My Mother's Passing

My mother is dead, dear, wonderful woman that she was. I have trouble believing this to be true, but sadly it is, I saw it with my own eyes and felt the coldness that confirmed it.

My Mum had rapidly advancing Alzheimer’s and as is the way of so many elderly folk, broke her hip in a fall and some six weeks later she suffered a severe stroke that left her in a semi conscious state. Her carers and specialist declared, well, not so much declared as quietly suggested, that further treatment was futile and that moving her to a hospital was not advisable.

So she stayed where she was, in the very lovely care centre that had been her home for the last few months, in a private room that overlooked a sunny garden courtyard. And her passing was eased. In that last week she took no food or water, no medication, just a clean, expertly pressed nightie each day, some talcum powder, a little salve on her lips and four hourly turning. We sat, held her hand, stroked her hair and talked with her.

My daughter had sent her Grandma hand drawn cards – entreaties to “Get Better Soon” and heartfelt declarations of “We Love You So Much” – decorated with big purple love hearts and flowers – gently, gently we shared the news that this time there would be no getting better.

My mother looked like a little bird there in her bed, she was quite still save for her quiet breathing. The contrast to her previously feisty, vibrant self was so very stark.

She was terribly thin. She was terribly vulnerable and she was terribly dying, each day spending a little more time deeper in sleep.

I opened her curtains so that the bright sun of northern Australia that she so loved would shine in – the sky was deepest blue every day that week. We gathered to tell stories around her bed, each one of us adding another vividly coloured thread of our memories to her story. She seemed to hear our voices. She loved Test cricket, and flowers and knitting and dancing and Scrabble. She lived for breakfast and tiny cups of strong espresso coffee throughout the day.

I filled her room with boughs of the exuberant purple blooms from her favourite tree that grows so vigorously outside her kitchen window. She loved the view from that window, especially when the tree would fill with birds in the early evening – I wanted her to be surrounded with the life and abundance and the colour she was so fond of. She wore bright batik sarongs and borrowed library books by the bagful, she loved ice cream.

I played her favourite passionate tangos in the vain hope that some of the intrigue and sensuous life contained therein would nourish her. As a child I had loved her telling the story of how she had met my Dad at a dance and that she was quite sure on that first meeting that they would be wed. Her love was like that – sure and enduring. At dances she’d tire my father out and still want more. Up until her 80th birthday she’d dance, and just as she had when we were children, she’d take our hands and encourage us to move and be moved by the music. She believed in the power of music to transport, to transcend and transform. In her declining years the music moved her beyond the limit of her illness. She loved the Samba, the Rumba and the Cha Cha Cha.

I kissed her dear, dear face and breathed the familiar scent of her soft skin and her beautiful hair wanting desperately to imprint her in my memory more securely. I told her I loved her, that we all loved her and that we would look after our Dad. She loved romance and opera, she loved Greek and Roman mythology, she loved languages, she loved her husband, she loved her children and she loved our children.

Facing the inevitable we clutch and grasp when it comes to life and death and each parting becomes a time of terrible uncertainty in which goodbyes must be said in the knowledge that each time might be last time, until one day, it is. We were close she and I, and though we lived at a distance, I never doubted that I was in her thoughts as she was in mine. We were used to goodbyes, but that week of comings and goings from her bedside, morning and evening was hard, so very hard.

I listened while the dear man, who as my mother's doctor for more than ten years, had concluded each consultation with a hug and a fond kiss to her forehead –the same family doctor who in 2005 had been loathe to give my father the news of my mother’s official diagnosis because, “Alzheimers is a bastard of a disease”- soothed my Dad’s torment and sadness about the decision to stop her treatment and sustenance, and his terrible feeling that he was literally starving her to death.

I watched as that young doctor rose quietly to the occasion. He calmly gave my father exactly the information and reassurance he needed to hear, in a way that he could hear it – each word chosen to bring maximum comfort, frankly and gently confronting the truth of her impending death and his sincere wish that her last breath and passing be peaceful.

