How do you prepare for a day you dread?

I’ve been thinking about this last Saturday of June for a while now. Remembering how surreal it was last year, sitting next to my mother’s bed in hospice on a sunny morning, realizing what was different from the previous mornings, afternoons, and nights I’d been sitting in that same place. Realizing what was different — and what that meant.

It was quiet. The ragged gasps for air had stopped. The jerky rise and fall of my mother’s bony chest had stopped. Her tongue hung limp. My mother had taken her last breath on the morning of that last Saturday in June. That last breath is a wily weasel. You never know exactly when it will come. You dread it. At times, you hope for it to end cruel suffering. But you just don’t know which will be the last intake of air. The last beat of the heart. The last pulse you’ll barely feel.

My mother has been dead for one year today. It’s a shitty anniversary that brings a surprisingly resilient and sneaky grief. A grief I convince myself I’ve outwitted. Managed. Processed. Completed. But grief has other plans. OK, then.

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My mother died seven years after my father. He died in their living room, which had been transformed into a dying room many months earlier by home hospice care. It was a training course that nobody ever wants. How to Do a Bedside Death Vigil. Ten Tips for Feeling Like You’re Doing Something When There’s Nothing You Can Do. Dos and Don’ts for Waking Up to Find a Parent Dead.

When Mom died last year, I was gathering documents as the trustee and executor and came across a letter my father had written with the first iteration of his will. A letter I’d seen years earlier. My mother didn’t have a letter included in her papers. I believe, though, that she echoed the same reminders my father had written for me and my siblings. Reminders for living a good life.

Dad wrote his letter 40 years ago when he was 62 and had just retired. I was 26, three years away from getting married and eight years from becoming a mother. One year away from very nearly succeeding in committing suicide. Every parent’s worst nightmare.

I imagine Mom and Dad sitting together and discussing the letter. My mother didn’t sign it, and I don’t know why she didn’t write one of her own. In preparing for this dreaded death anniversary weekend, I’ve re-read Dad’s letter many times and thought about possible versions my mother might have written had she chosen to at that time. She was only 54 then, and had already taught me important, life-defining lessons. As with my father, those lessons were not always pain-free.

I can only imagine what words Mom might have put on paper for her children to read after her death, but I’m pretty sure she concurred with the reminders in this excerpt from Dad’s letter:

My children have developed marvelously. They are adults and are headed off on independent lives. I am completely happy with them. If I were not, it is too late to try to change them. I would like to give them a few reminders, however:

1. Be honest, honorable, and trustworthy. 

2. Be magnanimous. Avoid pettiness. Don't try to get even. 

3. Be modest. Fight vanity. 

4. Be proud, without being immodest, of all that you have accomplished. You are a success. Be happy with yourself.

5. Continue personal development. Enjoy art, literature, drama, serious music. Develop your own capabilites in the arts, crafts, and music. There is too much available for doing to permit a feeling of boredom. Enjoy your professional work as much as possible. You are away from work most of the time, however, and what your attitudes are during that period will largely determine your happiness. 

At 66, I’d like to think that I have tried and somewhat succeeded at these simple reminders. There have been times, though, when pettiness or vanity made unwelcome appearances. And being happy with myself, well, that’s taken just about all of the 40 years since Dad’s letter was written. I do know I’m doing my part in the continued personal development department. A whiskey distillery internship. Latin dance lessons, Portuguese lessons, and, maybe, piano lessons. I have a trial lesson at a music academy in Lisbon next week. They might not accept me, and I’m scared shitless nervous about it. But I’m practicing on my keyboard every day, using Mom’s old classical piano music books, some of which she used as a teenager.

I think my mother and father would approve. I think they would be proud of the life I’m living in Portugal. I think we all might benefit from loving reminders from time to time.

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Thank you for reading! ❤️ May your weekend find you reminded of happy memories, simple pleasures, and how much you have to be proud of and grateful for.

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All images are my own.

The Hot Goddess

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