the day my mother died essay

The Day my Mother Passed Away

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A daughter remembers and writes her thoughts and feelings the day her mother passes away.

Editor’s Note: Names of a doctor, nurses, the facility referenced, and family members used in this essay were changed to respect confidentiality. Carol has been attending a monthly support group and has had individual counseling to deal with the stresses of her caregiving and her mother’s death. It is her hope that her experience and emotions will help comfort and educate other caregivers.

How could my mother pass away today, a day with cold winds blowing and me not knowing what to do for her? I hear an airplane in the distance, coming closer, then passing overhead, then going on to another place just like my mother’s life comes and goes as she lies in her bed, fear etched on her face. After a few hours, the fear fades and gives way to her inevitable flight and the peace so welcome. Yes, it’s a relief of sorts, but now that she is gone, I find no solace in her departure. Not yet. Death is a reality – but life goes on without her. I can’t get it sorted out yet.

Departure on her new journey took place about 2:45 today. Nurse A. told me she took two quick breaths and left me here without her constant presence. I went home to eat a bite of lunch and she took it upon herself to leave just then–either that, or nurse A. decided to murder her which I don’t think happened–but it did occur to me as erratic as my thinking is on this day I have lost my one and only mother.

I also thought perhaps I killed her by letting them administer morphine drops to her. Maybe they went overboard with the drops and gave her too much. I thought. There is a downside to morphine, that being explained to me by J., her favorite nurse, that morphine can depress the upper respiratory system and can take the breathing down a notch or more. In large doses, morphine can cause death. But I know she starved herself to her death over the past seven years, a gradual refusal to eat and during these past few months, she looked like the people I’ve seen on TV, those that starved to death in concentration camps. I know the people at (the nursing home) loved her and I hope nurse J. doesn’t blame me for asking for morphine to make her comfortable.

Did I make all the right decisions? Did I do it all ok?

I wish I had people (family and friends) there with me to help me with these uncomfortable decisions that needed to be made during her last moments and on these last days. There is no way to know. My husband said he didn’t want me to be there by myself. I called him to leave work and come be with me, but he didn’t get there in time. I was by myself except for the hospice nurse, A. I didn’t care for her blase? attitude about dying, as if she had so much control and knowledge that it’s not a big deal when people die. She smiled and moved around mother’s room swiftly and with precise motions, as though she could demonstrate to me and everyone else how to help with something so vast an event as death.

I am not at all sure I did the right thing (by asking for morphine for my mother). But isn’t that just like me? To blame myself for things and beat myself up and not let my mother or myself rest even now, as she is cold and gone? She was a good mother in her own way, as much as she knew how to be. She had her own story and operated her life out of her own story. Everyone does. That’s the best they can do. I feel extreme guilt and sadness, like I’m so responsible for her death somehow. All this stems from her doctor, Dr. K, and his words to me, “I’m not an executioner, I care about my patients,” when I asked him to give mother a small dose of morphine to help her be more comfortable and lessen her pain. He should not have planted that word “executioner” in my head as if I play a part in “executing” her instead of providing her with comfort and peace at her end. I did what I thought was right and what I think I would want for myself and those I love, too. She struggled to get out of bed today and go somewhere. She might have fallen on the floor and broken bones, or worse.

Isn’t that just like her, to want to go somewhere other than where she was? All her life, she wanted to be in a place other than where she was. She was never happy with the place where she was. I didn’t think she had the strength to move a leg or an arm today, but she did. She was determined to get up and go. So like her and so like me to feel responsible for everything that happens and how it happens — as if I had this storehouse of power that I could draw from like magic to have control over life and death.

Will I find peace in all this? Will I give myself some resolution and let this go…let her go? She is certainly gone, but I still can’t picture this life or these moments without her in each one. The phone is not ringing with her requests for help or complaints for things gone wrong or the terrible food, or bad nurses, or not being able to find things or not having what she needs, or wanting to be at a different place or to get a job. I got that from her for sure, always hunting for a job, not feeling useful unless I earned money. At age 96, she wanted to find a job answering the phone at (a real estate office) or work wherever she could. It’s strange to me that she died just about the time the extra money we put aside years ago ran out. I like to think she did this on purpose to save me from figuring out how to come up with extra funds to help buy her protein drinks and Depends and other things Medicaid did not supply. That’s a nice thing she may have done, even though she may not have realized it. Either way, it worked out ok. Now she’s gone, a reality I find difficult to accept.