Hardest of all was leaving my courageous father alone to tell his beloved wife of 55 years that she mustn’t be afraid, that it was all right to let go.

My brother stayed with her through the nights that week, we didn’t want her to be alone. She passed away in his arms very early in the morning on the Friday, the same morning that I slept in her bed, in her bedroom, in her house. When his call came and we’d talked, I made tea and sat in her chair in the quiet of the house that she loved and weighed up the kindness of letting my father sleep a few more hours before having to bring him the news. Later, just before dawn I tucked him back into bed with his grief.

Days after, having been strong for my Dad, having been organised for my family, after being calm for my kids, I was angry. I was furious – not at her, no, not at her, but at this gross injustice perpetrated against her, against our family, against my dear father, angry at a disease that granted her little peace. How could she been so reduced, how could her world have been made so tiny? How could she be dead?


I wept in her garden. I cried so many tears, sobbed great hard sobs there under that tree with its purple blooms, I cried like a child until I thought I would break. Later I sat with my father on the sofa and let him be my Dad, holding his hand while we talked and became resigned, letting him comfort me. I told him that I was sure my mother had felt well loved all her life and how grateful we were of his steady and compassionate care of her in the last years of her illness. I told him how very well loved he and our mother had made us feel all our lives.

We reminisced about travelling and the fine holidays we had fishing and camping all over the country. We spoke of her feisty tenacity and her ability to enthuse people into doing whatever was necessary. We laughed about the times he and she would lead a team cooking for two hundred fire fighters battling blazes in the Victorian bush for weeks on end and how much those fellows had loved my Mum’s food and loved her for cooking it.

When the time came we sent her off in fine style with a bower of vivid blooms, we wore colourful clothes in her honour. Her friends scattered scented rose petals and patted the pale wood of her casket in the same gentle way they might of patted her shoulder in conversation.

Eulogies were spoken – we spoke of her sense of fun and adventure, her keen intellect, her vivacity, her energy, her dignity and mostly her love of family. Her love was all embracing, generous, and non judgmental.

We spoke of her love of life. We spoke of her great capacity for friendship.

Even in her seventies she gathered friends and admirers. One such dear fellow recited with a voice thick with emotion, romantic passages from The Divine Comedy by Dante Aligieri at her wake, recounting fond times when he and my mother would discuss and share their love of literature. Dear little white haired ladies who’d link their arm in hers and say of their friendship, “She’s my long lost sister!” with big grins on their faces, were saddened that there would be no more little chats and sharing of confidences.

And so, Nat King Cole crooned “These Foolish Things” while we reminisced over lovely photographs and after poems and prayers were said we played “Shall We Dance?” from the King and I – quite loudly. When the first notes were heard, through their tears, friends and family smiled in the full knowledge that my mother would have liked that -

…Or perchance,
When the last little star has left the sky,
Shall we still be together
With our arms around each other
And shall you be my new romance?
On the clear understanding
That this kind of thing can happen,
Shall we dance?
Shall we dance?
Shall we dance?

– she would have liked that very much, and her answer of course would have been an unequivocal, enthusiastic and emphatic, “Yes!”

I miss her dreadfully already and even on the days when I think I’m okay something will trigger a moment when I’m quite not okay – I understand that that is just the way it is. She’s not gone though – she’s here when I throw the dish towel across my shoulder when I cook, when I discuss the Latin and Greek origin of words with my eleven year old, when I call my daughter ‘Stellina’, when I say “take care’ each day when they leave for school, when we say “buon appetito” each meal time and “buona notte” before “sweet dreams” each and every night. She’s here when I kiss our kids and tell them they are clever and lovely and kind and that I love them very much and my dear, sweet Mum is most certainly here when we dance.


More information on Alzheimer's Disease here and here.

The King and I - enjoy!