Thanks Mom - Jan Wolterman (the snowy day read aloud .TXT) 📗

I had never touched a dead body before. It wasn’t my mom in the casket. It was a cold, rock hard figure that only looked like her. And it totally freaked me out even though I had had plenty of time to prepare for her death. Only by playing her ‘last words’ over and over in my head did I find the strength to make it through her funeral.

My mother, Mimi, was like Kevin’s mom from the television show, The Wonder Years. Warm and loving with words of advice as needed but silent support always. She was a typical homemaker until her children were in high school, then she joined the work force. Very aware and loving, my mom was more than my parent. She truly was my best friend.

After I married and had kids, Mimi told me to enjoy them while they were young because “they grow up in a heartbeat and get their own lives before you know it”. Little did I know that her own heart wouldn’t beat long enough to see her grandsons even make it to high school.

I can still vividly recall the surgeon marching into my mother’s hospital room, after surgery to clear her occluded artery, and exploding in apoplectic rage when he saw mom smoking in bed. The doctor’s frustration poured out in a verbal assault that left Mimi in tears and promising, once again, to try to quit ‘those damn’ cigarettes.

Like millions of other smokers around the world, Mom valiantly tried to loosen the addictive grip of nicotine addiction. She knew what she was up against but she vowed that someday she would finally be able to kick the habit.

Someday came too soon. It came in the form of a massive stroke that left her brain damaged but not paralyzed. Mimi now became my ‘child’ and I became her ‘mom’. Together with my brother and father, we fed her, bathed her, changed her diaper, and loved her. For the next ten years my mom, due to aphasia, barely spoke a word. She often understood what we said but was unable to make the brain connection to respond.

One morning, as we were helping her shower, she collapsed in our arms. This final stroke landed her back in the hospital and hospice was called in to help us deal with whatever time she had left. It wasn’t long. Within ten days, the call came, early one morning. My mother had died.

My sister had been sitting by Mimi’s bedside in mom’s final moments. Though comatose for the previous five days, Judi said mom suddenly opened her eyes to focus on some one or some thing at the foot of her bed. An angel perhaps? Or maybe it was her deceased mom urging her to leave behind a body that no longer served her. Regardless of who or what, Mom’s eyes followed this ‘entity’ to the window. Then she was gone.

The next day, while driving to the funeral home, my father quietly related something that had happened the night before. Dad had been sitting alone in the dark in his living room after the call came, trying to come to terms with her death. Suddenly, he said he could have sworn he heard Mimi talking to him with her voice as clear as a bell. When I excitedly asked what she said, he answered with a slight hesitation.

“As though she were sitting next to me, I heard your mother say, “Bill, it’s beautiful up here!” He quickly added, “But don’t tell anyone or they’ll think I’m crazy.”

With a sigh of relief I felt some of my sadness lift as I absorbed mom’s assurance to us that death doesn’t take away our life, it only transforms it.

Attending her funeral was heart wrenching and emotionally draining. I continually reminded myself that though she wasn’t present in body, she was present in Spirit. And as others spoke about how kind and loving my mother was throughout her life, I couldn’t help but think maybe it’s beautiful ‘up there’ for her because she made life ‘down here’ so beautiful for so many of us.

Thanks mom. I count you among the greatest blessings in my life and I look forward to being with you again when it’s my time to return home.

Publication Date: 02-19-2010

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