Heartbeat in a bottle
My mom knew before we did that her time to leave her body was coming. It was Christmas time and she wasn’t quite herself. She hadn’t been herself for a few months at that point, but something shifted. We were together for a Christmas celebration, my siblings, our families, and my mom. She kept saying how happy she was that we were all together, how happy she was we were there with her. When I asked her why she kept saying things like that, she told me “because I’m dying.”
What do you do or say when someone tells you that? Did I have a feeling it was true? Yes. Did I want to believe it? No.
A couple of weeks later when when we had to bring her to the hospital, we knew that this might be it. Her body was tired, she was tired, and it couldn’t fight anymore. I would never wish on anyone the decisions we had to make navigating my mom’s health. We kept faith that she would decide when it was time, and she did just that. We didn’t have to remove any machines that were helping her live. She decided on her own time when she was ready. The pallative care team was such a gift. Those teams are truly doing hard and beautiful work to make things comfortable and dignified for everyone involved. To hear a team confirm to us “yes, your mother is dying” was such an odd thing to hear, but also such a relief to know that we weren’t trying to rush this process or “call it quits.” It truly was her time.
So much of death and dying we don’t talk about openly. It’s a hard place to go, to relive. Just like any stressful or traumatic time, it feels a bit out-of-body. I find myself reliving my mom’s final days a lot lately. All of the sudden the life has left the body and with it, pieces of your soul. It’s shock, it’s pain, it’s disbelief, it may also be relief for the suffering. It’s every emotion packed into miliseconds of your existence that will forever be changed.
In all of the loss I’ve experienced, I’ve always wondered if losing someone slowly, over time is better or worse than losing someone suddenly. When it happens suddenly, you have no time to prepare and process. When it happens over time, you are watching the life leave someone. Both, I would say, are hard. However, I have to say that as hard as it was to watch both of my parents succomb to disease, it was time I got to spend with them, help them, be with them. I wouldn’t change that. There is something painfully beautiful about supporting someone in the last moments of their life.
In the particular hospital where my mom spent her last moments, the nurse captured some of her heartbeats from the monitors and printed it out, placing it in a tiny little bottle. Each of us was able to keep a reminder of her heartbeat in a bottle. Another strange and beautiful gift — to be reminded of my mom’s life, her legacy, her heart — a reminder that her physical heart was no more.
These moments, however hard to revisit, are sprinklings of the last moments with her. And for that, I am forever grateful.
