10 weeks ago, Mom called my two sisters and me from the hospital in Staunton, Virginia, with the news that lung cancer cells had been found in her body, enough to warrant an inoperable, terminal diagnosis and her decision to place herself in the care of a hospice nurse, preferably with us at her bedside. “I will go soon,” she said. “Come home when you can.” Within a week I was on a flight headed east, without any idea of what lay ahead aside from the imaginary specter of my mother’s weakening body, and terrifying knowledge that I’d be without her soon.
I left everything behind. An unfinished mural. My boyfriend and other close friends. A set of presumptions and goals, and many half-baked plans to re-launch the project I’ve been building and presenting here for nearly a year, my Search of the Frightening and Beautiful, journey number 4. I was to get on my bike sometime around August 25 and head east on U.S. backroads, talking to people, swapping stories for new ones, ending up at Mom’s, with whom I’d spend a week or so catching up. She was going to drive me to Newark so I could take my ultra-cheap flight to Spain, where I’d process all those fresh road experiences into new art, repeating the whole thing in early November while heading back to Texas.
But when your mother calls you home at the end of her life, all else stops. Nothing else matters. Nothing at all. Most of those plans went on hold and I dedicated what resources I had to getting to her and helping my sisters care for her during her final two weeks in this realm. This would turn out to be among her greatest gifts, second only to bringing me into the world.
I’m not going to share much of those two weeks. I won’t because they belong to us - to Mom, Laird, Lee; nephews Mart, Connor, Gabe; niece Brianna; and me. They belong as well to extended family and friends who visited when they could, pouring in love in the form of cards, flowers and food that kept magically appearing in our kitchen, enabling us to focus on Mom instead of driving every day into town for groceries. And they belong to the hospice nurse who knew what to do when we were clueless, who rescued us when we were in danger of imploding under the emotional strain of what was happening.
Rather than going into detail - I mean, who the hell needs that anyway - there are impressions to describe: indelible beauty marks she left with us, traces of her grace, strength and vulnerability - the life-affirming things that are worthy of passing on.
Like her sense of humor. I never before realized how sharp it was. She’d always made fun of herself (my Mom’s fart jokes would have embarrassed GG Allin), but as the sickness took hold and she grew slower and quieter, she’d release these amazing one-liners that’d stop us in our tracks. In moments we thought she was fading, she would suddenly, in a word or two, remind us that she was not only still around, but smarter than the rest of us. Or she’d raise one well-timed eyebrow at, say, an ill-informed remark or at a questionable choice somebody would make…and any pesky egos would be handily dispatched.
Her physical strength and ability to communicate diminished fast - we could tell that frustrated her, despite my sisters’ agility and efficiency in caring for her. None of us knew what we were doing…but we did our best to figure it out (in my case often quite clumsily) and to let her know every day how much we loved her. She returned that love in spades; as tired as she grew, I could feel it emanate from her eyes and in her grip that remained tight whenever she held my hand. In her last moment of consciousness my nephew Connor asked her how she was feeling, to which she replied, “comfortable…and at peace.”
On her final day, as her breathing grew more labored, my sisters and I gathered around her, focusing as much warm energy on her as we could. Though her lungs and heart were shutting down - things that had till then conjured images from nightmares in my own mind - she remained quiet and peaceful, undisturbed by the laboring of her own body, as if she were already somewhere else. It occurred to me - to all of us with her in that moment - that she was already on a journey, leaving her body and returning, until at last it was time for her to go in earnest. A couple of days earlier, as my mother sat dreamily in her knitting chair, my aunt noticed her folding the corners of the sheet we’d placed over her legs to keep her from getting chilled. “I’ve seen this before,” Nancy said. Her own mother, my great aunt Betty, only days prior to her own passing, had also been observed methodically folding a sheet or blanket in her lap. “I have to catch a train,” she’d said, when asked what she was doing. She was getting ready for a trip - the grandest trip of all…
Mom died on the morning of August 3, a warm, sunny Saturday. My two sisters, my nephew Connor and I watched her take one final, graceful last breath. Laying there with those wisps of white hair curled back from her face, she was still as beautiful as she’d ever been.
I miss the hell out of her. I still reach for the phone, wondering what she’s up to. Then I remember she’s not there to answer any more, and it sucks. Truly. But then I realize the importance of and freedom inherent in letting go of her. I don’t have her to turn to when I need help any more. As she is free of the limitations of her human body, I am also free to move into the world, and into myself, without attachment to anyone or any thing. Which is the way it should be.
So here I am, at Villa Bergerie, an artist residency based in a pre-Renaissance-era village of roughly 32 people, in the foothills of the Pyrenees of northern Spain. Mom insisted I go, even after she became sick (the plane ticket was her 50th birthday present to me). I have 5 more weeks to contemplate my life from a distance, to re-align myself and stretch out in new directions, whatever they may be.
In Search of the Frightening and Beautiful carries on, though “journey no. 4” will likely happen through a series of shorter trips into Texas and the surrounding states. The nineteen stories I’ve stitched so far will make their ways into the lives of others, though I realize more than ever now that meaningful exchanges with strangers can’t be predicted or choreographed. I will go out into the world again and they will occur.
The text on my own embroidered story is a bit sketchy. (It wasn’t easy to make.) For those who find it on the illegible side, it reads,
“She sat there in her knitting chair, surrounded by her daughters and grandkids, attempting slowly to stitch the last rows of a blanket she was trying to finish for her closest friend. She looked down at me sitting on the floor and smiled calmly, her eyes warm and kind.
I thanked her feebly for her lifetime of support and generosity, not knowing what else to say. ‘Thank you for being born,’ she said.
Those were my mother’s last words to me. Two days later, she was gone.
