It was the hardest thing I think I have ever experienced. I wept.
...Well, we had her funeral out of state. She wanted to be buried next to her parents in Idaho Falls, ID. With the proper permits acquired, my father had her loaded into her casket and into the back of a Uhaul truck. The smallest kind that has the enclosed back. We drove her across state lines. I thought about editing down what I said at her funeral. I would have done to hide religious beliefs because I don't like to put it all out there for others to see. But I think I will leave it as I said it. It was honest and heart felt. I would not want anyone to think any different.
I am driving through the high plateau of Eastern Oregon and Idaho with my parents. I have always loved the patchwork landscape of farm country. Seeing the gold of dry wheat, cattle, irrigation canals and massive sprinkler systems. There is something heartwarming about it to me. It brings peace to me. There are a lot of family memories in these long drives. Not that we ever really stopped or did things along the way, but every summer we would drive to Idaho Falls, as a family, to visit grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles. The long drive through farmland was all part of the experience. That's probably why it is pleasant for me. This drive reminds me of childhood innocence and excitement. It was such a different life.
My dad is calculating our speed in miles per minute then per second and who knows what else in his head to keep himself entertained. Outside of a small town called Weiser, I see the Snake River. Every time we saw the Snake, Mom would tell us that it always made her feeling like she was going home. None of us minded that we heard it every year. She always said it with a little child like glee that she never tried hide.
This time is different. This time Dad and I are driving a sarcophagus on wheels with my mother in her casket in the back. This time, when I see the Snake run alongside the highway, I have mixed emotion. I smile with the thought of my mother, always so excited to see her parents. It was contagious. Now even with the fond and happy memories of my mother's excitement, there is pain. At times overwhelming. Mom's passing has brought every one of us to tears.
A few weeks before my mom passed, my family had the opportunity to spend a day playing at the beach in California. I spent hours in the shore break. As I stood chest deep in the water facing the ocean, I felt hope. I knew my mom did not have long. She was deteriorating too quickly. But I found solace in the rise and fall of the waves. I knew she would die. Like the ocean, I would feel sorrow crashing down on me. But we would rally together to be buoyed up. We would feel the powerful influence my mother had on our lives, and we would come together to lift each other from what at times feels like we are drowning. That is what my mom would try to do. She always tried to help people when she saw the need. When she saw hurt or heartache, she tried to help.
She often told me of a lesson she had at church one Sunday in Relief Society. In a group of women, the one leading the class passed out note paper. Every woman was to write something on the paper that they were struggling with. Anything. The things that came back were powerful. One woman was suffering with the loss of a child. Another a spouse. Others with abusive relationships. The trials went on. My mom was astounded at the lesson that everyone struggles with something. No matter the face we put on for others to see, we struggle. She made it a point to remind me that we are not alone in our suffering. And we need not shut ourselves off from the hands that are outstretched, begging to help us in our times of need.
When I was a kid, I decided I needed to run away. With the forethought of a child, my backpack contained maybe a change of clothes, a few toys and no food or water. Feeling unwanted, I told my mother I was leaving. She said go. I walked out of our split level house in Seattle, turned and hid under the upstairs overhang. I wept. I could not run away. I was heart broken that my mother called my bluff. After a while, I collected myself and went back inside. Mom was waiting with open arms. She had been watching from the windows above, waiting for me. She wrapped me up in a hug and I sobbed into her shoulder. I have thought about this a lot over my life, wondering what that experience taught me. What should I have learned? I see this over and over in my life as a pattern my mother would let me learn for myself. She loved me enough to let me learn the hard way.
While she lay in her hospital bed at home, I told her, “Mom I want you to stay. But it's okay for you to go.” It was a moment that helped me understand that lesson she taught me when I tried to run away. At some point, you have to be willing to love someone enough to let them go. This is how we learn. And I have to let her go now. She can't stay anymore. For whatever reason, she needs to go, and learn. And I can't do it for her.
My dad said this was/is harder that he thought it would be.
I know.
You can tell yourself all you want, it will be okay, I will get through it. But when it comes time to have her go, it is much harder than you thought it would be to say goodbye.
You weep so completely that every muscle in your body tries to choke the life out of you. Constricting until you gasp for breath, erupting from one wave of sorrow only to be thrown asunder again. An eternal struggle, life versus death, crushing sorrow with life strung from each desperate breath to the next. With time, the waves of sorrow come less frequently. I hope they are easier to bare. This is not to say I wish them to go. I want to always think about my Mom and remember how much I love her. Some of that only comes with the outpouring of tears.
