MY LOST GOODBYE

                                                                      

My mother died today and along with grief and throbbing pain of the heart and mind came anger. Anger at those who continually told me that things were, ”as she would have wanted.”

Of one thing I am certain, the one thing my mother would have wanted, is NOT to have died ! That’s what my mother would have wanted!

My mother knew what I can see, that she was the lynch pin to our family. With her we were a loving bunch; a family. Without her, we three immediates left behind are little these days other than strangers linked by years of hallmark cards, phone calls from opposite sides of the planet and an even rarer text message. In forty four years, my father has called me on the phone just 4 times. Each of them with bad news about my mother.  My mother had always bought and sent the celebratory cards at birthdays, Easter and Christmas. My father forced by her to write the words within them so as to have a connection of sorts with us in some degree.

We were not as a unit a technologically friendly family. My mother and sister communicated via landline or fax machine. Few other people could communicate with them as even fewer people still own fax machines. The recording on the landline message machine was a twenty year old recording of my voice. Computers, cell phones, smart phones, hand devices of any sought and internet had never interested my parents.

I admit I was a late starter to technology myself and still struggle with modern paraphernalia that we all must have these days but I have accommodated multiple smart phones and laptops into my working life as it is required.

My parents retired at forty. The next 33 years of their lives my parents had stated that they had been left behind, until in fact they had been, by everything and almost everyone.

It is true that my mother of the past few years was not the woman I had loved in my youth, my teens, nor twenties. She had lead a hard horrid life in her own youth and it, along with a sick husband who required her attention anther unexpected requirement to be the family banker, insurer,project manager and pacifier, along with medical problems of her own had finally begun to take their toll. Three falls, mini strokes and suspected alcohol mixed with medication taking over the past few years had made her forgetful and lapses of memory where common. At times she could be lucid and current in her thoughts. Other times she slurred and forgot many things.

Either way, she was my mum and I loved her dearly. She was there always, even if the phone calls had become fewer, the letters and postcards had become less consistent and harder to read when they did arrive and the distance of myself had increased to half a planet. She was in this world and that was what counted. To hear her laughter, to make her laugh soothed whatever was wrong in my life. I hoped for those moments it soothed hers too.

I knew of my mothers hatred for illness. She was stubborn and could look after herself. I inherited that trait. She hated anyone taking care of her and our father. She was a trooper in the old sense. She had told us all that she did not wish to ever be a burden and that her Grandfather had suffered long years of care having been incapacitated by a stroke. She did not want this at all.

I know that. But a few hours ago, before I could board a plane to begin the journey home, my father made the difficult and heinous decision to remove my mother from life support and to have her laid to rest.  It was in a brief phone conversation with me after the fact, as he stated, “That’s what she would have wanted.”

He wanted us to remember her as she was, not as how she had become due to her fall and care over the 48 hours since her accident.

I was raised to respect my elders. I was raised to love my parents. but this time I don't agree.

Perhaps the distance of time and geography is all my fault, but I feel robbed of having had the chance to say goodbye.

Is it wrong to think that if someone is on life support that they could be held there for a day longer if family were in transit. Is it wrong to ask to see your mother before internment of any kind even if it was not what she had told me she wanted. She was after all, no longer here to reprimand me any more and there where plenty of things that in my forties, I had done and she and my father had done too, that both of us did not agree with. If things are so perfect now and he follows the rules as "she would have wanted", then why was she even out of the house in her recent state. She had suffered a half dozen falls in 12 months at home and at malls, so why did no one accompany her that day. What my mother would have wanted is to have not hit her head again and to be a public spectacle in a public bathroom. No one cared then. So why the rush to follow the rules after the fact and rob me of a chance to say goodbye. I did not care how my mother looked, it was just to touch her one last time to hold her hand, to whisper to her “I love you dearly with all my heart Mum”, "Im going to miss you so damned much Mum."

Who now do I ask the tough questions of life? Who tells me everything is going to be okay? Who is going to tell me that they love me no matter what? Who's going to pay the AMEX card?

I hate flying. I hate death. I have been guilt ridden because of it for decades due to an early loss of a close friend when we were both 21 and along the journey of life, so many others who have entered and exited my life..

Seeing sunrise or sunset at 35,000 feet always makes me cry as I am closer to heaven and am seeing beauty of Gods creations first hand.

Today I hate flying for the heavens contain my mother as well as my friends. Today I can't forgive God for taking her.

Today that same sunrise is a horrid blood red, not the tequila sunrise shade of gorgeous orange it always has held for me.

Today I am flying home to a lost goodbye and my heart is irreparably broken.