When you spend time with a person who is dying, you become painfully aware of what really matters. I just spent a long weekend at my mother’s home in Colorado, both to relieve my siblings from her 24-hour care and also to be there for her 86th birthday. To be honest, when you have lost a parent at a young age, you constantly wonder when the other one will go.
My mother took pride in the fact that she hadn’t been to the doctor from the day I was born until about 8 years ago when she started having TIA’s (mini strokes). From that point on, one thing after another has happened to cause her health to deteriorate, some of which might have been prevented had she done, well, her “preventative” care. But as her forced acquisition of a physician said to her, “parts wear out”. Unfortunately, at this point, she’s not fixable.
As of a month ago when I was there for my last visit, my mother could still shuffle around using a walker, venture into most parts of the house (a tri-level, so no easy feat), and had a fairly clear mind so that conversations flowed, although slower than in previous years. Now, my mother is confined to a hospital bed and wheel chair, with very infrequent field trips into a room next door to watch the occasional t.v. show. When I arrived, my sister updated me on her medications, her current habits, and also how to transfer her to and from the bed, to the commode, the wheelchair, and back again. She said that with mom’s confused state they have learned that the best way to they get her to and fro was to stand her up, wrap your arms around her, then tell her to dance with you so you could more easily direct her to her next seating arrangement, while supporting her crackly and brittle bones. Luckily, mom was able to joke about this as I moved her, but it was clear that she was in complete pain and equal dismay at her situation.
My mother has always been a person of pride—perhaps part of her Leo character or maybe just her way of life in general. She has always valued her independence and stubborn nature, and was able to hold these titles until the last couple years—mobile, capable, and resourceful. Needless to say, seeing her like she is now could break even the most concretized heart, but once again, it is a wake-up call for how to become more conscious of the nuances of end of life.
Being who I am, I am constantly wondering what is going on in my mother’s mind. She has never been one to share much or talk about her feelings, but it wasn’t difficult to decode—during this trip in particular—that reality was setting in. She told me the second day I was there that she thought everything would be better once I arrived, but it hit her earlier that evening that there was no future. These were hard words to hear, but they also indicated a new level of consciousness that her passing was imminent and undeniable. Perhaps this is an awareness we all reach when we are preparing our psyche and soul to leave this world.
As an agent of conscious evolution, I listen to what people say from a grand scope. I take in where they are in their process of day-to-day awareness, as well as consider their place in this intricate matrix that we call life. Because I believe in reincarnation, I can see my mother both reviewing her 86 years and preparing to let go so she can enter her new life, whatever that will be. Through the eyes of consciousness, I can see the dynamics that are playing out between she and I, my siblings, my deceased father, and various others in a 3-D sort of way. I understand that some karmic ties are being completed, while others are likely going to need to be worked out through many lifetimes—unless people commit to doing their work. Understanding the matrix brings me peace in a complicated, but enlightening sort of way.
After my father’s death, there was a great deal of healing to do—grieving for what could have been, for what was, and how the grand matrix might have played out differently had we known to do our work when he was alive. It took me seven years to release the pain and come to understand the major role(s) he played in my life. But in reality, it played out exactly as it was supposed to in order to give me the opportunity to learn what I was supposed to. In my training to become a psychologist, I learned a great deal about how to manage and heal, and through my understanding of the Universe—the world beyond the world—I now know how to evolve as a result of each loss.
I’ve done my work with my mother. For the most part, our karma is dissolved and I will grieve much differently for her than I did my father. In doing my anticipatory healing, I can now see the beauty in a person’s passing. I will never enjoy seeing another suffer, but now I know that how a person plays out the end of their life is also part of the grand matrix. It is both part of what they chose to learn before they make their transition and is also part of everyone else’s matrix who is touched by a particular loss. There are often huge things to learn as a result of our pain, and grief provides a necessary catalyst to moving forward—or backward—depending on whether we learn what we are supposed to in order to evolve beyond the loss. Unlike my father’s death, I already know what my mother’s transition will mean to me at the time it occurs, not seven years later. I know what it will mean for relationships I have with other family members, friends, work, and many other aspects of my life—many of which are already shifting. I know that with every ending there is a beginning, and that the results will play out in both big and small ways.
Throughout my time with my mom this weekend, she kept saying, “And when people ask what you did on your trip, you will tell them you danced with your mother.” Indeed, I will.
Ironically, Dancing With the Stars was one of her favorite television shows over the last few years. She watched religiously and picked her favorites. She often told stories about how she and my father would go out for a night on the dance floor and how she would wear her high heels, do the polka and other sorts of jigs. It is somehow comforting to know that she is ending her life how she lived it in her earlier years.
My guess is that next time I see her, she will either have passed or be even nearer the inevitable revolving—and evolving—doorway of demise. Regardless of dancing with her on the way to death’s door, I can honestly say that our recent swaying will be the most beautiful dances of my life.
Thank you for this dance, mom. It will not be forgotten.
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