My son fell asleep in my arms today, both of us locked in an embrace. Sitting on the edge of my bed, I held him close while waiting for him to fall into deep sleep so I could then lay him in his crib without him waking upon landing. We rocked back and forth and I brushed my mouth and nose against his warm head and soft hair, drinking him in and imprinting the memory into my brain.
While waiting him out, I allowed my mind to open the door I mostly keep closed, locking away the memories of eight years ago that still sting. My mum died eight years ago today, a painful culmination of a savage week of hope, despair and crushing loss. Truly, I try not to fully think about those days often because they’re so painful. How naive I was at the time, so buoyed by Mum’s positivity and remarkable success rate at overcoming any illness.
It’s hard to describe how antagonizing it is to be a young adult living a week of watching your parent’s health rapidly, yet excruciatingly slowly, decline to death. Unbearable is an appropriate term, but I bore it, so I can’t use it as a descriptor. But I barely did. That experience doused my own positivity and created an anxiety that affects me daily. It is why I take COVID precautions so seriously. Watching your parent die is horrendous. And she didn’t even die “tragically.” She laid in a hospital bed, pumped with morphine, and died “in her sleep.” She had a “death rattle.” I sat in my dad’s lap and watched my mom take her last breath. I heard it. I saw it. It is forever seared into my memory. There is no forgetting that.
Experiences like this make you a more empathic person, Sean says. Of watching someone who is too young to die, die. Watching someone you didn’t think you could live without, die. Watching not just your parent, but a knowledge base, your childhood memory bank, die. Of watching parts of your future memories extinguish before they can ever be made. Of watching someone who loves you unconditionally, who loves you so fiercely in only a way a mother can love their child, die.
Sean, too, experienced part of this “last week” of Mum’s life. He came to the hospital when she called a family meeting to say she “was done.” He watched us gather around her bed, with other family members on FaceTime and the phone, while she talked to us. Nurses stopped her morphine drip before bringing her to the Hospice ward and he too saw her grimace in pain as the drugs stopped blocking the feeling of someone’s body shutting down. He stood in the room and watched us all at our breaking points trying to keep our shit together for her, for the first rightfully selfish decision she made in a long time. Later, he would say his last words to her while she was in a sleepy morphine stupor, with me by her side, of, “I’ll take care of your girl.” He, too, is empathetic.
On one of the days in the last few weeks of her life, I was at her house doing my “taking care of Kathy” duties. Because she had a hard time walking then, various family members split up days to spend with her and care for her. I remember sitting halfway in her lap on a recliner. Her lap was a frequent place for me. She hugged me, hard, arms wrapped around my middle. She was more sentimental than usual, and told me she loved me. We stayed embraced like that, not saying anything. I remember I was leaving to go somewhere and honestly felt rushed - pulled among work responsibilities, taking care of her and making dinner for or spending time with Sean. Here is part of that naivety I mentioned. What was she hugging me so hard for? She would get back to doing chemo soon and we’d all eventually be back to normal. She wouldn’t need a wheelchair and would walk unassisted again. She overcame everything thrown her way. She was such a force, such a strong woman with an indomitable will. I had no idea what was coming.
Becoming a parent has changed the loss of my mum for me. It is a deeper hole in my heart where memories of watching my mum and her first grandchild together don’t get to live. And, in a 2020 plot twist, that hole is only deeper because I can’t watch my dads do this with Calvin, thanks to COVID. Sean, Calvin and I are staying in our bubble, as we should, because Sean and I have already experienced the horror of watching a slow death of someone who I wish so badly was alive today. To potentially be an asymptomatic spreader or unintentional eventual-symptomatic spreader to my Dads would wreck me, and wreck Sean if it were his parents. We empathize with our family who want to hold our son, but - we’ve been in the thick of illness and despair and don’t want to experience that again. Being both an adult child and a parent during this pandemic is cruel.
Only now, having birthed a child of my own, do I understand what Mum was doing that day when she hugged me tightly, silently and for so long. She was, essentially, doing what I did earlier today to Calvin - breathing in his scent, hugging him as if we were one, burning the memory into my brain for keeps. I assume she knew there would be no “coming back” from the state her body was in then. And maybe Mum had an inkling she was living the last of her days. So she was loving her first child, remembering the days of feeding and rocking, of giving as mothers do all of herself to her child. Hugging me - an extension of her, her heart, breathing me in, holding us close as one, searing the memory into her brain to keep forever. A mother’s love. I’ve felt it. I give it. I fully understand it now.
