A Dying Year Archetype.

I've only known one person who actually had a dying year, and that was my mother.  She was diagnosed with lung cancer and told she'd live another 2 to 5 years with rigorous chemotherapy and radiation, or 1 year without it.  She chose without.  After going through it with her, I know she made the best decision.

I didn't think that initially.  I thought, absolutely, you go with the 2 to 5.  You go with it for yourself, so you get more daylight, and you go with
it for the people who love you, so

they can memorize you.  My mother was always wise.  Her wisdom was deeper than I thought.

The reason she chose less time over more was two-fold:  She didn't want to be alive unless she could participate in life fully, and she didn't want to become a burden to anyone she loved.

She had watched her father, and second husband, do anything to extend their lives after each received their terminal diagnosis, and noted the secular, and spiritual effects their decisions had on them, and those they loved.  Less time was an obvious choice for her, after that.

Her transformation during her last year is a primary reason I'm engaging in this process, and sharing it.  I don't think I would have remembered my mother the way I do if she hadn't had that final year to make a second emergence in the world.  I wouldn't have known how much she sacrificed for her four children, or how much courage she possessed, had I not witnessed her last year.

She became so many facets of what she could have become if she hadn't been diverted to protect her four children from the man who helped create them.  I have no doubt my mother fulfilled her assigned role in this dimension, still, it was germane for me to see the rest of her.  It suggested to me that some people have two personas, and are bound to the materialization of one.

The woman who fought for me, and my siblings, was remarkable.  

The woman who appeared during her last year, when all her maternal duties had been fulfilled,  shimmered.

*********************************************

"It is cancer!  Now the big question is what kind.  If it is small cell, and I do nothing, could be six months... Interesting, we are always so sure of what we will do, and how we will act, as I was with Jack. There is no doubt I will do it my way. But I now really understand why Jack did it his way. It puts a wall around you, and it is work to open the door, so others can enter. They're so busy living, and it's so painful knowing I will never get to know the end of so many stories.   

But I think that would have been even if I had lived until a hundred...

  I hope that I can work (the material) things out.  I really don't know how to.  I hope the kids will know what to do.   I never was a 'detail' person- seem to be a lot of details to dying.  Funny, I seem to be more afraid of working them out, than dying.   Maybe because I can't do anything about dying, and there are so many ways to see to the details,  and nothing is clear. 

 There is a century plant that is blooming on my street.  I see it everyday and watch it unfold.  There are miracles."**

**From my mother's journal of her last year.  The excerpts that follow will mirror the chronology of her journal, and will be in red italics.  The one above was her first entry. 

('Jack' was her second husband)

Mother May Not

Although my parents were married until I was 18, my mother raised us almost exclusively.  By the time I was in middle school my father was out of reach.  I might have seen him at my, or my siblings, athletic events, or on the weekend, if he came home, if I was lucky. 

During the week, he usually came home drunk, and after the bars closed.  He was an accountant, and he'd leave for work sometime during the day before I got home.  The only time we spent together was when I left a dish in the sink, and he noticed it as he stumbled in at 2 or 3 in the morning. Then he'd knock my door off the hinges and physically drag me out to put it away.  

Ahhhh, father-son time.

My mother, on the other hand, was a vivacious woman with an adventurous spirit, and creative mind.  She loved kids.  She would stop whatever we were doing if she noticed a child in trouble. And our door was always open to a kid who needed a neutral country.  She gave and gave and gave and gave until we'd taken all she had. My father took the most.

I was 21 when I realized my mother had disappeared over the years, how the creativity and zest and hope had been packaged, and put away.  She'd been depleted by the thousands of last minute calls to occupy a void, fill an empty promise, or place her finger on a crack in the dam.   She was a shell of the woman who pranced through my first decade.  It made me sad, and I didn't know what to do.  I kept telling myself that someday I would.  

Part of her returned when she started a new life with my younger sister, and brother.  She was the cheese lady at 'Knott's Berry Farm' in the mall.  She found a group of women who supported her.  And she started dating.  

********************************************* 

 "Today is very hard!  I guess the closer I get to Monday, when I know all, the harder it gets.  It's not that I'm afraid of what the doctor will say- Instead, it will make me have to take action.  Tell the kids.  Settle things, etc.  I'll have to decide what to do with the rest of my life...

