My mom died. Died - by choking to death on food at breakfast in a nursing home - the one place she didn't want to die - and I know this isn't the way she ever thought it would happen.
You can think you have prepared yourself for a parent's death - but nothing makes that early morning phone call easier. You can tell yourself in her moments of misery that it would be best for her to "go" because her quality of life is so miserable. That doesn't help the grown man son when the day actually arrives. Nothing helps - you just walk through it. I wasn't there. I wasn't anywhere near. The last phone call a week earlier had been strained from trying to understand her voice and me trying to talk loud enough for her to hear. She did hear me - and I heard her. She knew who I was and said she loved me. I did the same. My regret is that I didn't know that would be the last phone call. It's the regret of millions of other people facing the same experience. How do you ever know that will be the last conversation - especially when you think you have a couple of years remaining?
I know what death is - and I fully understand that it's what has to happen to every human on a timeline that is unique to each individual. I no longer associate death to an afterlife that many others do. I'm OK with that - although I'm envious of those who somehow get comfort from what they have convinced themselves happens in their version of the afterlife. They speak of it with such confidence. I know -I used to be one of them. I've also been on the receiving end of many of their tributes to my mom in which they express those beliefs so freely to me. My mom believed the same thing - and a huge part of me hopes that she is now on the receiving end of what she thought the afterlife would be. I hope for that for her - and at the same time find myself filled with anger at the thought of a "God" who would have her last moments on this earth filled with terror as she choked to death. Hadn't she been through enough over the past 83 years?
My anger is not really at that God - because I don't believe that any rendition of a God put her through those last moments. I can't believe that - it just doesn't come naturally to me. I wonder why and how it does to so many others? The sentiments expressed to me are well meant by people who truly cared about my mom - and me. Somehow through my disbelief of their words I find myself still able to appreciate them in the moment although their certitude that I must have the same belief is an incorrect assumption. On the day we place her ashes in the ground - those sentiments will again be expressed - and her version of God will be praised in both song and word. I miss her already!
