Loss: On Helping My Mother Prepare for Her Death

I dreamt of my mother. Twenty years later the dream remains perfectly clear in my mind. She said was going on a journey. She told me she needed my help getting her dress ready. 

Without an evident reason, I was terrified by this and became very upset with her. 

 “Where are you going?”

“Why do you have to go?”  

My voice became more and more strident as my frustration thickened into anger when she continued to ignore my question.  

Instead of answering, she kept repeating, softly, firmly, “I need you to help me get my dress ready for my journey”. 

She showed me the dress. It was a white dress, a classic style, one that a little girl would have worn to church for her baptism. It wasn’t a style for beauty or fashion. It had a purity to it, like the heart of the child who might wear one like it. 

A style dignified for the journey she was going on. 

~~~~~~~~~

I woke up alone in my historic Charleston, SC apartment in a panic.  The sun was bright, it was a beautiful day. Spring was gently transitioning into summer. This was the time of year that always brought immense joy for me. 

None of the beauty or joy of this beautiful spring morning registered to me. I was short of breath and felt like I was choking. I reached instinctively for the landline phone that I had beside my bed. I called her immediately; I was terrified.

She answered. I asked her between sobs, “You are going to be ok, right?”
“You’re not going to die, right?”

It wasn't a question, it was a plea to be comforted. She gently wrapped me with words meant to embrace my grief-laden heart: “Yes, I will be ok. It will all be ok”. 

It was an untruth; but it wasn't a lie- not a lie meant to deceive.  

She hid the truth until it could be revealed at a safe time and space. This time and space came to pass not long after, when I went home to visit her.  On that not-far-off day, she asked me to go to a private spot in the house so we could talk. 

Now she told me what she could not tell me over the phone. In the setting she had chosen, she was ready to hold me in her arms as I collapsed, sobbing, desperately trying to assimilate this brutal new reality she had revealed to me. 

In the panicked conversation we had several weeks earlier when I recounted my dream to her, my mother had realized that it was time to tell me what I already knew in my heart. 

She was dying; and my life must go on without her. 

And before she died, she would need my help getting ready for her journey. 

And in those last three to four months of her earthly life, this was the role I played for her: to help her transition from this world to the next in the most seamless way possible. 

Not for her; for those she must leave behind. 

No matter left unresolved, no task left unfinished, no conversation left unspoken. All of it, down to the planning and coordination of the program for her memorial service, I did with her, and for her, before she died.

And, in so doing, I made sure that her beautiful dress was immaculate for her journey.