My mother passed away this past Saturday morning, in her own home. She was 87 years old. My brother was there with her (I wasn’t). From what he reported, she died quickly and without struggle. It was probably the kindest type of death possible: quickly, at home, with a loved one near-by. Death is a thing you don’t hope for, but “type of death” sometimes is. In this instance, my brother and I had our hopes fulfilled.

The social and religious death rituals are done, and my mother’s remains now lie buried next to my father’s. Back in the land of the living (living for now, anyway), I am currently dealing with the complex, powerful and sometimes contradictory emotions involved in losing a parent while in your mid-50s. Certainly I am glad for having known my mother for so long. But by the same token, having had her in my life for all these years, the loss is that much deeper. I was quite close to my mother as a child. She was anything but a distant parent. She was very warm and caring towards my brother and me. As young children, this certainly was nice.

Obviously, it became a problem in the teen years, when you want to carve out your own identity and independence. In the end, no permanent emotional damage was done between Mom and me or my brother, but many various kinds of angst were experienced as we transitioned from dependent children to independent, know-it-all young men. Although sex and girlfriends were more of an issue for my brother than me (given that I was more of a social “dork”), I became much more distant from my mother by the time I had finished college. The fact that I found a job after graduation in a distant city also contributed to our separation (my brother found work nearby and continued to live “at home” with Mom; this was good in that my father had died during my junior year).

I had all kinds of Barack Obama-like dreams of greatness and changing the world. And as with Barack, my own mother’s needs would have to take a back seat to my own great plans. But fate eventually made it clear that it had other plans for me. I married an intelligent, literate woman of good education, and felt that I had made it into the world of culture and accomplishment. Unfortunately, she lacked parents like my own, parents who fully committed themselves to their children’s proper rearing and well-being. Thus it was hard to fully commit herself to our marriage. After a few years we decided to separate, and she moved on to other relationships (actually, she started working on those relationships not too long after we took our vows).

I had hoped to continue working toward some type of “greatness”, and to find another partner in this quest. But as years became decades and “greatness” eluded me along with “a girl who understands me” (thinking here of a Warren Zevon song, “Desperadoes Under the Eaves”), I was living back on my ancestral turf again (good old northern New Jersey), and my mother was starting to decline physically. My brother was still living at home, and devoted himself to caring for her and keeping her out of a nursing home. This wasn’t exactly what I had hoped to devote my life to, but over the years it became about the best cause I could involve myself in that might have positive, humane outcomes. (I never had or raised children, a cause in which many people find solace after their career dreams evaporate).

So, over the past 9 years, as my mother went from walking cane to walker to wheelchair to overhead hoist system to hospital bed (at home, mostly; but she did have two hospital stays earlier this year), I became more and more involved logistically and financially with my brother’s cause of making my mother’s declining years dignified. My brother remained the front-line guy; he lived with her and I didn’t, so he had to take her to the doctor and change her urine-soaked clothing and oversee the thousand details involved in keeping her comfortable and involved in a family setting. My brother was also the lead-guy with respect to emotions. I talked with Mom and tried to be as friendly as possible, but my brother was the guy who kissed her and held her trembling hand as to help her eat while seated in a wheelchair at a restaurant. (Oh, and he bought and drove the wheelchair-lift van to get her there too).

So, it didn’t seem as though I was “emotionally invested” in my mother; I didn’t expect to experience much more than a sense of pity and a kind of nostalgia for earlier days once she finally left us. In a way, I thought this was good; why put your feelings on the line for what has to happen sooner or later anyway. I had fervently hoped that she would meet a peaceful ending, and certainly would have been upset if this hadn’t happened; but as to feeling any big emotions about her no longer being in my life, I really wasn’t expecting much.

But as they say about tidal waves, you hardly see them coming until they hit the shore. Mom is now gone, and I am about three-quarters sure that I am entitled to a “mission accomplished” feeling. She lasted to age 87, beating all her relatives (and even her in-laws). Even though I was mostly on the planning and strategy end of the operation, over the past few years my inputs and involvement seemed to grow (certainly my financial involvement grew). I was there on almost all of the major care decisions, and I think we got most of them right (still need to think a few through, though – not that it would do any good – but just for my own sense of closure and self-judgment).

Nonetheless, I’ve been dealing with some major emotional feelings since I arrived at my mother’s house on Saturday morning and saw an EMS truck out front with local policemen near the door. Again, these are not guilty feelings. And a lot of these feelings have positive aspects (right now I’m feeling the kind of exhaustion you get after an intense effort at something that more or less comes out right, as my mother’s funeral services did). But they also involve sadness and loneliness; they do at times make me think some not-entirely-logical thoughts, e.g. “too bad that a person like her has to die”. I mean, dying is just part of the deal for everyone, the just and the unjust. But that hasn’t stopped my eyes from moistening and my throat from clenching now and then. Something big just happened to me, good or bad.

Hopefully it will mostly be good. I suspect that I’ll get on with things and eventually find some new inspirations in life. Hopefully the goodness that was inherent in my mother will inspire me to find ways to share some of her goodness, some of her appreciation for simple being, that was so prevalent thorough out her life. I took a walk in the park this morning to reflect on this, and decided to engage in a mental exercise meant to achieve “fairness and balance”. I reminded myself of my mother’s many faults, her clumsy and stupid moments, the times when I felt she had failed or disappointed me. There were such moments throughout the course of her life. She was not always even-tempered, and she did not share my penchant for intellectual discourse and critical thinking. She wasn’t always supportive during my marriage, and didn’t appreciate that my ex-wife hadn’t know the caring environment that her own family always provided. (To be fair, my mother was quite sympathetic when my marriage finally fell apart).

But it was not an entirely easy exercise; I had to force myself to recall the bad moments, and even then they faded from mind quite quickly. In the final years, as my mother talked less, she seemed to accumulate a kind of peaceful wisdom, something beyond my scientific and philosophical thinking and also beyond the Catholic religious myths that she and my brother devoted themselves to. I may be imagining and projecting; this may all be wish
ful thinking on my part, but she seemed onto something “Buddha-like”. It occurred to me that we both grew over the years. She could (when she was still here) think about my own continued failings and lack of “world-class achievement” over the course of my adult years, as I could recall her own faults. But by the end, we both weren’t the people we would have been thinking of. We were different, and hopefully better. Hopefully she’s now in a more perfect realm, and I’m still here struggling with my earthly faults and failings.

So for now, I’m in a void. But it certainly wouldn’t be my mother’s intent to keep me there. Just the opposite, of course. I have faith that the seeds of inspiration and hope that she planted in my subconscious regarding life’s deeper and ultimately positive dimensions will bear fruit, fruit to share with myself and with those around me. I believe that the world is a better place because of her, in a hard-to-fathom way (just like that tidal wave moving across the ocean). I hope that I yet find ways to share with the world some of the goodness that accumulated within the swirling patterns that were her life.

P.S., perhaps my mother represents another shred of evidence supporting the proposition that although the good do not always enjoy good lives, they die good deaths.