In Memoriam — Remembering Mom
Twenty years ago I was working in the office of Barry’s Bay This Week. It was about 9 p.m. The phone rings – I answer it.
It’s a phone call that no one should receive. I have relived it so many times. And the next three weeks are a blur.
I thought I had six months, heck, I would have settled for three months.
That phone call was my mom, calling to tell me she was given the diagnosis she had six months to live. Six months! I did not sleep that night. I cried. I walked. I wailed. I wrote.
In the morning, my boss Wendy told me I was going to see my mom. Three weeks later, I’m on a plane heading to Edmonton. Three days after arriving, my mother died. I was sitting beside her bed, holding her hand. My brother Kevin on the other side, his wife at the end of the bed. My sister Leitha, eight months pregnant, is on the telephone that is near my mother’s ear. We are saying our final good bye.
You know, I remember everything. And I’m grateful I remember, but wish I would have had more time.
Twenty years have gone by, and this month is just so difficult for me. I cry a lot. I remember so much. And I wish Nov. 24 would never arrive.
I am envious of women who still have their mother to talk to. Cherish her, talk to her, hug her, tell her you love her.
Oh, I know she is with me in spirit. But, sometimes that’s just not good enough.
I wanted her to meet Tim, but we met so many years later.
I want her to meet my grandchildren Henry and Veronica and stepchildren Christopher and wife Amy, Amanda and partner Alain. She never will. They will never hear her laugh, see her beautiful smile.
My mother will never know that I remained in journalism for 38 years.
She will never know how much I miss her.
But, I would have it no other way, really. I would not want my mother to suffer – and she would have.
I remember the palliative care nurse’s words – when it’s your mother’s time to go, let her go. Don’t ask her to stay, because she could remain in a vegetative stage for years. My mother would not want that. She loved life.
The night before she died, I was pushing her around in a wheelchair. Around and around the palliative care floor we went. I sat down and we were talking. She said, “Connie, I’m just so tired. I just want to sleep.” So, I said, “Mom, I’ll take you back to your room, and you can sleep.”
She never woke again.
As I sat in her room awaiting the funeral director, I was talking to her. I wound all her music boxes and listened to them. The director arrived with help, loaded my mother into a body bag and then onto a gurney. As they wheeled her out of the room, the music boxes stopped.
Today, I can turn on a music box and listen to it, knowing it was one of the things she listened to.
I can work on her sewing machine – something she enjoyed doing but could never teach me because I just couldn’t get the hang of it. I taught myself after she died.
If your mother is alive, hug her, tell her you love her, talk to her – and if you are estranged from your mother, call her, say hi, and get the conversation going.
Rest in Paradise my dear mother .. Helen Delite Anson White Mew, June 30, 1938 – Nov. 24, 1998.
Love and miss you Mom, Connie