What am I doing going to Tahoe with a group of strangers when I want to be with the kids?  As long as I have this secret, I'm cut off from them.

 The clock on the wall- it measures how long we have until something we don't like will end, or to stop when we're not ready.  It tells us when to eat when we're not hungry, or when to when we aren't.

 The clock of LIFE is measured by joys, and sorrows- a belly laugh, or a single tear.  It has no hours, no seconds, no minutes.  It just is.

 Now, everything seems un-normal.  Will I feel capable of working?  Buying groceries?  Talking to a friend?  Talking to a child?  Will I be ready?"

Jack 

"I wish Jack had talked more about what he felt when he was dying.   By not, was he protecting me?    Are my kids then, not protected?   Is there a right way to do this?   I want to make plans to keep busy.  I just want to go to bed and sleep.  I don't know what I want.

 My body is sending a message.   I don't like to see it, and I don't want others to either.   It's definitely sending a message."

Dating led my mother to Jack. Jack was from Montana, and worked as a high school counselor.  He had a wide, cowboy mustache, no hair, and a pot belly.  He was also enormously patient.  He encouraged our family efforts at repair, and never intruded on the effort.  He was the kindest man I've ever met.  

When he and my mother chose to be serious she moved in with her two younger children in tow.  He took on a lot with us, and never complained, or judged.   His daughter, who lived in Santa Barbara, told me she thought my mother's moving in 'saved his life'.  I have no doubt he saved hers.   

My mother and Jack were together almost 20 years, but chose not to marry.  They had one of the best 'marriages', however, I've seen.  They elevated each other, and those around them.  Jack was her second husband despite the lack of ceremony.  Their union was the start of my mothers authentic life, the one she could have had if she had let us fend for ourselves.  It was wonderful to witness.  

When Jack died he left his 'paid for' home to my mother to reside in until her death, before passing it on to his daughter. He also left enough money to insure her security.  He had no way of knowing how integral those two things would be to her arrival in the world, or that she'd die exactly 1-year later.

*********************************************

  "I never liked television,  but always loved music.  However, lately, I

LOVE silence.   Why do I talk so much when people are around, especially the kids?   Am I trying to divert their thoughts from what is really happening here?  

One of the kids asked me, on a scale of 1 to 10, my priority of buying a family cabin.   It is, and always has been, a 10.   A refuge.  A place where they could always be together... I'm sorry that I didn't take the time in the spring to find one.  It takes 1 person to hold the pieces together as they are pulled farther, and farther apart by life.   I think that was my role, and a cabin would have kept them physically, and spiritually, together."

My mothers comment about silence was a huge shift from her habit of ticker-tape dialogue.  She talked constantly to explore what she was inquisitive about, or to share.  She was rarely quiet, or contemplative.
Until cancer.
With cancer she went inward.  She went deep, and examined herself until those insights could be worn for people to see.  

She rarely shared what those insights were, but their impact was obvious.  About half-way into her year I was sitting with her, and I asked why she had grown quiet.  "I have no need for words, or language", she said. "They're concrete, and belong to this world.  I don't need them where I'm going."  

That's when I realized she was preparing to die.
That's when I understood the depth of her conviction to make her final act, her most profound.
That's when I knew I was privileged to witness it.

Fruition

My mother told me she had practiced the scenario where she's given a year to live, and she imagined that she'd travel.  She said now that it was for real all she wanted to do is be with us, and work in her garden.  I've never forgotten that.  

I consider it to be a telling statement about what's of genuine value in a persons life, and those things seem to be the things we make our largest investment in.  You don't come to know yourself, or find meaning, on a lavish cruise.  You discover who you are in the things you gave yourself to, because you loved them.

My mother loved her children, so she did what she could to insure we identified, and addressed any issues we may have had with her while she could still hear them.  She was genuinely concerned about repairing what needed repair while she was living.  The woman who made a skillful practice of addressing pain in digestible chunks was offering to swallow all of it.  
She asked a close friend who was a therapist to see each of us, confidentially.  

