Blood is Thicker Than Water: Fragments of My Mom's Life

On Tuesday, January 7, 2003, at approximately 1:20 am, my Mom drew in her last breath. She endured the death that she most dreaded: as her lungs filled up. she had to struggle harder and harder to get the air she needed. I couldn't bear to see her draw breath after gaspgin breath, clenching her hands and pushing for the last bit of air that her lungs were slowly denying her. I kissed her face three times on the forehead, put one kiss on each cheek, one on the tip of her nose and one on her mouth. I whispered, I love you so, into her ear. I took her right hand in mine and with my left hand softley stroked the hair on her forehead. Finally, I got up from the bedside and glanced back at her sitting in the bed with her skinny arms braced by her side. She looked so forlorn. hours later, with excruciating slowness, she drowned in her own bodily fluids.

Mom once sia dto me, I'm not afraid of being where I am now and I'm not afraid of what lies after death; what I fear the most is how I get from the one place to the other. She had every reason to fear what would happen because her death was mess, dreadful and ugle and her dying was messy, dreadful and ugly. Mom was breathing oxygen when she died, and I wondered, Did sustaining the level of her oxygen prolong the process of dying? The nurse assured me that she felt no pain; otherwise, her arms would be flailing about, she said. Small comfort? How horrible it must have been for her because she was aware of what was happening. Perhaps no one gets the death she hopes for.

Mom's Eulogy

(I wrote this eulogy and planned to read it at Mom's funeral. Instead, I submitted it to the Pentiction Herald, where it appeared on Saturday, January 11, 2003.)