Death of my Mother
The Death of my Mother
She felt no pain, just discomfort and the knowledge that it was just a matter of time: days, weeks or months, unlikely years.
Her weak fatigued form gasped breathes of air while staring up at the pristine white ceiling.
She died by medical aid in dying, a choice she made carefully and unwaveringly after spending quality time with my sisters and asking their opinion.
I had a strange love-hate relationship with my mother.
Most of my life, I thought she hated me and when she started to love me, she thought that I hated her. I loved her, desperate to be loved and accepted by her, but never knowing how. I always fell short.
She was never able to say the words, “I love you” with the true freedom of ease. Was it because she was unable to love me because I was my father’s daughter? I will always wonder but I will never know.
At the end, we made our peace saying what we could to each other in the short space of time left to us while my sister jealously watched and listened to our every word.
In my mother’s own way she punished me and will punish me until the moment of my last breath.
I live thousands of miles away from her, at the opposite end of the world thinking it was far enough away, yet in the end, distance was my greatest foe.
I tried to get to her the day I heard that the cursed C invaded her every pore, but distance and her words being what it was keep me at bay.
“No, she said. It’s not time yet for you to make your way to this distant shore. The time will come, but not today. The time will come, I will tell you when.”
She had my sisters with her and needed nobody and nothing else.
I waited each day with abated breath, hoping that today she would call for me.
“Not time yet,” she whispered again, avoiding eye contact.
“Then when I asked? When you have passed?”
She said no more, except always “No, it’s not time yet, not today.”
She finally nodded her head in “yes” when I asked again if today was the day I could come.
“Leave next week. It is the time for you to spend the time we never had.” she said reluctantly.
The morning before I left I got the call telling me she decided not to wait any longer and was ending it the next morning.
Her call was to say her final Good Bye.
“Wait for me Please mummy!” I begged. “ I leave tomorrow and will be there in 24 hours.”
“I can’t wait,” she said. I don’t have to see your face. I see you all the time on Facetime,” were her last words to me.
She ended her life before I went but asked that I watch her die.
I did.
I watched as she stared at my sister’s face, closed her eyes as she took her last breath and was no more.
I will pay forever with the image of her limp, lifeless form and open mouth deafening me with its silence and rejecting me until the very end. It will plague me until my end of days when I myself opt for the final infusion of life ending liquid.