I gradually learned to set boundaries with mother’s constant demands from me. Zanda and the members of the support group helped me learn to give myself the much needed time away from her, to make time for myself and give myself a break from the monumental task of caregiving. I was a caregiver for my mother for almost eight years. Throughout those years, I learned to care for myself more and still be there for my mother. Did I do it perfectly? No. But I learned to value myself more and not let the job of caretaker suck the life from me.

I hope she is looking down from heaven where Jesus comforts her and knows I will take care of myself. I hope her soul is not in limbo somewhere waiting for Jesus to come back before she can be with Him. I pray Jesus will give me a sign that Mother is ok. I need a tiny (or big) sign of some kind, something to hang on to, and something to give me comfort that I handled things ok. It may sound selfish-my wanting a sign. It is my belief that Jesus can go before his Father and ask Him to help me know that mother is at peace and happy now. All things are possible and this tiny prayer I ask. Jesus, can You please go to the Father on my behalf and tell him I’m suffering and need a bit of relief?

Asking once is all that is necessary because He hears all our prayers. I also pray that I will forgive my two grown daughters for not being there with me at the end of mother’s life. I don’t have the energy or desire to hold it against them. At least, my son, T., came to see mother within the last couple of weeks of her life. I feel like putting something on Facebook saying my son came to see mother in her last days, but my daughters did not have time. So there. It’s out, my anger. And my daughter, K., did not even call me when Mother passed away. She sent a text when A. told her Mother died, “It’s a really good day to pass away today and I’m sure she (mother) is looking down at us smiling.” Right…what an odd thing to text to me.

I’m tired now and feeling anger keeps my grief at a distance. I pray, God, for your help because I cannot do this by myself. I am lost right now and I need your help. Please give me some amount of rest tonight and when if I wake up during the night, help me go back to sleep. I need rest and peace on this final day of my mother’s life, rest to help me walk through the coming days without her.

By Carol F., Family Caregiver

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My mother's death isn't something I survived. It's something I'm still living through.

For years, I’d assumed I would be completely incapable of functioning after my mom died. I had no idea what my life would or even could look like after that. I couldn’t imagine it, just like I couldn’t imagine, when I was a kid, what it would be like to drive a car or go to college or even just be a grown up; it felt like I would just have to cease to exist when she did.

And yet, here I am, two and a half years after my mom’s death on May 15, 2018. I don’t know if I’m thriving, or even “surthriving,” a term that makes me think of a preternaturally peppy Molly Shannon character on “Saturday Night Live.” But at least I’m no longer sleeping with the lights on while the Mel and Sue years of “The Great British Baking Show” drone on at the edges of my consciousness … most of the time, anyway.

Opinion I thought the grief of losing my husband was over. Coronavirus brought it back.

I didn’t do anything in particular to survive her death except continue to stay alive. I certainly haven’t processed the pain, and I doubt I ever fully will; it’s all simmering just beneath my skin, ready to escape at the next Instagram story from The Dodo about interspecies friendship.

Immediately after her death, there were things that had to be done — writing an obituary, canceling her credit cards and hiring an estate attorney. And I did them; they filled some time. I had help — a lawyer, friends, family, the health aide who became a second daughter to her and a sister to me. Plus Mom had been very organized; she’d even prepared a list of all of her logins for me. Logistically, it was as easy as a death could be.

The most important thing I learned about grief is that it isn’t linear, and it isn’t logical.

But at the end of the day, I was her only child. And she was my only mom. And she was gone. Just gone.

So I let her answering machine fill up with messages, because I couldn’t cope. No one sat shivah for her in Texas; I didn’t even know where to begin to organize that. I had a panic attack in the housewares section of Target.

In the months after that, I declined a lot of social invitations; I whiffed deadlines; I stayed up all night playing video games and listening to true crime podcasts by myself. In short, whatever remaining concerns I had about meeting most societal norms went out the window.

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It wasn’t all terrible; there were small mercies that I’ll never forget. Even when I was at my worst, my loved ones did what they could to soothe the unbearable. My friends came and sat shivah with me in New York City when I arrived home, filling my apartment with carbohydrates and flowers. They flew to me when I needed them but couldn’t say. They took me into their homes when I showed up; or they took me hiking along the Pacific Ocean or to karaoke.

