A Story Bigger Than My Mother and Me: Opening Our Hearts and Dying Without Regrets

My mom on May 16th

Since the advent of COVID-19, and after two months of only being able to window visit and Facetime with my 93 year old mother at her assisted living, all that changed on May 12th. Her hospice nurse and management at Glenwood Senior Living consulted and decided that my mom's consistent decline meant that I should be again allowed to visit inside her apartment because no one knows how much time my mother has left.

I'm acutely aware of this when I see my mother every day. Does she have hours, days, weeks? Will she make it to her 94th birthday on June 5th? Will this be the last time I see my mom alive?

And then I return again and again to this moment, which is all we have. 
 
I am witness to and mindful of the changes that come with end stage Alzheimer's. My mother has lost the torso strength to sit up. Caregivers prop her up as best as possible in her recliner or in her hospital bed. And this enables me to feed my mama her pureed meal, one tiny bite at a time, and interspersed with sips of iced tea and ensure. Eating in itself has become a meditative moment to moment experience.

In-between spoonfuls and sips, Mom will sometimes slip in and out of consciousness. I watch to be sure that she has swallowed and is not pocketing her food or drink. And then, when her eyes again open slightly, I lean in smiling through my eyes, and Mom smiles back. So peaceful. Soul to soul smiles. And sometimes she'll move her lips and motion kisses to me. Kiss, kiss, kiss...

More often than not, my mother will be nonverbal, and our communication is through our eyes, through touch, through all the ways that love fills us and the space between us. Sometimes, my mama will break her silence and her gazing into my eyes with, "I love you" or "My darling."

I hug and hold my mama, kissing her through my mask, feeling the warmth of her skin against mine, listening to the sound of her in-breath and her out-breath, speaking of how very much I love her.

And I silently pray and give my mother permission to leave whenever it is that she is ready... You can let go, Mama. You can move into the Light, into the peace that awaits on the other side. Dad and John are waiting for you... I am fully surrendered into whatever it is that my mother needs and is in her highest good.

Meanwhile, there are these priceless moments. While all else is falling away, love is what remains. And the peace that comes with surrendering into Love.

* * * * *

"I would like my life to be a statement of love

and compassion — and where it isn't,

that's where my work lies."  

— Ram Dass

I've long been aware that the story of my mother and me is much greater than the two of us. Over time, many have shared with me glimpses into their own stories — their parallel experiences and struggles with a parent with mental illness and/or Alzheimer's, a parent who is dying or has died, and the great joys and the deep sorrows of love and loss.

And the underlying thread, I believe, more than all else, is about love.
 

I am reminded of a quote by Krishna Das: "I saw that people who were attracted to me weren't really attracted to me at all. They wanted connection to that place of love that I also wanted to be connected to."

This journey of opening our hearts and expanding our capacity to love is not an easy one for most of us. There are obstacles in our way which, depending on our responses, serve to harden us or to break our hearts open.

The larger story of my mom and me is a human one that we all share. The details are different, but the underlying themes are often very similar. And they come back again and again to the invitation to utilize our life experiences, very much including our greatest struggles, to cultivate and deepen our potential and capacity to love and to die without regrets.

* * * * *

My maternal grandfather, Marvin Moesta, and my paternal grandfather, Frederick Smith Strong, Jr.

My mom sleeps off and on while I feed her her dinner, May 18th, 2020

As I sit by my mother's bedside, so much arises from the depths of my heart. Memories, thoughts, sadness, compassion, gratitude, grief, wonder, and love — all arise and flow through me and then subside until they arise again. I'm mindful of the need to consistently return to compassion, forgiveness, tenderness, love.

I look at the framed pictures of my grandfathers on the book-stand next to my mom's bed. The photograph of my paternal grandfather, who we grandchildren called "Super" and who others knew as "the General," and I remember how the one person — other than myself, my husband, and grandchildren and great-grandchildren — who my mom repeatedly communicated over the years that she remembered was Super. She'd forgotten my brother, all four husbands, her parents, the former step-son and his wife (who'd sought financial gain from my mother), her first cousin who lives in Oregon, and all others who'd once been part of her life — all have long been lost in my mother's memory. Except my father's father, Super. It's my sense that my grandfather left such a deep impression upon my mother, both because he was renown and respected by many and, therefore, fed her narcissistic need to be associated with those of high regard; and he also met a deeper need. I believe that my mother may have experienced a degree of safety and caring that she did not feel with her own parents. So, up until just recently, Mom remembered Super, who is also deeply beloved to me.

