Bye Nana

Marge passed away last night.  It’s been a difficult time for Rachel and Wil.  What was originally predicted to be a few days of hospice care had rolled into 10 days and there was talk of moving her back to the nursing home because she was dying but wasn’t dying in a way that required hospice care, or at least that’s the transcript of what was going on as I heard it through the grapevine.  

In fact, while my daughter and I were talking by phone about Nana’s situation, Nana was quietly slipping away.  So when we were sharing how, for her sake, we wished she could go, she went, or, as best as I can calculate, she passed within that hour.

The same thing happened when my mother was dying of cancer back in 1988.  She was in a great deal of pain and, ever the mother, didn’t want us to see her suffering.  She forbade us (my brother, sister and me) to visit her after she said her good-byes, and she thought since she was  officially done, that was it.  Unfortunately, that wasn’t it, and as two emotionally painful days went by, by the third I decided to go back to see her.  I was talking with my secretary on the phone, sharing how I just wished my mom could pass and end the suffering, then headed to the office.  My plan was to go down to the shore that evening to sit with my mom for a bit again with my brother and sister, who had decided to go back too.  But when I got to the office, the VP of our group met me at the door and walked me back out, giving me the news (my sister had called my office).  So when I was ranting about how unfair her suffering was and how I wished she could go peacefully to the next place, she did.

I’m wondering if they heard me.  I’m wondering if they could feel the spirit in which those words were said.  I hope it’s not like the 1939 movie version of Wuthering Heights with Laurence Olivier in the shadows hearing Cathy’s harsh words about him and leaving before he heard the loving expressions that followed.  I hope they know how much they are loved, even now, and how the expressions of speeding them off were for their benefit, not mine, because the emptiness of the loss never goes away, no matter how long they linger or how quickly they depart.