in pain. They had been managing that wonderfully, so I was horrified. I stopped at the desk, and the nurse there told me that her kidneys were starting to fail. So - long story short - we called in Hospice, they put her on morphine, and I canceled what client appointments I could. Within days I was grateful for those meetings with close and supportive friends who took me away from her bedside for a little while, because once she was on morphine she was no longer with us even the minimal amount that had been her most recent normal. By Wednesday she no longer knew who I was. By Friday I had recited her favorite poem and psalm so many times that I was doing it even in my sleep. I thought about delaying my Sunday morning departure, but my sister talked me out of staying. What was the point, when she didn't know who I was? After I left, my sister and her daughter spent that Sunday afternoon with my mother, and that image comforts me now. A beautiful young attorney in the healthy bloom of early pregnancy - this will be my mother's sixth great-grandchild - holding the dying hand of a woman born fifty years before Women's Lib but who was nevertheless a legal secretary who rose to run the law department of a big insurance company. So the cycle of life goes on.

[vic smyth]

Hi Roberta,

Thanks so much for sharing your story. As someone who's lost both his parents, my heart goes out to you. I know what a difficult time this can be.

But what fascinating new evidence your mother adds to the transition process! I hope that you are able to communicate with her after her transition and get some insights from her.

With Lovingkindness (metta),
vic

[LachlanMac]

Thanks Roberta for sharing in such detail. It's always nice to have such honesty and passion. I'm sorry for your loss, but it seems you've got your thoughts pretty strait about you which is always a good thing.

[Andrew]

Yes, thank your for sharing your mother's story with us in such detail, dear Roberta! At such a time, it must have been hard for you to dedicate enough time to write this all out.

I've heard this story four or five times now, and it still amazes me that your mother actually refused her death-bed visitors. I've never heard of anyone doing that!

[ravensgate]

Thank you for sharing the story, Roberta. Has you mother tried to contact you yet?
In regards to not being ready to go, the same thing happened to my friend's uncle. He was quite ill and one day he told the family that some relatives had come to take him "away", but he asked them to come back in a few weeks because he had "stuff" to finish. Weeks later he told his daughter "they" were back and he'd be gone by morning. The next day his daughter went into the room only to find that he had moved on.

[orangeysky]

Thank you for sharing, Roberta. God Speed. Love, Light and prayers to you and your family.

[Carol and Mikey]

Peace and love to you and your family Roberta. I am sure your mom is very happy being reunited with so many loved ones! Love the stories shared here. All this is so good and consistent in confirming that we do live on as we transition to the "Next Place". That we do SEE our loved ones again! WOW! Gives such hope and peace to me!
Carol

[beadtrader]

Many hugs to you and your family Roberta. I imagine it is a bit of a relief for you that your mom was finally able to escape after all she had been through.

A few years ago a friends mom died after several months of family, friends and pets coming for her. She did not want to let go either. The cancer finally wouldn't let her hang on any longer though. My friend saw a very good psychic a few months ago and heard from her mom. Her mom said "I made it!" Apparently she must have been quite worried that she wouldn't be accepted into heaven. Thats so sad. On the other hand my mom was more than ready to move on when she wasn't feeling well anymore. She'd had surgery for pancreatic cancer 2 1/2 years prior to her death. As long as she was feeling "ok" she was happy to be here with us. I was able to be with her in Arizona the last 2 weeks of her life, and watched her decline daily. I'd told her that my husband and kids were driving out to be with me and I think she made an effort to wait till they arrived. They arrived on Friday night and when my husband walked into her hospice room Saturday morning you could see in her eyes that she was just shocked to see my husband (she was unable to speak at this point and did not want her grand daughters to see her like that and remember her like that). She made a huge effort to pull her hand out from out of her covers to hold his hand. She died the next afternoon. And I wasn't alone in Arizona without my mom. I used to think that I wouldn't be able to bear it when she died, but I'm doing fine. My beliefs and knowledge are such a comfort to me. I KNOW for a fact that she lives on, just not in this dimension anymore. I even got to see her and my dad a few nights ago. So Roberta, if it is ok, I would like to ask how you are coping with the loss of your mother. Is there anything in particular that has been helpful to you?

[poeticblue]

You have helped me in many ways Roberta. I am thankful for you and many others. Thanks for sharing this story with us.

[Roberta Grimes]

Thanks to all of you for your kind, comforting words! Dear Beadtrader, even though my mother had become so debilitated that for at least the past year she could do nothing for herself, and my sister and I had been hoping she would free herself soon, it still has been surprisingly difficult to have her actually gone from this plane. I have cried a little every day, as I wrote her obit and made final arrangements. My mother was churchy but decidedly un-spiritual and she was afraid of death to the end, so I even worried a bit about her transition. But I needn't have worried. I have just had my first sign from her!

As is so often the case, this sign is personal - only my sister and I would have recognized it. My father was 14 years older than my mother, and he died in 1991 at the age of 86. My mother, who was then in her early seventies, had always promised him that he would never go to a nursing home, and the only way that he was going to leave their home of more than forty years would be "feet first, with a lily in his hand." When he had a major stroke in September of 1991, my mother brought him home from the hospital to die. Calla lilies were out of season and the internet did not yet exist, but somehow she was able to locate one calla lily and she had it sitting in water for a week while friends came and went and my father had a wonderful, joyful last few days with us. When he graduated, she put that lily into his hand and she insisted that he leave the house feet-first. (That was my mother - it always had to be her way!)

Last night eight calla lilies arrived from my cousin in Colorado. Since calla lilies are not pretty and they are associated with death, I thought that was an odd choice for her to make! I called her this morning to thank her, and I asked her why she had chosen calla lilies - did she know the story of my father's death? She said that no, she had never heard that story. She said, "I intended to get roses. They were having a special on roses. But I saw the lilies and kept going back to them. I really wanted to get the roses, but I got the lilies. I don't know why."

But I do. Thanks, Mom!!