And I look upon the picture next to his of my other grandfather, who I always knew as Papa. There were no pictures of my grandmother, only this one of my mom's father. It's been years now since my mother expressed any remembrance of either of her parents. During the years that she was locked in the tragic torment of her narcissistic illness, my mother would refer to the "two crosses" that she carried in her life as her parents and "the twins" (my brother and me). Memories of my maternal grandparents come and go, including of their final years. I'd already moved to Oregon when my grandparents had so deeply declined that my mother had them forcibly removed from their home and placed into a nursing facility. Papa had reportedly warned my mother that if she tries to move them from their home that he'll meet her at the door with his shotgun. So Mom had the police accompany her and the ambulance which transported my grandparents to their nursing home, which was many miles away from where my mother lived. My grandmother had been late stage in her alcoholism by then and also had advanced dementia. As I gaze upon this photo of Papa, I remember how he and Nana were dropped off at their nursing home, placed in different rooms given their different needs, and left. No one visited them every day or even every few months. They were abandoned, mirroring the abandonment that my mother had experienced as a child. And I grieve for the tragedy of it all.......

Many things also come up for me as I look upon the photographs above my mother's bed. There is the beautiful image of my stunning mother, my "first mother" who was narcissistic and unable to love, and what she used to call "the masterpieces" — photographs of my brother and myself, perfectly positioned and smiling just slightly. These images remind me of porcelain dolls, too perfect and without any hint of the spirit that lay beneath the surface of these five year old twins. All three photographs were taken in the mid-1950s and are signed by Jack Navin, a renown Detroit photographer. For the early years of my life, I knew Jack and Bob, who always visited us together, as Uncle Jack and Uncle Bob. My father, a closeted gay man, had lived with Jack and Bob until his marriage to my mother at age 34. When I was old enough to know something about being homosexual, Jack and Bob had gone from being my "uncles" to "those fairies," which is what my mother came to refer to them as. 

That was my first mother, whose relentless judgments of others were often cruel and dehumanizing — all of which was a cover for her own internalized rejection of herself and belief that she was unlovable. And that is what my mother told me as a teenager: that you have to earn love. It's only unconditional when you're a little child; after that love is something you have to earn. Even from your own mother. That was what she believed through most of her life.

So many memories, thoughts, emotions....

* * * * * 

 

Then I come back again and again to today. And here is my mama, my "second mom," peaceful and falling asleep after looking deeply into my eyes with a lovely smile on her face. And I am simply overflowing with grief and gratitude. 

I ache for all the many years, the decades, when my mother was compelled to push away love and was completely lost in her false self, the narcissistic illusions that had replaced reality and walled up her heart and tightly shut it. I grieve deeply for my mama, for her parents, for my brother and father and grandparents who all died alone and who had largely been strangers to love. I grieve mightily for them. Because the contrast with this love that my mother has allowed to enter her heart over these past seven years is so stunning, so beyond words amazing, so infused with wonder and Grace.

And it's been such a long, long road for my mama and me to come to this point, this place of opening our hearts to love. There have been so many losses along the way. And there is this miracle of awakening and gradually embracing and shedding the obstacles to love.

The trajectory of our family has been radically transformed. The contracting into our smaller selves with the illusions of separateness and all that comes with it — fear and shame, resentments and bitterness, anger and inner isolation, shutting down and shutting out, and spiritual impoverishment — is replaced with tenderness, compassion, love.

These last seven years I have had the supreme gift of acting as midwife to my mother's soul, tenderly attending a lifetime's worth of suffering while compassionately assisting the opening of her heart to life and to love. Along the way, this process has been deeply reciprocal, also healing and opening ever more deeply my own heart.

And now I get to continue being a midwife to my mom through this final passage into death. And I am witness to the love that has always been there within my mama and within myself. It is the love that does not die. My mama is letting go of her body and moving into her soul. Unlike those who have come before us, this will be a good death, a peaceful death, and a surrender into the Light of the Love which has always been there and which connects us all.

With deep tenderness and compassion for us all,

Molly 

* * * * * 

The Love That Will Not Die

Spiritual awakening is frequently described

as a journey to the top of a mountain.

We leave our attachments and our worldliness

behind and slowly make our way to the top.

At the peak we have transcended all pain.

The only problem with this metaphor is

that we leave all the others behind --

our drunken brother, our schizophrenic sister,

our tormented animals and friends.

Their suffering continues, unrelieved

by our personal escape.

In the process of discovering our true nature,

the journey goes down, not up.

It’s as if the mountain pointed toward the

center of the earth instead of reaching into the sky.

Instead of transcending the suffering of all creatures,

we move toward the turbulence and doubt.

We jump into it. We slide into it. We tiptoe into it.

We move toward it however we can.

We explore the reality and unpredictability

of insecurity and pain, and we try not to push it away.

If it takes years, if it takes lifetimes,

we will let it be as it is. At our own pace,

without speed or aggression,

we move down and down and down.

With us move millions of others,

our companions in awakening from fear.

At the bottom we discover water,

the healing water of compassion.

Right down there in the thick of things,

we discover the love that will not die.

— Pema Chödrön

* * * * * 

"I think, I'm going to start telling people more

often what it is that I love about them so they can

hear it while they are living. I'm changing my to-do

list from the tasks I faithfully work through each

week to tell family and friends what I love about

them; die without regrets."

Excerpted by Walking Each Other Home:

Conversations on Loving and Dying 

by Ram Dass and Mirabai Bush