Dear Friends,

I couldn’t start fresh. The jumble jar of details was essential, it seems. If I can’t be clear about this time, and I can’t even find words to speak outside my family right now, let the context stand: when I again say life has been life-ing, it means in every way.

I was compelled to write this beneath a scrawl of notes I’d never text to my family—notes I detailed from all the nurses and doctors who have come in to illuminate how this would work. I’d asked for advice from almost everyone—the stellar medical staff, my dear cousins, Michael, the remarkable angel-on-earth chaplain, and in quieter moments in every other spare second, G*d. What was I to look for? How may I help? They’d been through this many times before. And yes, I have been at the bedside with friends and clients who’d asked, too. It’s sometimes beautiful. Yes. But it’s also been brutal. I feel ill-prepared. It’s humbling, disarming, and shocking, but I wouldn’t be anywhere else for Mom. As mothers protect their young, I was as fierce in protecting our mama at every step.

For many days, I wondered why this wasn’t taught to us. Shouldn’t we all know how to do this? Shouldn’t we be schooled to read the signs? I did my best to listen to the inner wisdom and breathe into the process. I listened to “Being Mortal” on every drive to and fro. The imperative need to respect every cell of Mom kept pushing forward. Then, the words “Take nothing for granted” repeated in my head, over and over, as I looked at my feet, trying to take in this new path. Years ago, my pastor, Rev. Michael Beckwith, reassured me when I asked why I kept being chosen to attend the tender times. He said, “You’ve been called to one of the most sacred tasks of all, Jane. This is spiritual midwifery, but instead of just helping a soul in, as you do with childbirth, here, you are assisting the soul in returning home.”

But this time… This is my mom. Mama. How do I…?

Since moving back to Northern California before the pandemic to help my siblings help our mother in these fragile years, we knew that getting to her nineties was a considerable achievement. We also agreed to bring her out of her isolation room at the hospital and to get her home was the “gentle way” that Mom always preferred to travel. No more pokes. No more scans. No more sirens. No more screaming, swearing neighbors in the hospital. She has long adored the slower road with the sunlight through the trees, taking in the friendly squirrels, open fields, and lush orchards of her youth or sighing as the scent of the warm river air wraps around her. “Isn’t it marvelous?” She’d say when we took the gentle way. The freeway was only suitable for long road trips to visit, but now, hospice would be her gentle way forward with us beside her.

Hospice began on her 96th birthday, and the youthful EMTs wheeled her in the room to us under an arch of felt letters spelling out c-e-l-e-b-r-a-t-e that I’d festooned with pink paper lanterns and yellow balloons. Mom asked the EMTs their names. She was always elegant, always polite, always connecting on a personal level.

I could hardly catch my breath to see how impossibly tiny our mother now was in the arms of the woman who lifted her from the gurney as gently as a baby and set her down in her soft, yellow bed of many pillows. “Thank you, dear,” Mom said as she tried to sit up and adjust her bedcovers. Birthday banners and fresh chamomile daisies in mason jars encircled her room. Though Mom was recently declared legally blind, she could still see the edges. And what she couldn’t see, she’d ask about, and we’d tell her in detail. She loved that her birthday gift was coming home. She loved that I actually did bring her requested homemade lemon cupcakes and that I’d stayed up until 2:00 AM to bake them (because that’s what she would have done.) She insisted the EMTs take one each, too, before they waved goodbye. We lit Mom’s candles. My siblings and I sang to her. She made her birthday wish, and we feasted. Cupcakes, Coke, and cards for Mom. Nat King Cole, “Unforgettable” played on. She was always up for a party.

Rather than insulate for the next recovery, we prepared our hearts for what Mom’s father called “Topflight.” We decided to invite our closest family members to fly or drive in and don yellow and blue paper gowns, gloves, and masks for a tiny window in hospice in her apartment for the next few days so Mom could verbally give her cards of love and see her precious family one last time while she could still speak. My cousins are spectacular in their love of Mom, our family’s matriarch, and she has been remarkable. I don’t think she’s ever missed a wedding, a shower, or a family reunion.

