I think I will have to take my Dad’s approach and just say this simply: Mom passed away at 7pm last night. Ever the captain of her ship, I think she tried to time it (if such things are even possible) so that she wouldn’t go on my birthday on Tuesday, or my parents’ anniversary, which is today. That would be typically protective of her.
I’m not sure what to say about how I’m feeling at the moment; last night it was mostly a sense of relief after I got off the phone. She waited almost exactly three weeks from the day she decided to stop further treatments, and while we certainly had some great time together in that period, she was clearly ready to go, and truth be told, getting a bit impatient about it.
So today I’m alternately heartbroken, numb, full of memories, and gearing up for what is now my biggest task: becoming fully the person she’s always told me I can be. I’m now 39 (happy birthday to me), and it’s time to stop farting around with whatever artistic and social ambitions I may have. If this experience has taught me anything it’s that you can’t take time for granted.
R.I.F. (Rest in Fabulousness)
Linda Nuckols Gunby
December 19, 1940 – June 28, 2006
Well, it’s late Sunday night, and the news for today is that I’m going home. Mom is still here, though I think we really have reached the beginning of the end (or the beginning of a beginning, depending on how you look at it). She’s been very weak all day, is having more trouble scooting herself up on the bed, etc., and really is ready to go—you can see it in her eyes every morning: a look that says, “Why am I still here?”.
However, tomorrow will mark 6 weeks away from home for me, and with Deb’s Dad’s health failing as well, it seemed a good time to come home. There’s just not much more for me to do here, either physically or emotionally, and I have been so gifted with time that I no longer feel the need to be here for some theatrical last moment. Given how things are, there may not be one anyway—the nature of this disease seems to be a slow slipping away, and we may walk in tomorrow morning to find her gone. So home I go, and safe journeys to us both.
She had a way, like most Moms do, of making everything better. Even her own death has been made more bearable for us by her attitude, her acceptance of this circumstance. But she is leaving us little by little, and soon, and with another looming family health crisis on the horizon, I desperately want someone who can make it all better for me. Now I have to figure out how to do it myself, and my inner kid is screaming a tantrum about not wanting to grow up, in spite of the fact that I’m three days away from the perpetual birthday (39).
When I was younger and still living at home, crises always got hashed out on a blue rug in Mom’s office. I would usually walk in after dinner, plunk myself down in the middle of the rug with the kind of deep sigh only teenagers are capable of, and wait impatiently for her to ask me what was wrong. After a lot of verbal tugging, she always managed to shake my problem loose and hold it up to the light, where it didn’t seem quite so impressive or important anymore. The fact that I’m able to discuss my feelings openly like this now is a testament to years of Mom-based talk therapy.
And as my last little bits of denial wash away these days, the thing that makes me the saddest is that our conversations, though they’ll continue, will only be one-sided once she’s gone. Conversation about everything under the sun has been one of the constant joys in my family, and without her, it will be like a choir missing a whole section. The song will go on, but it will never sound the same.
Lots of time to reflect lately, unsurprisingly. Mom continues to slowly decline, though with surprising bursts of energy the last few days. She sent me downstairs in search of an elusive box with her mother’s initials on the top, and in the course of looking for it, I found an amazing treasure: 6 boxes of family photos and mementos. Some of this I was aware of, but lots of it was stuff that I’d never seen before. More importantly, much of it was stuff my parents hadn’t seen (or at least looked at) in decades. We’ve spent Mom’s alert moments in the last few days going through it, trying to put names on photos, reading letters, and generally trying to pass on as many stories as possible. It’s moments like these that we all wish that my brother could be here (him most of all, I’m sure), but I’m trying to get this all written down so that I can pass it on to him and his kids ultimately, since I’m one end of the family line.
So what does this have to do with passing the baton? Maybe nothing, but having been here for nearly 6 weeks now, I can’t help but feel like a torch is being passed in a lot of ways. There’s the obvious generational thing, but it feels like more than that somehow. Mom and I have had the chance to talk over the years (and especially now) about some pivotal spiritual and artistic events in her life, and more than ever I feel like I am following the same path she’s been on the last few years, trying to get a sense of my place in the world, why I’m here, and what I’m meant to do. She found those things ultimately, I think, in family, art and service to the Fire Department. I’m still looking, but I told her the other night that I felt like I was getting close to figuring some of it out, and she said she thought so too. I’m steeling myself for her passing, but I also know that I’ll always have a voice in my head that says “You go, baby girl.” I’m blessed, and holding out my hand.
Soundtrack for this entry: Jill Scott – “Golden”. My manifesto of the moment, courtesy of Beauty Shop.