My Mother is Dead

and other joyful stories

Nothing is more gratifying to me than telling the story of my mother’s death.

Does that sound off to you? Why would it?

It’s a treat for me to talk to people who have experience with this sort of thing on a regular basis, those who take care of the dying. Just this week, I reconnected with an old friend, Janel. Since she liberated herself from housewifery a few years back, she has tried on a few hats, including baker and now, as a CNA, taking care of old people in their last days.

When I told her how amazing it was for me to be there in my mother’s last moments, she understood instantly. “People always tell me how awful it must be, I tell them it’s wonderful to get to know all these interesting people at the end of their lives!”

She also finished my sentence when I started with “Grief…”

”… is really selfish. That’s why we can’t wallow.”

Prudence George Cox was born in 1937, and passed out of this world almost 83 years later. She showed us all how to do it.

When she was diagnosed in early 2020, we had to read the tea leaves to figure out what was going on. Petey, as she was known to her friends, was a good Midwestern American to the end. She would never have made some big tearful announcement that she had Cancer, that would have been calling attention to herself and that might invite pity, and NO ONE would be pitying this proud woman.

It was more of an aside, “I have this disease, and I have some months left, and I’m too old for radical treatments.” The family had to compare notes to figure out the truth.

The truth was pretty banal. Leukemia, of the type that had taken her older sister, Diana, some 40 years before. No cures, just palliative care.

Our biggest laugh at the end came while waiting for her oncologist appointment. She started giggling. I said “Why are you laughing, you old bat?”

She replied, “I was just thinking that when I’m gone, YOU’RE going to have to take care of your father. Hah hah!”

She only fretted about one thing, and that was her belly was distended because of the disease. If she had one small flaw, it was probably a hint of vanity. “I HATE this, isn’t there something they can do?” pointing to her stomach. No, mom, the doctor said there’s nothing to be done.

Petey had some memory issues (most everyone who knew her toward the end of her life had been taken aside and told, in hushed tones, “You know I have dementia.” Like we had no idea. Some of us had this interaction two or three times).

My wife was pregnant at the time. I’d come by in the evenings, and me and dad and sometimes my wife would discuss what to name the baby. Petey was visibly disgusted when I suggested we name the baby girl Clarence, after my paternal grandfather. This wasn’t funny AT ALL. She very much approved of Caroline- it was my pleasure to announce it to her at least three times, as she’d forgotten. She got to meet her last grandchild in the weeks before she passed.

She had lots of pretty things, not that she coveted any of them. Carved bears, Mexican dolls. I noticed they’d disappear here and there. People would stop by to visit, and she’d insist they take something, like the Giving Tree. I think she just wanted to be of some use at the end. And to move on without encumbrance, just as she’d come into the world.

She made sure each of her 12 grandchildren had one of her paintings or pastels. Making art was her very personal escape. I was long annoyed that she never took any of my kids on her excursions into nature to teach them, but I’m old enough now to understand why. It was hers, and she didn’t share that part.

Probably because she shared everything else. In her last hours, she rose from the bed and was concerned about something. She walked around the house, looking at artwork. Scanning the paintings and prints. I think she wanted to make sure she’d given it all away.

On the evening she died, we’d sat on the couch with my dad just a few hours before. She announced that she felt she was the luckiest woman in the world to have lived the life she had lived, and she gave all the credit to my dad. “I’ve been to so many beautiful places and seen so many wonderful things, I’m so lucky.”

Dad had asked me a few days earlier if one of my teenage daughters could come stay as Petey was having issues at night and he wasn’t getting any sleep. At 86, it was a heavy load.

I thought I should be the one to stay over, and on this, the second night, she was having trouble breathing. Trouble getting comfortable. When her doctor had suggested hospice a couple months earlier, she’d jumped at it, so there would be no ambulance this night. Once she’d decided, that was the way it was going to go, no looking back.

She kept sitting up in bed, walking to the bathroom, trying to get relief from the breathing machine. She couldn’t. Dad went to bed.

Suddenly, she got very tense, sitting up violently, her arms flailing. I said “Mom, are you ok? I love you.” Her eyes were wide open but her pupils were dilated.

I laid her down, and she was peaceful. Her breathing became more labored. I was wired with excitement, sitting, watching, wondering. I really hoped it was the end, I did not want my mom to go through THAT again. My mind raced, thinking about the opiates she had stashed, would she want to end it that way? Would she be able to make that choice if she recovered from this stroke or embolism that had just occurred?

My phone rang, it was 12:30 AM. Very unusual, but my wife had felt something, she wanted to check on me. We talked for a minute or so, and I blurted out “I think this is it, I think she’s dying right now.” We talked. Sometime in my pacing about I re-entered her room, and she was still. I put my hand on her chest and felt that she was gone. I was still on the phone. I felt so good that her pain was over, and so honored that I’d been there with her at the end, and I got to experience it with my wife.

I only wished I’d told her one more time how much I loved her. I don’t think she heard the last one. But that’s grief talking, right? Petey doesn’t care.

She’d never mentioned heaven. Or god. Or seeing dead relatives on the other side. Not once, not a hint. She had no “hope” for any of these concepts. She was grateful for the time she’d had, and it wasn’t colored by any self-serving bullshit.

Which means, of course, she lived to LIVE, not because she felt she was going to be rewarded for living. She had lived well, and graciously, and with honor. I couldn’t be prouder to be her son.