Jamie and Matthew got the call
from Mom's doctor somewhere around 7am: today was the day. They were told Mom's
breathing had become labored and to come to the hospital quickly. Then, Dad's
doctor, Courtney Snyder, called. My siblings relayed that news to him and
Courtney, a man my father actually trained, said that he'd personally prepare
Dad with the news. Then they called me. I skipped meditation and showering:
time was of the essence. I got dressed quickly but had to take a shit. While
crapping, the phone rang again. It was my brother. He was crying. He didn't
need to say the words, but stumbled through them anyway: Mom had died.
It was classic comedic irony: Mom
shits herself, interrupting our goodbye conversation just a few days earlier;
then she dies, interrupting me taking a shit.
I finished dressing, picked up my
siblings, and called the funeral home to start the process of executing the
funeral I'd planned for Mom according to her wishes. And then, together, we
drive over to Albert Einstein Medical Center to have one last visit with Mom.
We drove in one car, something we'd not yet done on this trip. I remember that
much. But I don't remember how we got to the hospital. I just remember handing
over the keys to the valet parking service and then walking inside. And needing
to take a deep breath. And Jamie's comment to the “security guards” at the
front desk that they needn’t worry about seeing us again. Then we got into the
elevator together and rode up to the eighth floor in silence.
There is, literally, nothing you
can do to prepare yourself for seeing your parent dead. Nothing. There's no
special mantra, prayer or deep breathing technique that will, somehow, reduce
the shock of seeing someone you've known for your entire existence laying
lifeless in a bed. All you can do is try to breathe and stay in the moment.
Walking down the hall of the 8th
floor to her room was like being in a dream. The hall telescoped out to beyond
my capacity, a blur of white tiles and beeping medical devices on rollers. As
we passed the nurses station, I glanced up and saw a few faces meet mine. And I
wondered: how many of these people already knew that Mom was dead? How many
knew that we were her children, walking down this hall to see her for the last
time? What did they think? Could they understand or were they too desensitized
from seeing scenes like this every day, of family traveling from distances near
and far to visit their workplace and watch people die?
As we floated in electric silence
to the front of Mom's room, her night nurse aid, Mamie, made way for us to
enter. Like Kerberos guarding the River Styx, she'd been guarding the threshold.
I offered Jamie to go in first. She was the only daughter, she was closest to
Mom in her final years and I thought it would be appropriate for her to lead us
in. She was already crying on the threshold. But I don't blame her. What
awaited us inside was otherworldly.
Mom was laying in bed in nearly
the same position we'd left her the night before: arms and feet raised on
pillows to help keep her comfortable, leaning slightly to one side. Her mouth
was open and so were her eyes. But her skin had already changed color slightly.
And it was cool to the touch. If you've never seen a dead body before,
there's... there's just no mistaking it: you know right away. There's a look,
an energy, and an emptiness around death that is both seen and felt because it
creates a silence around it, like a vacuum.
Jamie took Mom's hand and looked
into her face and said, "Oh, Mom... Oh, Mom..." Matthew went
around to the other side of the bed and put his hand on her arm and just looked
at her, helpless to change the situation. I put my hands on Mom's feet from the
end of the bed. They were cool to the touch. And I wept, silently at first and
then out loud, for the passing of a woman I admired, respected, loved and,
sometimes – in later years - truly despised. And when Jamie had moved away from
the bed and sat down in a chair, I moved to where she'd had been on Mom's bed.
And I took a deep breath. And I put my hand on Mom's. And I said to myself:
"Do not look away, David.
Look into the eyes of your dead Mother. See her. Be here with her now. Do not
be afraid. Do not look away from her death. You will regret that. Look upon her
and see her as she is now and know that she is gone."
And I tried. But I could not see
that she was gone. Instead, the permanence of her life became a powerful
illusion even after her death: I continued to see her chest rise and fall as
she lay there. I knew it wasn’t happening. I mean, I absolutely knew that my
mind was playing tricks on me but the vein there on the left side of her
neck... It was beating still, wasn't it? Didn't it move just now? Didn't I just
now see that vein pump as it had been pumping the night before? I thought about
mentioning what I was seeing but remained silent. Moments later, Jamie said,
"It looks like Mom is still breathing," and, relieved, I blurted out,
"I know!" grateful that someone else was there with me, dreaming the
same lucid dream.
Jamie's phone rang, the same,
obnoxiously loud ring she refuses to alter. She glanced at its screen.
"It's Aunt Gert," she said.
"Not now," I said and
she put the call through to her voicemail. Jamie rarely listens to me, but in
this moment — a moment of raw, emotional human-ness — both my siblings followed
my lead. "No phone calls right now," I said. "I think we should
take a few minutes to sit here with Mom and just... be with her." And so
it was.
I opened the curtains that had
been drawn to keep the light from Mom's eyes. Light from the morning entered
the room. The view out of the window started with the heliport and extended
clear across the Eastern half of Philadelphia and over to New Jersey. We sat
silently around Mom. We looked at her. I picked up her limp arm, found her hand
from under the sheet and put my own in it. Her fingers were turning a shade of
blue I can't describe. I continued to see Mom breathing. After a while, I made
my way back to another chair. We shifted uncomfortably. Occasionally, someone
spoke, a memory here, an off-color joke there. We cried. But we were together,
Mom's three children, still there, surrounding her in bed, for one last time.
A nurse came in to remove a few
tubes from Mom; I asked her to please save that for after we'd left. I don't
think any of us could have beared to watch a person we didn't know manipulate
Mom's body in order to disconnect her from the various devices and tubes.
Sometime later, I couldn't tell
you how long, Mom's oncologist, Dr. Leighton, came into the room, followed by Marv,
Dad's business partner for nearly twenty years. And they both expressed their
sympathy. I shook their hands. Crying, I thanked Dr. Leighton for all he'd done
to help Mom to survive for as long as she had. He shook his head, saddened, and
called her a remarkable fighter. Marv asked if there was anything he could do.
Jamie said, "We admitted Dad to Jeannes Hospital a day ago. Go visit him. He
could use all the help he can get right now..."
There was a pause and we all
looked at Marv. He stumbled out that his schedule was, you know, kinda tight on
this particular day and that, well, he'd really need to spend the entire day at
Einstein Medical Center and, you know, we'd just need to see, wouldn't we...
When the two doctors left, I
drifted down to the nurses station and, over the beeps and boops of the
machines there, asked them to please call Goldstein's Funeral Home to begin the
process of claiming Mom's body for her final journey. They said they would, of
course and offered condolences, respectful to not make much eye contact.
I walked back to Mom's room but
didn't sit. "I'm going to say goodbye to Mom, now," I told Jamie and
Matthew. "I don't need to see her again. In fact, I don't really want to see her again at the funeral in her casket. I'd just
prefer to say goodbye now and leave it at that. And I just wanted to let you
know in case you felt the same way..." They both nodded in agreement. This
would be our last time seeing Mom. I walked to the left side of her bed, put my
hand on hers and leaned over to kiss her forehead. It was cool under my lips.
"Goodbye, Mom," I half
stammered, half swallowed. I'd started crying again, quietly this time. And
then, looking at her face one last time, I took a breath, turned my back on her
and — one foot in front of the other — walked from her room, a gentle surrender
into the chaos of whatever came next.
