Dear Mom

Hi, Mom, it’s Jerry. Just got back to New Hampshire and thought I’d tell you about the last week. Remember when you started a text chat with me from your hotel last Friday? I thought when you typed “help me” that you might have a computer problem, but then all of your words were mixed up and it quickly became clear that something bad was happening. I tried to call, but you couldn’t hear or understand me and hung up. Laura got through and you were too disorientated to call 911 or even tell her where you were. While she tried to talk, I poured through old emails to find out where you were. In the end I simply thought like you and looked for the hotel nearest to the hospital where Jake was being treated. That was it. The lady at the desk was nice enough to go check on you. By then you’d collapsed on the floor and they called 911.

Later, Laura talked to the emergency room doctor. Medium to large stroke, he said, with a two inch clot in your brain. We really need to get in there, remove the clot and stop the bleeding, the doctor told Laura. She told him you had a “do not resuscitate” and he said this wasn't that type of situation, you had something wrong and they had a chance of being able to fix it. Doctors are so optimistic.

Surgery went well and they hooked you up to more tubes and wires than you can probably imagine. I had caught the first plane and arrived that night, a few hours after surgery. My first thought was “Mom wouldn’t like this.” The emergency nurse was a young guy, full of himself, and I so much wanted him to tone it down for the evening or swap with someone else. You would have had no such hesitation in telling him just that.

I stayed at the hotel you'd been at, since you’d already paid and it was right next door. I’ve got to say that was one of the worst nights I’ve had in a long time. Not your best choice in hotels, Mom. Thoughts of you echoed almost loud enough to drown out the constant noise of doors opening and closing from Sturgis-bound bikers checking in or partying throughout the night.

Saturday morning’s cat scan showed more blood and damage than they expected. Laura and Kirk, who'd been driving all night, arrived an hour after the scan. A few hours later we sat with the doctor to get the bad news. He said that, as a surgeon, he could go in there and clean things up, all tidy like. As a Son he knew that wasn’t what our Mom wanted. In the process he’d be sweeping away large chunks of what made you, you. We all knew the answer, most likely loudly telegraphed from your anesthetized body a few feet away. We knew you'd hate what had been done so far, being a realist and knowing the slim chances of recovery, and would never want to face a life less than fully functional. We agreed that we’d be removing the life support, but would wait until Chris arrived.

The airline, just as you would expect, delayed Chris and Chelsea’s flight out of Minneapolis. Eventually the three of us kids sat down to discuss what didn’t need to be discussed. It’s like having a meeting to decide if the sky is really blue or if Winter in Atlantic City is cold and snowy.

I’m already fuzzy about the timing, but they took you off of life support. If it were possible I can imagine you smiled, took a deep breath, and gladly took back the job of taking care of yourself.

All through the years you’ve told us again and again that you wanted no drastic measures to keep you alive. Being a bit naive I guess I’d always assumed that DNR simply meant they’d take you off some machine and you’d quietly fall asleep, forever. Quickly. Silly me. I forgot that this is the same woman who left a cheating husband and raised three kids on her own while putting herself through nursing school. The woman who lost a kidney to a clumsy surgeon’s knife in an unrelated surgery and then decided to fight off colon cancer without chemo (and won). Just a few of the many challenges you've faced head on over the years while living alone in a cabin at eight thousand foot elevation on the foothills of the Rockies without running water, electricity, and only wood heat (from logs you cut and split). Not to mention the trudging to an outhouse to do your business no matter how many degrees below zero it might be.

Oh, and happy birthday. Never in your wildest dreams would you have guessed your 74th birthday present from us kids was removing your life support.

The doctor said a couple of days, what with the damage, only one kidney, and so on. But he didn’t know you. He didn’t look at your hands and see your strength. He couldn’t look in your eyes and realize who he was dealing with. He wasn't one of the many doctors you boldly confronted when trying to save a grandchild or a friend from a mistaken diagnosis. Two days turned into four, then six, and even we started wondering what you were doing.

It’s a grizzly affair, as I’m sure you are aware. At first I didn’t want to sit with you, wanted only to remember you the way you were; typical melodramatics on my part. Chris signed off as well. We decided you were gone. Only Laura sat tirelessly by your side, talking to you, holding your hand, making sure you were comfortable. After they pulled out the tubes you looked more like Mom and I sat with you one morning. First I went for a long, soul-searching walk, a trait you passed on to me. Somewhere, in that sunny, humid South Dakota morning with memories of you flashing through my head, I realized that whether it was you or merely the shell that carried you, I owed you that much and so much more. So I went in and sat the morning with you.

