One Way Ticket

From Chuck

Today I will say goodbye to my mother. She was in a physical form for 98 years and 10 months and with me 78 years and 10 months. While in Portugal, I received a telephone call from my brother telling me that she died in her sleep the night of December 15, 2024. She was on hospice care and had as he said only one bad day. The day before. Her body was completely worn out and stopped functioning. She did not die of disease.

She had lived in her apartment prior to being moved to a one room caregiving unit. It was a fall, which got her over to “that side of the building“. The fall was due in part to shingles which left one eye mostly blind, and the other with limited site. She also had had a five day hospitalization and emphatically said she did not want treatment which required hospitalization. She was stubborn, maybe willfull . She knew what she wanted and didn’t want. When she died, all she could do for herself was feed herself When I visited, some days she liked the food and some days it was “no good”.

For the past three or more years when I would visit and walk the halls pushing her wheelchair, departing would always be tearful. Mom would say “I may never see you again”. I agreed, but then added that “Didn’t we have a good visit”. If the weather had been nice and warm, and I had taken her outside to sit, we would’ve had a very nice visit. We would sit in the shade of a tree as she was still afraid she’d get skin cancer at age 98. So I had really been saying goodbye to mom for quite some time.

My mom was the last of her generation in our family. There was no end of life event, but there had been a 90th birthday party which was attended by 40 to 50 friends, children, grandkids, great grandkids, as well as many of my cousins. I had put together a slideshow and the whole party had a Mardi Gras theme as she was born on Ash Wednesday. That was actually her celebration of life party.

I’ve read many books which described near death experiences, and books of Christian and Buddhists mysticism. I’ve also had my own spiritual experiences. My belief is that our consciousness energy goes on after the physical body is unable to function. I felt no sadness when my brother called. I knew her time here was short and that she might die while I was on the one-way ticket journey. I am thankful that her time of distress was short and that she was being cared for by the loving hospice workers. Today, this Mother’s Day, I will have my own final goodbye ceremony. I will burn her contact information and look once again at the slides from her 90th birthday party, I will put away her picture and sewing that she did. Any ashes will be taken by the breezes in the backyard. Bye mom, love you. Thank you for the strong genes you gave me.

From Louise

Mother’s Day presents me with many things to think about and remember. My mother died over 20 years ago at the age of 90. I never went to my mother for help when I had trouble figuring out what to do. Her advice always seemed pretty old-fashioned and didn’t seem to fit my circumstance. I remember that at times when talking to my own children. Is it possible they feel the same as I did with my mother?

I think I understand where my mother was coming from with her comments to me. She was very bright and a very hard worker. She graduated from high school in 1929 at the age of 17. Because of the depression, she was the only one in the family who had a job. Her mother was already deceased. My mom supported her father and her sister with a clerical job she held at a meat packing plant in the stockyards in Chicago. I had so much opportunity she didn’t have. Most of the time I felt pushed to achieve more. I rarely got encouragement from her. I knew she was pleased with what I had achieved when I heard her talking to her friends about me.

My mother and I started college on the same day. I was 18. She was 50. I graduated in four years. She took 10 years, but was working the whole time. At age 60 she became the first female social worker in the Illinois men’s prison system where she had previously served as a stenographer.

This Mother’s Day I had connection with both of my children. Both are very caring and kind. I hope I am good for them.