This is “End of Life” for you…

I still remember the relatively deadpan and emotionless way in which the doctor gave us the bad news. She had just come back into my mother’s room at the modest university-run hospital to share the results of some recently taken imaging scans she had sent to a larger hospital for further review. My mother had been in this hospital for only a few hours, having arrived by emergency ambulance an hour away from where she lived. The hospital in her home town, they said, was too small and did not have the capabilities to deal with my mother’s issues, including her excessive size/weight at just nine pounds short of 500 lbs. I had arrived only an hour before and had driven for over four hours from the other side of the state where I worked and lived. I arrived just in time to hear the news first hand.

Without expression the doctor simply began her analysis in the following manner. “Well, I’m sorry to say I have some bad news,” the doctor said. “This is end of life for you.”

Over what seemed like the next ten minutes the doctor explained all the reasons why it was certain that my mother’s life, as she knew it, was now over. Among those things I can remember now, her lungs were failing, her kidneys were failing, her heart was leaking and literally spraying blood all over the inside of her body, both chambers of her heart were blocked and her aorta had a huge bulge in the wall that was thin and about to burst. There was probably more but I think I half mentally checked out. I’d heard enough to agree there was no coming back from that much damage.

I did have a little idea prior to this that my mother was not doing well. It took ages for her to admit it but she finally admitted one night after dozens of times telling me she was fine that this time she was “not doing so well”. That alone was a huge red flag. She knew the end was coming soon. She reluctantly explained weeks prior that she had been bleeding out of her rectum and that doctors had no idea why. The doctors at that time wanted to send her to a bigger city for further testing and analysis but she was told that the testing itself was invasive and risky and could possibly induce death and she just didn’t want to take the risk. Within a week or so later she was dead.

As I sat by her side holding her hand, the doctor explained that they would soon need to remove her off of oxygen but that she would give us a little time to visit. Of course what she really meant was to say our last goodbyes but my mother didn’t seem to acknowledge that. We talked a bit and my mother apologized repeatedly for leaving me a mess.

“The finances are worse that you can imagine, she explained. “I’m so sorry. You have a HUGE mess to deal with and way worse than you think.”

She then preceded to tell me that her sister whom she lived with was going to try and keep the house they both shared and that she simply can’t.

“She HAS to sell the house,” she insisted and that made no sense to me.

My mother begged me to bring an attorney to the hospital to give me full power of attorney over her affairs (something we had said needed to be done YEARS ago) but it was too late. She insisted I lawyer-up and prepare to fight my aunt over ownership of the property they had “shared” together. I insisted I had no intention of getting a lawyer on her death bed and was not going to war with family. In fact, I was prepared to move in with my Aunt and help take care of her now that she would be alone. What was done was done. Yet, over and over she begged nurses to hear her declare that she wishes for me to get everything. They also told her it was too late to change any wills or make any changes like that. What’s in place will remain in place.

What my mother didn’t do, however, is the most shocking of all. Not one time on her deathbed did my mother ever beg me to return to the Seventh-Day Adventist church or “come back to God”. In fact, not once do I remember her even talking about Jesus or about how she is ready to see my father in heaven soon (something she always said she looked forward to.). In fact, there was an eerie and utter lack of religion or discussion at all. For decades she had tried to get me to “come back to the Lord”. I had braced myself for one final deathbed appeal to return to the only denomination by which I can be saved. She was a firm believer in “salvation by denomination”. But nothing. Not a word.

When it came time for me to say goodbye, I knew I would never see her again. I simply told her that I had to be back at work and asked her to rest now. A nurse came in and told my mother that they were going to remove her oxygen mask now and for a moment she panicked.

“But I can’t breath without my oxygen,” she said.

The nurse looked at me a bit confused and then back at my mother and said, “I’m sorry, are you ready to go or not?”

My mother realized what that meant and simply said, “Oh….”

I said I loved her. At least I think I did. I know I did at least once during our goodbye, and again I asked her to rest. They would be giving her something to help her stay relaxed.

As I walked out to the parking lot where a “friend” waited for me, I shed no tears. When my father had passed a decade earlier I’d fallen apart once everything sank in, but now, with my mother, I could feel nothing but a small cringe of uncomfortableness remembering how she said she wouldn’t be able to breath and realized that this was EXACTLY the point.

I drove back home to the west side of the state and was questioned by some of my closest friends about leaving her there.

“You should have stayed by her side till she passed,” a friend or two told me. “She would have wanted you there.”

All I could feel at the moment was anger. I’m sorry, you’re going to tell ME what my mother wants on her death bed? Who knows my mother more, ME or you? My mother and I had made our peace long before and I simply couldn’t forgive her for a lifetime of religious trauma and hypocrisy she had subjected me to. I felt empathy for her fear of death but I didn’t need to sit and watch her die.

I told my wife that when my mother passed I probably wouldn’t shed a tear. It was true. I got the call the next day but missed it and my wife informed me the hospital called and I knew exactly what that meant. She had passed. As expected, I felt little more than relief that her suffering was over.

Maybe that makes me a horrible person but THAT is the direct result of a lifetime of religious trauma. If you had seen and heard the things that I had growing up, would you have shed a tear? Perhaps. But I’ll let you be the judge of that when you hear my story.