For us to have a little more freedom having hospice at home, again, I wonder how this could feel so sad even when I knew this was her gentle path, her topflight to joy and sweet reunion with her family, husband, and friends who had gone before her. Each visitor, young and old, shared their happy memories, brought flowers, or showed pictures of their kids, their grand and great-grandchildren, her great-nieces, and great-grandsons and great-grandnieces. She received laughter and love. She gave each her blessing and thanked them for visiting, tasking everyone to keep all our cousins together and, to some a bit more, our democracy. (Mom is a lifelong Democrat, as is her former mayor of Berkeley, CA father and her teacher mother. Her brothers and my father fought and defended democracy in WW2, and while she didn’t want family strife, she wanted everyone to remember she, too, had marched for women’s rights. She, too, marched for her teachers’ union in Oakland. She was stunned and horrified at what had happened under the former administration.)

And then, after the last guest left, she said to my sister, “I think, just us now. No more visitors.” I’d already closed the door, agreeing. Now, just my brothers, sister, and me with her. Now, just her nurses. Food was left at the door for us to bring in, but it was barely, if ever, touched.

As I held her hand for days and nights, I saw a collage of joy and grief layering above her and she said, “I’m tired.” And then, as I knelt beside her to tell her I love her again, she reached out, held my face in both hands, and said, “My baby.” She stroked my hair smooth, over and over again. Strength to speak had been elusive this day, but her face glowed, and her eyes twinkled with every bit of sweetness she could summon with her smile, “You,” she continued, “are my beautiful baby. I love you so.” I looked over at my brother, standing a few feet away. His eyes were as red-rimmed with tears as mine. All my life, Mom loved introducing me as her baby, laughing when I was her 30-year-old baby, then her 40-year-old baby, then her 50-year-old baby. She wasn’t laughing this time with the 61-year-old baby, but she smiled as wide as she could and said, “I love you, my baby. Thank you.”

She didn’t fly with “Moon River” on the night of the most beautiful full moon—two of her favorite things that live in the air. And she seemed determined not to impact my dear sister-in-law’s birthday or the day following her birthday. But after a beautiful, relatively quiet, nearly solo night with my Mom (save the nurses tenderly checking on her hourly), where I read every bit of poetry that real and Facebook friends brought forth and played many, many of the gorgeous songs offered, too, after the sun rose, after her beloved chaplain visited with all the most cradling Catholic rite words and prayers tucked into her heart, after her favorite nurse and her favorite RNA came back from their weekend and came in her room to tell her they love her, and each gave a caress of comfort, and not long after my sister arrived and told me our mother wanted me to have her ring, as Annie held her right hand and as I held her left…with as much grace as she lived her life…she took one…two…three breaths more…and…then…our mother flew to her heavenly home.

And now, three days… four… I am still struggling to share the immensity of her love and the magnificence of her life when I can’t seem to find words worthy enough through my tears. Is there a thesaurus for grief like this? Even when she’s been prepping us all for two decades, why is this so hard? My brother Don astutely offered, “We’ve never known Mom not to bounce back. She’s always recovered.”

“Yeah. True.” I agreed, crying again. “She’s always been one miracle after another.”

And she still is. Mom has bounced back all the way to her soul’s perfection.

…

I have many more beautiful stories about my mother, but maybe I’ll try another day. We already have sweet stories of her reminding us she made it and is pushing love notes from the other side. Mom and her love are to be continued.

Please forgive me for not texting, calling, or writing back—even my closest friends and family, who are dearly checking in on us. I am stretched so thin right now with the many details of life after life and how to honor my mother. I will do my best to read everything and write back as I can, but it may take a while longer than good manners and Mom would encourage. Hopefully, I will get a new footing soon.

I appreciate your understanding and am sending my love.

P.S. Some here may remember Mom being the most supportive Mom to my siblings, my family, and me, but also to many of you during in-person events starting back when she’d come to Braco events in San Francisco and Los Angeles, and later to Dancing Hands events in N. CA.  Perhaps next time I’ll share more details about her hands during this time, but again, I’ve had enough tears for one day and need to get back to organizing her things with my sister.

Hug your loved ones. Even at 96, she’d agree life is too short. Love more.