On Memory and New Beginnings

I lost my mom at the end of October. Soon, I’ll mark the third anniversary of her passing. The kids heading back to school, the cooler temperatures, the dark mornings, the way the sunlight shifts and weakens - all of these sensory cues bring memories of her final weeks flooding back. I remember visiting her at the nursing home where we had moved her after her last hospitalization. When the nurse would come to care for her and ask me to step out, I would escape to an outdoor deck near her room for a breath of fresh air and to clear my head. While it seemed that she was nearing the end of her life, there was a bit of hope that she would recover enough to move from the inpatient rehab to the assisted living section of the building. That flicker of hope also contained the futile optimism that she would come to terms with her situation and accept the reality that she could no longer live alone in a second floor apartment. As the days of October passed, her condition worsened and all of those flickers were extinguished. It simply became a waiting game. 

When I close my eyes, I can see myself on that deck at the nursing home, pacing, a little chilled in the crisp autumn air. I remember calling my sister, belaboring every medical decision, telling her what the doctors had said, describing the forms the nurse manager of the unit had instructed me to sign.

Over those long weeks, the leaves on the trees surrounding the deck turned from green to bright red and orange, falling gently to the sloping lawn that led to the road, the exit, the highway that would take me away from that sad place and back to my husband and children.

I don’t think I ever saw my mother smile during her final days. She was unhappy in that facility, and complained about the staff and the food. She asked constantly when she would go home. She was angry and fading. Initially, for a few weeks, she was sitting up and we would exchange a few words. After a while, as her condition declined and she stopped eating and drinking, she was bed-bound, sleeping most of the day, with an oxygen tube slipping out of her nostrils. On those days I just sat with her and spoke quietly, telling her news of her grandchildren or the weather (we always talked about the weather). I wish it had been different. I did the best I could and yet I’m pretty sure I messed it up. I felt ill-equipped to handle the work of helping my mother transition out of this life.

She died in the early hours of a Monday morning. I was planning on driving to see her that day as soon as I dropped my daughter at school, but I was too late. I wish I had been there, that she had not been alone. A kind, soft spoken nurse who worked the overnight shift called me at 7 am. He had a slight Caribbean lilt to his voice. He said the consoling, gentle words he had been trained to use to inform a family member of their loss. He was very sorry to tell me she had passed peacefully in her sleep, and I had his deepest sympathies.

Recently, I was feeling sad for no particular reason. I told my 16 year old daughter how I was feeling and suggested that the time of year reminded me of Baba (my Mom) passing and how I regretted that she was mad at me at the end of her life. With wisdom well beyond her years, she was quick to reassure me. “She wasn’t mad at you, Mama,” she said. “She was mad at her situation, that she couldn’t stay in her apartment anymore. She was mad at life, not at you.”

I hope my daughter is right, but of course, I’ll never know. The grief of losing someone can so often be tied up with the guilt and self-doubt of not knowing whether you did everything you could for the person you lost. As we’ve just celebrated the Jewish High Holidays, I’m reminded of the concept of T’shuvah, or “return",” a set of principles that mark the ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. It is a time of repentance, repair and new beginnings. As fall deepens and the natural world fades into winter, I’ll try to leave the painful memories of her final weeks behind in favor of happier memories from our time together. I’ll give myself some grace and forgiveness. Maybe this October will mark a new beginning.