My little Mama died on March 7, 2021. It’s OK. I miss her, but she had made 85 trips around the Sun, and I believe she was ready to go home.

Her last few years were not easy. My Dad was her only husband and definitely her best friend, and he had passed a few years before. She never got over his leaving her. She developed dementia, maybe because of or at least sped up by his death. I was always very careful not to say or allow the word “dementia” or “Alzheimer’s” to be said around her, but she knew. I believe she knew.

In the weeks before she died, she would start crying at random times, sometimes while awake, often while asleep. Dementia patients sometimes cry because of physical pain they can no longer articulate, or from hallucinations from a brain that dies before they do. I don’t believe either of those was happening with Mama. I do believe she was at her most lucid during those moments because when she was asked why she was crying, she always had the same answer: “Jack let go of my hand”.

I believe he did. Every life has an endpoint. The death rate for all of us is 100%. Only God knows when. The hospice nurses could speculate based on vital signs, and her caregivers would guess based on their past experiences.

Daughters can beg God for more time and an end to suffering in the same breath. But the ending is not up to us. And although I believe my sweet Poppy in Heaven also didn’t know when his bride would come with him either, he, like all of us, waited. It is a great comfort to know he was there for her.

Dementia patients lose the ability to swallow and eventually to digest food. But Mama could chew, swallow, and would still accept sips of water or Coke. During the last three weeks, she refused to eat. She would spit out anything we would give her. I told her that she could win any watermelon seed spitting contest in the world because even in her weakened state, she would violently spit halfway across the room.

During her last week, she refused liquids too. I would try to give her tiny sips of water from a syringe just to keep her mouth moist, but she would close her mouth tightly like a toddler. I believe she didn’t want anything to delay her leaving.

Mama rallied just a few days before she passed, like a lot of dying people do. She sat up in her wheelchair. no leaning, no slumping, and she was alert and happy. Her eyes sparkled a beautiful cobalt blue, a color I had never seen before. She watched her favorite shows, “Gunsmoke” and “Little House on the Prairie,” and ate a couple of chicken nuggets by hand. She had not been able or willing to feed herself in weeks, but that day she did. Not much, but enough to give me great hope.

I was so hopeful that I went to her favorite cafeteria the next day, as soon as they opened, and got her everything I knew she liked to eat. But when I got to her house, she was back in her hospice bed, asleep.

She never ate anything, and she never fully woke up again.

Sometimes life is incredibly cruel. A disease comes, hope rises and falls, and hearts break beyond understanding. But…we had that day. Her favorite caregiver (and angel in disguise) later said that Mama looked at me that day with such love and studied my face as if she were trying to memorize me. Maybe she somehow knew she wouldn’t be seeing me again for a while.

I remember feeling a little uncomfortable because she was staring so intently at me. She had a soft smile on her face. There was a sweetness in those moments that overcame the suffering and oncoming death of my little Mama. 

I didn’t want her to leave, but I did want her suffering to end. She didn’t have any pain that we could tell, but she knew her brain wasn’t working right, and she felt so confused and helpless. Dementia patients have good days, but eventually the bad days take over. We avoided most of the bad days, and for that I am thankful. I am blessed she knew all of us all the way to the end. God blessed us mightily both with her life and her ending.

On the last night and morning of her life, I got out old cards and letters to her about holidays, vacations, and golf trips, mostly from people long since passed away, and some from my brother and me. She had saved everything. I read them to her until my voice gave way. I wanted to remind her of the great friendships she had and the legacy of love she left. I believe she had one foot in Heaven and one on Earth at that time, and I believe she heard and remembered every word.

She had saved a couple of essays I wrote in high school about her and Daddy. I am surprised the papers had not fallen apart after 40-plus years, but I am glad she kept them. They were reminders of how blessed my brother and I are to have had Daddy and Memau as our parents and friends. Truly, I believe they were a gift from God to us.

A few minutes before my little Mama passed, her eyes opened really wide and were a beautiful, soft, milky blue color. She raised her head off the pillow, tilting her chin forward as if she were straining to see something just beyond my face. Her mouth was in the shape of a perfect “O as if she was seeing the most beautiful surprise. I believe she was seeing Heaven for the first time. I know she was.

I also believe that at that very moment, Daddy took hold of her hand for the final time.  This time, he didn’t let go.  

What a beautiful beginning.