Regardless of personal or religious beliefs, the passing of a loved one from this life to whatever comes next leaves those of us here gripped in sorrow. And that is okay. To grieve, to mourn, to feel the we have been shattered into a million pieces is part of what makes us human. I would not diminish it. I would not tell anyone to ignore that. It is a reminder that we are capable of such profound love that it cannot be contained by the bonds of mortality.
Maybe it sounds mean, but I always loved to tease her. I loved to make her grossed out. It was fun for us to talk about anything medical. A broken bone, intestines, weird anomalies, whatever. Especially at the dinner table. The dinner table seemed to be almost a sacred place, a tradition handed down from her father. Which of course made it that much more fun for me as a punk kid to choose that as the place to discuss the human heart that had been passed around the room in my biology class that day. In high school, I would often sneak down the stairs if she was in the kitchen. I would wait until her back was toward me then I would creep in and scream while I grabbed her arms. I loved to see her jump, then turn to see the exasperated look on her face, sometimes turning into a grin as she would take a halfhearted kick towards me.
Mom would make a cookie sheet of brownies and cut a square out of the middle. Her half heart-ed excuse was that she needed to check to make sure they were done. I liked to beat her to it. From the other room, I would hear her yell, “Hey! Who took my brownie??”
Teasing Mom was my way of playing. It was my way of telling her I loved her. Now, as I write these memories, I go through such a torrent of emotion. I still laugh at those childish teasings. Then I break down sobbing that she is gone. No longer do I get to jump out and scare her. I think if she chooses now as her time to get even, she would have the last laugh.
Children are a source of both limitless love and infinite frustration. Often at the same time. I will admit to having caused more than my fair share of frustration. I can only hope that during her lifetime, I earned even a portion of love she freely gave me.
A little over a month before she died, my parents asked me to come out their house to give a blessing to both my mom and dad. It was one of the hardest things I have ever done. I did not give her the blessing I wanted to give. I wanted to tell her to be healed. Instead, I told her there were angels around her, watching over her, waiting for her. They were so excited to see her again. I did not tell her that while there were many around, I distinctly saw my grandmother, with her big smile, twinkling eyes and pinky raised as she always did, just waiting, waiting, ready and eager to wrap my mom in a hug and tell her she loves her. Standing just behind Grandma, as stoic as ever I knew him, my grandfather stood waiting for his daughter, letting Grandma gush over with emotion.
I do not have all the answers or to know everything. But I cannot shake that experience. My mother passed surrounded by her family, both in this world and the next. It was time for her to go. Minutes before she passed. I hugged her, pressed my face to the side of her head, I whispered while crying into her shoulder again, "I love you Mom. Please go. Be free of this. I love you."
I have struggled a lot. We all have. I missed her instantly. One of the many ways of coping for me is a song I have listened to on repeat. It is called Move Pen Move, by Shayne Koyczan. Edited down a little, it says:
“Stay.
That's what mothers say when their sons and daughters go away, they say stay. My mother said go...
...So we just sat there. Our heads bent towards each other like flowers in the small hours of the morning, while light wandered in like a warning that time is passing and you right along with it, Bit by bit every day.
And all I could say is if I could I would write you some way out of this, but my gift is useless. And you said no. Write me a poem to make me happy. So I write. Move pen move,
Write me a bedroom where cures make love to our cancers... But my mother just motions to a bottle full of answers and says "help me go".
And now I know something of how a piano must feel when it looks at the fireplace to see sheet music being used for kindling, Smoke signalling the end of some song that I thought it would take too long to learn. Now I just sit here watching you burn away all those notes I never had a chance to play, to hear the music of what you had to say.
I count out the pills just to see if I can do it. I can't even get halfway through it before I turn back into your son and say Stay.
I could hook up my heart to your ears, and let my tears be your morphine drip because maybe it's easier to let you slip away than it is to say goodbye. So I hold my breath.
Because in the count down to death the question of "why" melts into "when". How much time do we have left, because if I knew what I know now then... Move pen move, write me a mountain. Because headstones are not big enough. My mother says stop it,
Write me a poem to make me happy. So I write this.
“Stay.”
She smiles and says, "gotta go".
I know.
Goodbye.”
I love you Mom. Please go. Be free of this. I love you.
