This is part 2 of a 2 part series
One afternoon during my mother’s final weeks, I put on my spiritual director’s hat and asked if there was anything happening inside her that she wanted to talk about. She started to review her physical complaints. I tapped her chest gently and said: “No. In here.”
She considered this. She was good, she assured me. And she really was. There was a calm in her that I hadn’t seen before — and something else underneath it that I can only describe as quiet anticipation. She seemed genuinely excited that she was finally going to meet face to face the Jesus and Mary she had turned to her entire life. Thrown herself at, would be the more accurate phrase. Some of her crosses had been heavy ones. Too much to carry alone. She had not carried them alone, and she knew it.
What followed in those weeks was a masterclass in dying well. I am not being dramatic. Here is what she taught me — and what I would offer to you, if you are walking toward this chapter with one of your own parents.
Acknowledge the elephant in the room.
You both know what is coming. The conversations that open once that reality is sitting in plain daylight between you — those are where the real ones happen. My mother and I had conversations in those eight weeks that we had never managed in forty years of weekly dinners. Do not let discomfort rob you of that.
Follow their lead.
Mom’s body was shutting down but her mind was entirely intact and her social preferences were non-negotiable. She wanted visitors. She wanted to serve pink champagne, as she had done at her wedding. Honor what they love while they can still receive it.
There’s no time like the present for planning.
Mom put me in charge of the funeral Mass and she had very clear ideas. Too dry. Not upbeat enough. I can’t see a choir doing that justice. She was a woman who knew what she wanted, and the gift of a little runway was that she got to be part of it.
The caregivers come first.
If your parent is dying at home, the quality of care is everything — for them and for you. Get the word out through every network you have. Work it. The right people exist. Finding them takes persistence and it is worth every bit of it.
Don’t be stingy with the I love you.
This is not the time to sort out old grievances unless the person dying wants to air something out. What they need — what most of us need at the end — is to know that their life mattered and that they were loved. Say it specifically. Not just I love you, but I love you because. Give them the particular reasons.
• • •
Before my mother died, she left a letter. To her children and grandchildren.
It reminded us not to mourn her and that she was proud of each of us.
That is not a letter you write at the end of a life. That is a letter you earn over the course of one.
Robin Kencel is a certified spiritual director, author, and founder of the Aging with Purpose Initiative. robinkencel.com