June 19th Mom became ....Infinite.
Me, my kids, my brother, his wife & kids & the oneandonly great-grandchild surrounded her. Her eyes sunken, her mouth agape, her loyal chihuahua between her calves, the continuous care nurse checking for heartbeat until her gentle blessing, “she’s gone”.
We all told her we love her.
I rubbed her shin, noticing the curl of her big toe, telling her we are all here, no need to wait anymore. We promised to take care of her dog, who is quite old.
Before getting to her bedside, I reassured My Girls that seeing their grandmother in this state is totally their choice. I tried to give them information so as to set a relatively realistic expectation. They both chose to go in but shortly after, My Little One asked to be excused. I am proud of their honest, vulnerable courage to make the choices they did. It's a difficult task - teaching that death is part of life.
I'd like to thank my brother & his family for accepting the challenge, embracing the tasks of caring for our mom through her end-of-life. It can be difficult to have a parent living with you, let alone a dying one. They allowed medical staff & clergy to come & go. There were trying times, but in the end, what won was mom's comfort.
We are left with Her Infinity, Her Legacy. A woman who taught all of us how to LIVE, how to FIGHT, how to LAUGH. We are imprinted with the woman she was before she was our mother.
For Us Left Behind, all of us in our own way witnessed what smoking can do to one's body: the addiction, the COPD, the hospital visits, the rehabs. We were riding that emotional rollercoaster with her. My brother nor I smoke. Our kiddos all seem pretty disgusted by it (hopefully enough to not do it in their adult years!).
She would say how lucky she is to have lived as long and as fully as she did. I think she figured she wasn't going to have the longevity she had. She was raised in an abusive home & some abusive relationships, living all her life completing school to only the ninth grade. She survived four different kinds of cancers and wore that fact like a badge of honor. (She smoked until the final month of her life, unapologetically!)
My brother and I will drive to west Texas to spread her ashes among those of our father's. I am looking forward to that event. Writing about it now, I'm tearing up because I can't imagine the feels I'll experience when that moment is real. I'm sure I will feel some serenity, though.
