Yesterday morning the phone went at 6.30. Mum had deteriorated. We went straight to the home and sat holding her hand she was cyanosed and breathing heavily. I think she knew we were there. My sister had sent flowers for her birthday and we showed them to her. She couldnt talk at all but she didnt seem to be in pain. There was some oral morphine ordered and they gave her some. At 1044 or so I thought that it would be a while and I started to think maybe she would be alright. My older two daughters came to see her, we didnt ask them to come told them what was happening and left it up to them so I was pleased that they come. It is hard to face death. Her breathing slowed down and she took a few diffcult breaths and she died. I felt for her pulse and it was gone.
Today I wish I'd got oxygen for her and a drip and antibiotics and done everything to keep her alive so I didnt feel so awful. I miss her so much already and I see that stretching out for the rest of my life. I feel like I didnt treasure her enough. I couldnt leave till I watched to see if she would breath again I thought I could see movement but she didnt. I was so frightened of her dying frightened of the pain, hers and mine but it was very peaceful. I know we did the right thing she said last year she had had enough. Her younger brother died, her bones were crumbling and her memory was going and she wouldnt eat, she thought everything tasted awful.
She died on her 87 birthday pretty clever. She never liked birthdays much didnt like getting old. I kept thinking about that scene in Little Big Man where the Indian chef decides its a good day to die and he gets Dustan Hoffman to take him up the mountain to die. They wait all day for his death then he says ruefully maybe it isnt that day and they come down from the mountain. I wish
Today the funeral director came to sort out the times and the details. I was alright till we were trying to think of a little line at the bottom of the death notice. Then I kept crying he said they would ring back. We all looked up sayings etc I knew what I wanted to say finally found it "what a wonderful thing it was to be in this beautiful world." Pablito, one of don Juans apprentices says that before the leap into the unknown. She loved and was interested in so many things all her life particularly birds and gardens and the bush. When I think of that I feel a bit more at peace. I think that is what she would have said about life.
We had to decide on some music which was difficult because she never cared much about music then I remembered the time she'd had a new car with a CD player. Someone had put a CD of American civil war music on and she didnt know how to stop it or take it out. On one of the tracks was a reading of a letter written home by a soldier to his mother and found on his body after a battle. She said it made her cry over and over on the way to town finally she got one us to take it out to her relief. We listened to the music on the CD and it was really lovely Shanandoah, the Battle Hymn of the Republic (which my father would sing full voiced while washing up) and some others. Things just come together and feel right somehow. Yesterday feels like a hundred years ago. My sister says she asked a Buddhist monk once why do we grieve he said ignorance.