The first fifteen minutes sucked. Tubes or no tubes, this wasn’t Mom. People constantly stopped by to ask if we needed anything, did we have any questions? Eventually, gradually, it became less about me and losing “my” mom and more about caring for the woman all of us loved and owed so much to.

You want to know the funny thing Mom? All of us kids, and probably most of the cousins who showed up, really shared one common thing: we wanted to call you up and tell you about this situation, ask your advice. The one thing we all knew was that you’d always be there, for family and friends. Your own hardship and worries always took a back seat if someone else was in need. That’s why you were in Sioux Falls in the first place, making the twelve hour drive to help out and stand by your sister’s oldest son Jacob as he went in for cancer surgery. You calmed him, explained things. Heck, for all I know, you probably showed him the scars from your own surgeries.

Jake is doing fine. They removed the kidney and the tumor. He has some work to do to recover and learn to take care of himself, but he had a good coach and should be fine.

The week passed with you in a private room on the fifth floor, one or more of us standing vigil. Saturday night Chris, Chelsea, and I sat in the hotel room and had a great conversation about you. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could do this in mom’s room, I thought, rather than the somber sadness and gloom that pervades our visits? As chance would have it that’s just what happened the next night. Shiela and Bill stopped by and we’re all sitting around with long faces, conversation sporadic. Somehow a pleasant conversation started. I mentioned the dude ranch you took us kids too, we looked it up on the internet and a flood of memories filled the room. We talked and laughed and reminisced and there was no specter of death in the room, just a loving mother and a family. We even watched this video, using my phone since the hotel’s wifi blocks such silliness from computers on their network.

That lightened the mood and reminded us who we and you are. After that Chris sat with you and we split up the days and nights to be by your side. We’d play music and I even tried my hand at reading poetry. Well, at first I started reading a South Dakota magazine about the foods of the state. That sounded interesting, since you'd grown up there, but part way through I remembered that you hadn’t eaten for days and, silly or not, I couldn’t bring myself to read it anymore.

I’m sure each of us kids wondered how much of you was there, inside, listening. When the nurses came to move you on the bed and apply a bit of Chapstick you clamped down your lips in resistance to fight them off. If a song came on the computer with sad singing (sorry, Lucinda) you groaned until it was changed. Ditto to a few of the poems I started and a limerick told by Chelsea. It could have all been circumstantial, probably was, but you'd never had compunctions about giving your opinion before, so why stop now?

I’d been thinking that maybe you were waiting on the results of Jacob’s surgery, but Tuesday came and went and you held on even after we gave you the good news. Shirley, Sara, and Carol all stopped by to say goodbye and you soldiered on.

Thursday arrived and your breathing was stable and quiet, you had a fever but seemed to have settled in to a comfortable rhythm. Kirk and I went out to find an urn for your ashes, just as Laura and I had done for Lee five years ago. The funeral home wanted a hundred and sixty bucks for a plastic cardboard box. I toyed with the idea of posting “trip to Target in search of a suitable cookie jar urn” to Twitter, another internet thing for sharing minutia of one's life, but decided against it. We visited a half dozen stores, mostly kitchen related, passing up clear glass and plastic containers, lidless ceramics, and even a decorative compost bin. You won’t be surprised to hear that Kirk and I were standing in the middle of Target calculating how many ashes your body might produce and the space they’d require. The internet says a little less than a cubic inch per pound, or about eighty cubic inches for one hundred pounds. Kirk found a ceramic two quart container at Kohl’s ... on sale.

We dropped the urn and the paperwork off at the funeral home and headed back to the hospital. Chris and Chelsea were out looking for pants since Chris has lost a lot of weight over the last half year (don’t get him started on carbs unless you have plenty of time!). I took over from Laura so she could take a break. You and I listened to some music and then some of the hospice folks came to visit. One of them, I’m sorry I’ve forgotten her name, is an Opp, which means she’s related to us on your Mom’s side of the family. We discovered that both of us also have a four year old! Later, as we talked about your life and about the books you’ve been writing you suddenly stopped breathing. A short pause, then back to normal. A nurse came in after a few of those and said that this was a change in direction and suggested I call Laura and Chris.

You left quietly and gently, Mom. A slowing of breathing and pulse, a pause, one last breath and you were gone.

For the first time this whole trip I cried and cried. Not for you, for you have always been at peace with the world and yourself, but for myself. For Laura. For Chris. For all of the grandchildren and nieces and nephews who have been touched by you but would no longer have such a strong, generous person in their life. But mostly for myself. You never appreciate the anchor until you find yourself adrift. Or, perhaps, you were the rudder. Whatever the metaphor if there’s one thing that has been a stabilizing and inspirational force in my life it has been you.

I love you Mom. Goodbye.

Please feel free to leave a comment with your remembrances of Phil.