"It's hard having the kids see her.  She will be good for them, I know.  She's realistic, tough, compassionate, and has a sense of humor.  And perhaps if she sees all of the pieces, can bring the puzzle together so each piece will be able to find it's niche, and feel comfortable there.   

But it feels like betrayal because she will know more than I do.   She will see the whole picture as I will never be able to see it.   I feel very vulnerable, and strange,  knowing someone will know my children in a way I never will.   She will know all of my weaknesses as a mom. This gift is hard to bestow."

The therapist was the first step in what would become a complete disengage by my mother.  While we were scrambling for more time, she was preparing for the end of it.  I was certain my mother would grasp at every second she could have with us.  I was certain it would be impossible for her to let go.  I was beautifully mistaken.

At one point, she suggested I would 'have moments where I was glad she was gone, and had the opportunity to live a few years on my own counsel'.  I told her she was nuts.  She just smiled at me, and said, "It's alright that you'll do that.  I understand, and don't you ever feel guilt about it".

My mother spent her last month preparing us for what would follow.  She told us not to be angry with her friends who didn't visit.  She said some people can't be close to death, and don't know what to do.  She said she knew they loved her.  Ironically, one of the first people to arrive at her memorial was a woman in that category.

She walked up to me, and started sobbing.  She grabbed my hands, and said, "I'm so sorry I didn't come see your mother.  I tried, but I couldn't see her that way.  I'm so sorry...."

I smiled, and gave her a hug.  "It's alright", I said, "She knew that.  She wanted me to tell you she knows you're here for us, and she loves you".  That woman remained connected, and available, until her own death.

My mother, who was masterful at employing hyperbole and euphemism to avoid the direct admission of anything painful or necessary, had become a woman who wouldn't accept anything but that.  She spoke less because the truth requires less.  It was beautiful to witness, with one couple most of all.

They were wrapping up their visit and the man said something like 'we'll see you later', and vanished.  The woman began to do the same when my mother grabbed her hand. 

"J", she said, "You...will...never...see...me...again."  

She said each word slowly to draw out her meaning, and the woman started to cry.

"Then I want you to know," J said, "That we love you, and we'll be here for your children".

After the woman had gone I noticed my mother was smiling.

"Didn't you see what I just did?" she said, "I gave her permission to be REAL..."

My mother spent her life using language to mask the truth, and divert pain.  She used language to create the stories that would allow her to relinquish her dream of a happy family, and the cocoon of safety she'd promised her children.

My mother used words that made me believe the possibilities she saw in me.  She used words to lure me out of harms way without concern that I might actually believe them, and spend my life in pursuit of something that was imagined.  My mother used language to create a personal, and family, narrative that she could live with, until she couldn't.

Death is the purest form of truth.  It's a concentrate.  My mother gave up using language when she realized it was ineffective against what was coming.  When she gave up telling her stories all that was left was to name things exactly as they were.  You can't tell the truth until you accept it, and when you accept it you'll be able to help others meet it.  That's as religious as it gets.

You'll state for a person what they can't- you... will... never... see... me... again- and usher them past the acknowledgement that was preventing a real expression of their true caring, and the dispensing of guilt.  You'll leave words behind for the people burdened by the guilt of their own discomfort from not showing up, and those words will name what they couldn't.  You'll leave words that forgive. 

 You'll leave the words that are meant to be said by everyone too afraid to say them.

You'll become courageously authentic, like my mother.

Eulogy

My mother made her final passage on December 21st, the same day Jack passed one year prior, and her father decades before.  December 21st, the winter solstice. 

The longest, and darkest day of the year.

"Going through pictures, letters, cards, is fun.  I think it reminds us that we shared a full, rich, diverse life.   I love the snapshots.  Random pictures  that evoke rich memories.   Now, when snapshots are taken of me I wince, thinking when they look at them they will see my sickness, and be sad.   I'm wrong.  They will see how special, and precious, and full these last months have been.  The things we have experienced, and the thoughts and feelings we shared might never have happened because we all thought 'there is plenty of time'.   The real sadness is in the realization that time is short. 

All four have been here- I love just looking at them.  They are the miracles in my life.   I love you guys.  I'm so proud to have been your mother. I would not have had my life any other way.  Thanks for always being there.  I hope I was for you.  I did try..."