Diamond-Cut Life

The call came at 7:50 on Monday morning. My husband Thor quietly relayed it to me: Mom had died. My response was the opposite of quiet: I was hyper, distraught, frantic to get to her, to be in her physical presence for the last time. I drove the two of us at breakneck speed to get to her house. “I thought I’d have just a little more time with her,” I kept saying.

Life is like this: we think we have options we turn out to not have, after all. This can be the case even when we’re paying attention and reading the cues around us. When my husband and I had left our bedside vigil the afternoon before, Mom’s circulation was still good, her feet warm and toenail beds free of the purple-blue tinge the hospice nurse had told us was a sign of the end. So I thought we had a little more time together. But no.

Note to self: we don’t always get what we want.

Once at Mom’s house*, I joined my older brother Jeff in her bedroom. He was weeping, for the first time in our adult lives. We held each other close and murmured that she’s in a better place. My younger brother Mick joined us soon after. Relief, sadness and connectedness all commingled in us.

I’ve filled many handkerchiefs and kleenexes these past weeks, and I have more tears and grief in my future. Life is also like this: we will have pain, especially if we dare to love. The more we accept that, the better things go, I find. Pain is a price I gladly pay for being fully alive, and loving many people, of all ages. Joy and community are my steady dividends.

My eight year old friend Katelyn is calling from the backyard for me to join her in jumping on the trampoline — and I’m not about to turn her down. I love jumping with her.  Thor and Katelyn’s mom Kelly are taking the dogs for a walk in the Brea hills behind the house, hills still full of deer, coyotes and raptors.

Our lives have many chapters. This chapter of my mother’s physical death is one of the most precious chapters I’ve known.

*My mother lived in a very good ‘board and care’. These places (numbering 2600 now in Orange County, CA alone) generally look like normal homes, and have 4-6 people living there under the care of two trained caregivers.

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