Lightning of Years
It wasn’t until I sat down to write her eulogy that I realized how many times the lightning of years had struck my mother.[1] The losses began with my father’s loss of eyesight when they were still in their sixties. They chose to move into a continuing care retirement community (CCRC), and it proved to be a wise choice. Even so, it was the first narrowing of their circle and their options. They stopped traveling.
While my mom was still able to drive, their life continued in a happy routine, visiting my sister almost daily, picking up the grandkids from school. Then the string of losses began in earnest. My sister moved an hour away, and having no reason to drive, my mom gave her car to her granddaughter. She relied on friends and on the community transport services for rides. My parents began to despair of the weekly and monthly repetition of their lives, doctor appointments on regular rotation. Until new friends moved into the community. In her private writing, my mom credited L. and R. with saving my father’s life through their care and interest. They saved Mom’s life, too, and it was a mutual saving and healing.
Lightning continued to strike. A breast cancer diagnosis. The oncologist told her the radiation treatments were optional at her age with early-stage cancer, but my mom went through them, saying, “I have to make sure I outlive your father. He would be lost without me.” And she was right. His death was the next lightning strike.
And in her last nine years, she endured numerous cardiac procedures to get her atrial fibrillation under control. Then a diagnosis of colon cancer, for which she underwent surgery, but chose not to undergo chemotherapy, another good decision. She kept on ticking, like the watch in the old TV commercials.
So, it shouldn’t have been, but it was a shock when she showed signs of aging and decline. Weakness, fatigue, confusion. A few weeks before her death, she had a dream that she died. When she told my sister the dream, Mom didn’t say, “I dreamed that I died.” She said, “I died last night.” My sister responded, “Oh?” Not as in I don’t believe you, but as in Tell me more. When I reported this dream to my friend, the shaman, my friend said, “Oh, this is good news! She’s traveling to a different world before she gets there. It will feel familiar to her.”
I don’t know if that’s true, but I like that interpretation. It fits with my mother’s intrepid nature, to scout out what was coming, to take hold of her new life before she completely let go of this one.
[1] …what shall I wish for, for myself,/but, being so struck by the lightning of years,/to be like her with what is left, that loving. From: “In Praise of Craziness, of a Certain Kind” by Mary Oliver.
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Thanks for reading,
Deborah
Such an interesting metaphor to the inflection points of life—lightning!