My son fell asleep in my arms today, both of us locked in an embrace. Sitting on the edge of my bed, I held him close while waiting for him to fall into deep sleep so I could then lay him in his crib without him waking upon landing. We rocked back and forth and I brushed my mouth and nose against his warm head and soft hair, drinking him in and imprinting the memory into my brain.
While waiting him out, I allowed my mind to open the door I mostly keep closed, locking away the memories of eight years ago that still sting. My mum died eight years ago today, a painful culmination of a savage week of hope, despair and crushing loss. Truly, I try not to fully think about those days often because they’re so painful. How naive I was at the time, so buoyed by Mum’s positivity and remarkable success rate at overcoming any illness.
It’s hard to describe how antagonizing it is to be a young adult living a week of watching your parent’s health rapidly, yet excruciatingly slowly, decline to death. Unbearable is an appropriate term, but I bore it, so I can’t use it as a descriptor. But I barely did. That experience doused my own positivity and created an anxiety that affects me daily. It is why I take COVID precautions so seriously. Watching your parent die is horrendous. And she didn’t even die “tragically.” She laid in a hospital bed, pumped with morphine, and died “in her sleep.” She had a “death rattle.” I sat in my dad’s lap and watched my mom take her last breath. I heard it. I saw it. It is forever seared into my memory. There is no forgetting that.
Experiences like this make you a more empathic person, Sean says. Of watching someone who is too young to die, die. Watching someone you didn’t think you could live without, die. Watching not just your parent, but a knowledge base, your childhood memory bank, die. Of watching parts of your future memories extinguish before they can ever be made. Of watching someone who loves you unconditionally, who loves you so fiercely in only a way a mother can love their child, die.
Sean, too, experienced part of this “last week” of Mum’s life. He came to the hospital when she called a family meeting to say she “was done.” He watched us gather around her bed, with other family members on FaceTime and the phone, while she talked to us. Nurses stopped her morphine drip before bringing her to the Hospice ward and he too saw her grimace in pain as the drugs stopped blocking the feeling of someone’s body shutting down. He stood in the room and watched us all at our breaking points trying to keep our shit together for her, for the first rightfully selfish decision she made in a long time. Later, he would say his last words to her while she was in a sleepy morphine stupor, with me by her side, of, “I’ll take care of your girl.” He, too, is empathetic.
On one of the days in the last few weeks of her life, I was at her house doing my “taking care of Kathy” duties. Because she had a hard time walking then, various family members split up days to spend with her and care for her. I remember sitting halfway in her lap on a recliner. Her lap was a frequent place for me. She hugged me, hard, arms wrapped around my middle. She was more sentimental than usual, and told me she loved me. We stayed embraced like that, not saying anything. I remember I was leaving to go somewhere and honestly felt rushed - pulled among work responsibilities, taking care of her and making dinner for or spending time with Sean. Here is part of that naivety I mentioned. What was she hugging me so hard for? She would get back to doing chemo soon and we’d all eventually be back to normal. She wouldn’t need a wheelchair and would walk unassisted again. She overcame everything thrown her way. She was such a force, such a strong woman with an indomitable will. I had no idea what was coming.
Becoming a parent has changed the loss of my mum for me. It is a deeper hole in my heart where memories of watching my mum and her first grandchild together don’t get to live. And, in a 2020 plot twist, that hole is only deeper because I can’t watch my dads do this with Calvin, thanks to COVID. Sean, Calvin and I are staying in our bubble, as we should, because Sean and I have already experienced the horror of watching a slow death of someone who I wish so badly was alive today. To potentially be an asymptomatic spreader or unintentional eventual-symptomatic spreader to my Dads would wreck me, and wreck Sean if it were his parents. We empathize with our family who want to hold our son, but - we’ve been in the thick of illness and despair and don’t want to experience that again. Being both an adult child and a parent during this pandemic is cruel.
Only now, having birthed a child of my own, do I understand what Mum was doing that day when she hugged me tightly, silently and for so long. She was, essentially, doing what I did earlier today to Calvin - breathing in his scent, hugging him as if we were one, burning the memory into my brain for keeps. I assume she knew there would be no “coming back” from the state her body was in then. And maybe Mum had an inkling she was living the last of her days. So she was loving her first child, remembering the days of feeding and rocking, of giving as mothers do all of herself to her child. Hugging me - an extension of her, her heart, breathing me in, holding us close as one, searing the memory into her brain to keep forever. A mother’s love. I’ve felt it. I give it. I fully understand it now.
No comments:
Post a Comment