Requiem for My Mother

Rumi says:

On the day I die, don’t weep.Don’t say she’s gone.

Death has nothing to do with going away.The sun sets and the moon sets, butthey’re not gone.

Death is a coming together.The human seed goes down into the groundlike a bucket, and come up withsome unimagined beauty!

Your mouth closes here,and immediately openswith a shout of joythere!

Today is the sixth anniversary of my mother’s death. This morning at 5:30 A.M. I lit a candle in her memory.

At 5:30 A.M. on February 23, 2004, she breathed her last. After many plane trips to her home during her last year, on that last trip I had been back less than 12 hours when she passed. I think she waited for me.

I was so very fortunate to be able to hold my mother’s hand as she took her last breaths. Being with your mother when she dies is at once unforgettable, profoundly painful, and a priceless privilege. It doesn’t always work out that way though; I’m sure that being with a loved one in spirit as they pass over can mean as much.

I began this post with words from the 13th century Sufi poet, Jalaludin Rumi, because they give me such comfort. For Mama, though, here are some Biblical words from the Book of Romans that I know often sustained her:

All things work together for good for them that love God.

Mom was fortunate to be able to die at home in her own bed as she had wanted. She was fortunate to have a gentle death. The funeral home, the burial and the large memorial service followed. The family gathered afterward to tell stories such as her nieces and nephews remembering that she was always first up the mountain when she took them on dessert hikes around Tucson.

Like all of us, she was a very imperfect person. Yet she was  loved by her large extended family, and by hundreds members of her church family both nearby and far away in other countries.

She went on more than 25 working trips abroad, trying to improve the lives of people in India, Venezuela, China, South Africa, and many others. She spent much of her life trying to do good as she understood it.

Death dissolves personality limitations and leaves only the love. I am forever grateful that for her this happened before death; for the last weeks of her life, she became all love.

Thank you Mama for thousands of Southern cooked meals, for hundred of holidays made sweeter by your cooking and gifts, for your stuffing, your potato salad and your pecan pie, for your example of getting down on the floor to enjoy a child, and for always making music a part of our lives. Thanks for the protection and consistency you provided.

Most of all, thanks for teaching me that the spiritual part of life is the most important. That lesson sustains me everyday.

Mary Oliver says:

When Death Comes When death comeslike the hungry bear in autumn;when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;when death comeslike the measle-pox;

when death comeslike an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everythingas a brotherhood and a sisterhood,and I look upon time as no more than an idea,and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as commonas a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and somethingprecious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say:  all my lifeI was a bride married to amazement.I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it’s over, I don’t want to wonderif I have made of my life something particular, and real.I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world.

=======================================

I love you Mama, and I miss  you everyday.

Your daughter, Vicki ==========================

Blessings to you, dear visitor. Please share your own story of the final chapter in the life of someone dear to you by emailing me at drvlee1234@aol.com.