Well, judging by the reaction of the rest of my family, you would have thought I was taking out a gun and shooting her in the head or jamming bamboo under her fingernails. “It’s a mistake”;”She’s too weak.”; “She’s so fragile.” “It will just exhaust her.” “It will aggravate her pain.” “How can you do this to her?”

Everyone in my family wanted to keep her “comfortable” and “minimize her pain”, but it seemed so clear to me: my mom had a vision of how she wanted this last Christmas to play out for her, and it did not involve lying in bed having her pillows plumped. It involved going to the store herself and finding these specific gifts for my dad which she believed only she was capable of doing properly. I wanted to help her achieve that vision. I felt strongly that her voice and her request were what needed to be honored, not everyone else’s idea of what was good for her. if she was game, so was I.

So off to Walmart we went, under the disapproving glares of my brothers and sister-in-law. It was a sweetly bizarre venture. The gifts she selected were odd. Why on earth did she think my dad needed holiday paper cocktail napkins? The time we spent as I described in minute detail the colors and designs (she was basically sightless by that time) seemed unnecessarily tedious until I suddenly got to the one that she had apparently been waiting for. She jumped on it so decisively that I realized she had been listening intently for just the right one to match the vision in her head. She was extremely picky about it.

my dad, of course, did not care a whit about cocktail napkins and had no plans to ever entertain without her, but clearly the napkins and their details had a tremendous significance to my mom. Perhaps she was getting them precisely because he would never do such a thing for himself. Maybe the napkins were one last way for her to take care of him, to say to him life goes on–you’ll have to do Christmas without me next year, and you’ll be really glad you have these cocktail napkins then…

Who knows? And does it matter? When we got back to her hospice room, she was indeed exhausted and in pain, but that’s what sleep and the morphine drip are for. Clearly she had accomplished what she needed to, and before she drifted off into a satisfied haze of sleep, she managed to direct me in properly wrapping each gift with the appropriate paper and ribbons, and the correct information on the To/From labels.

Four days later, my mother was dead.

But she had achieved what she had set out to do for this last Christmas with dignity, her choices having been respected and honored. I know it was physically and mentally taxing for her, but I also know it was absolutely right to follow her lead. She did not regret the trip one iota, and neither do I.

Your blog had a lot to say about our cultural fear of pain which I think we now define as any minor discomfort, physical, mental, or spiritual. My mother clearly preferred the pain of actual living to the comfort of waiting to die. She wanted clarity, not numbness and confusion; she wanted to be present with us despite the pain. At the end of her life, there was a point at which the pain was so intense that it was as mind-numbing as the drugs. For her, that was where the morphine came in. Better to be delerious with drugs than with seering pain. But she hung onto her clarity as long as she could to be present to her own process of dying, and to make decisions about how she wanted to do that. And in the end she did it well, and on her terms.

Cheers,
Gloria

You are a brave spirit, soul, caregiver, who has helped so many through sickness and through passing. You are brave and wise and ornery enough that you, too, will survive this scare. Besides your students, friends, and readers (a bemused menagerie from around the world) all will be lighting candles for you, or, at least, be rambling through your books for joy. Be brave and keep smiling, and keep writing and blogging.