The blanket was soft and
forgiving. It fell over her like a shroud, covering her frail flesh with its
warmth, trying against fate to keep out the cold. I tucked my shoulders over
the curve in my guitar, cinching the music gently against my heart as I
observed the scene before me: my friend Pat, lying silent under the blanket,
her snowy hair whisped against her pillow. On her right side, curled into the
space on the bed beside her, was her youngest daughter, Nicole. And on her
other side, in a chair, her knees pressed into the side of the mattress,
was her oldest, Vicki. Pat’s arms lay
quietly outstretched beside her, like Christ calling us to himself in the
paintings we see in church. Each daughter held one of her mother’s hands,
gently and desperately caressing and kissing them. While I played my instrument,
as quietly and reverently as I know how to play and sing, Pat’s only son,
Desmond stepped into the room. He had come to see her in one of the few hours
he had at home between his work travels. He was weary from lack of sleep, and
he exhaled his love for her as he wept, letting go of old regrets, and inhaling
the evident love that permeated the room. I sat at Pat’s feet, on a piano
stool, stroking the strings of my guitar, praying that I would not break the
sacredness of that space. It was a divine triangle, Nicole and Vicki and Des,
with their mother shooting through the center of it. I knew the holiness, and
the honor of being present.
It was Valentine’s Day. Dave
and I had shared a simple meal and were driving to the movie theatre to catch a
show. But as we drove I felt that gnawing scratch of my spirit, the one I used
to ignore before I became steeped in age. “I feel like I should go sing for
Pat,” I whispered to Dave. “Would you be ok if I texted Nicole to see if it
would help?” David knows what matters most. I love him for no reason at all,
but I admire him for his holy vision.
A human circle of love had
huddled around Pat for days that led to weeks, knowing that she was working her
way to the gate between life and death.
We had been on such a journey with my mother, and to us the music never
ceased. But silence is not a good friend
of long awaitings, and I worried for the sisters who were so vigilantly seated
beside their mother, day and night. I sent a text, offering a little gentle
music, if it might help. And the answer
came back; “Please.”
When you sit in a darkened
room, in a quiet space, with the focus being absolutely centered on one person,
you can find out an awful lot you hadn’t known.
Pat was an Idaho girl, raised on a dry farm, with a passel of kids and
never ending chores to be done. She loved her family, and her home. Tender little memories swirled around the
room. My sister Libby and I had spent a good bit of time there, over the
journey of hospice. Games, and stories, and songs of childhood. And then Des
and Vicki would get to talking about their adventures as kids, and as
teenagers; concerts attended, trips taken, memories of little sayings their mom
used to repeat. We call up the happy when someone is dying, and it was a joyful
waiting. But I knew that among all these sweet memories were wounded hearts and
heavy burdens. Pat’s heart had been given, and then broken, then given and
broken again.
Pat had thought she was past
having children when she found she was pregnant with Nicole. Vicki and Des were
grown and gone, and Nicole became the child of her grown up heart; her reason
for coming home from work each day, her joy and delight. Vicki told of the
first time Nikki came to see her and her family, to stay all on her own. She was dressed in a new button up coat, with
a matching hat. Nicole came into the frenetic space of a household full of
little children and sat on the edge of the couch, her back straight, her hands
on her knees.
“Nicole, take off your
coat and come play,” Vicki told her.
“Oh no, I’ll just wait here until Mom comes
back to get me.”
Vicki says she sat there for hours. I’m not sure how long. But I am sweetly haunted by the image of that
young girl waiting for her own true love to return and rescue her.
Our mothers are our first
loves. We need them, some of us more
desperately than others. Then we grow, if we are lucky enough to keep them here
on earth with us, we begin to recognize how desperately they need us, too. Pat adored her children, her grandchildren, and the greats. On her nightstands were
drawings and cards and sweet little tokens of love from those who have trickled
down through her. She was surrounded by that love to her dying breath.
There, on that Valentines night, We sang and talked in
whispers for a few hours, each of us watching for Pat’s chest to rise and fall.
Pat was dignified, even in her passage from life. No fuss, just quiet graceful breathing.
Nicole remembered a little
song her grandfather Denton had taught her as a child:
Oh playmate, come out and play with me
And bring your dollies three
Climb up my apple tree
Slide down my rain barrel
Onto my cellar floor
And we’ll be jolly friends
Forevermore
Since I had played a hand
clapping game to this song as a girl, I began to play along. All three of us
sang it, giggling quietly when it was over, and I began singing an alternative
version from my own childhood:
Oh enemy, come out and fight with me….
Then... a silent pause. Nicole looked up at Vicki.
“I don’t think she’s breathing.”
Vicki repeated the words, like a second
witness. We huddled there in disbelief,
which gave way to an unlikely conglomeration of emotions; sorrow, joy, fear,
faith….they all danced together around us there in that room. We touched and cried and whispered, speaking
to her, knowing without any doubt that she could hear us from wherever it is
she had gone.
She did it! She did that thing we all fear as children,
the fear that really never leaves us even when our faith is complete. Like she
stood on the edge of that tall high dive at the Lava Hot Springs of her youth,
closed her eyes and jumped!
Pat always did have her own
timeline. When she was done with
socializing, she just left. No big
scene - attention grabbing was not her style.
But when she was ready to go, she left. On her own terms, in her own
time. Her family says they would be at family gatherings … weddings, baptisms,
barbeque's. One minute Mom was there, and
the next someone noticed she was gone. She made her way home when she was
ready.
And so it was. She saw her
daughters singing the songs of their childhood. She had received a kiss from
her boy. They were well, though sorrowful at the prospect of loss. And when there was a little laughter, and she
knew they were happy, she decided to duck out, to make the quiet exit. No fanfare.
Not even a gasp. Just a silent
exhale and she was heaven-bound.
The three of us sat on the
bed surrounding her body, still warm with the last of life, and recognized the
shift in the energy in the room. A sweet
emptiness, like the angels opened a window and drew her in. Nicole stroked her hair and commented, “I’m
so grateful she died on Valentines Day.”
It surprised me that she would say this.
Most people would bemoan the prospect of always remembering a tragedy on
a holiday. But both she and Vicki thought
it perfectly fitting that she would leave them on this particular day, with the
whispering of love echoing over and over in that beautiful room, like she
wanted to jump on up there so she could blow kisses down from Heaven.
I agree. Pat Denton left us with an abundant harvest
of love. We will feast on it for a very
long time, all the way through eternity.