Still, my grief cruelly took away my ability to concentrate on books, movies or even any TV shows that required more than the bare minimum of intellectual processing. I had nothing left to invest emotionally or intellectually in anything I normally loved — or even anything I was once pleasantly distracted by. I struggled to pitch my editors. I flubbed an interview with a celebrity so disastrously I still think about it late at night.

Eventually, I allowed myself the luxury of going to therapy twice a week instead of just once.

If this all sounds awfully familiar to you, it’s because we’re all grieving in some way.

The most important thing I learned about grief is that it isn’t linear, and it isn’t logical. You have to be very careful with yourself and with who you’re around, and you have to make sure they’re extra tender to you, too. Even the most big-hearted people will do or say the wrong thing; I still do it myself. Most of their missteps are forgivable, but you’ll decide which ones aren’t, and that’s important, too.

Special bonds were formed in the last two years between me and the friends who’ve also experienced the loss of their mothers; it’s a very particular, complicated sort of loss that can feel extra messy and ugly. And, let’s face it, not many people can tolerate hearing about the disgusting indignities of aging and death unless they get paid by the hour — nor should they. There is also a kind of relief that you feel after a death like that, and the relief feels shameful, but even the shame feels like a relief, sort of like popping a pimple.

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I’m no longer scared when the phone rings (mostly). When a famous person dies, I no longer calculate how much older or younger they were than my mom, as if that somehow affected her odds of survival. Dead parents, it turns out, are great ice breakers on first dates and at cocktail parties. I’m thankfully off the hook for airport travel over the winter holidays. When certain dates roll around — like the anniversary of my parents’ respective deaths — I’m not sad so much as simply disassociated.

If this all sounds awfully familiar to you, it’s because we’re all grieving in some way. We’ve collectively experienced wave after wave of loss in the past nine months, and it scares me to think of how shattering it will be once the constant flow of news and tragedy relents just a little.

I didn’t do anything in particular to survive her death except continue to stay alive.

This sounds horrible but, without the death of my mom — and specifically the experience of grieving her death — I wouldn’t have emotionally or mentally survived the pandemic. While I’m still no expert at tolerating discomfort, I’m better at it than I used to be; there’s not much else to do when you’re laying sideways across your bed at 4 a.m. staring at your cat and feeling desperately, bitterly lonely, except to feel desperately, bitterly lonely.

Plus, now I don’t have to worry about her during the pandemic; she had chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and an increasingly knotty conflagration of disorders that would have made her an over-the-top risk for Covid-19, and she lived in Texas. She worried about me all the time anyway, even when there wasn’t an airborne virus ravaging us, and I’d have felt guilty for worrying her, and she’d want me to move back to Dallas, and, well, we’ve all seen “Grey Gardens,” right?

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In the before-times, when I was on a subway stopped between stations, I’d try to sense the millisecond it began to lurch back into motion, until I could no longer tell the difference between standing still and moving. Grief is like that, but with fury and fear and sadness and a terrifying blankness that nothing can soothe. You can’t tell when the subway will start moving again; you can’t magic it into motion. You can only wait and see what happens, and make sure you’re holding on when it starts moving again.

You won’t believe the kinds of things you can survive. I didn’t. I still don’t.

More from our project on surviving 2020 and what comes next:

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• My father's murder disrupted my schooling. But I survived and got back on track.
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Jenni Miller is a freelance writer who covers movies, TV, sex, love, death, video games and assorted weirdness for a variety of publications online and in print.

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“When my mother died…” by Thich Nhat Hanh

by admin | Feb 17, 2016 | Blog | 0 comments

“The day my mother died I wrote in my journal, “A serious misfortune of my life has arrived.” I suffered for more than one year after the passing away of my mother. But one night, in the highlands of Vietnam, I was sleeping in the hut in my hermitage. I dreamed of my mother. I saw myself sitting with her, and we were having a wonderful talk. She looked young and beautiful, her hair flowing down. I t was so pleasant to sit there and talk to her as if she had never died. When I woke up it was about two in the morning, and I felt very strongly that I had never lost my mother. The impression that my mother was still with me was very clear. I understood then that the idea of having lost my mother was just an idea. It was obvious in that moment that my mother is always alive in me.

I opened the door and went outside. The entire hillside was bathed in moonlight. It was a hill covered with tea plants, and my hut was set behind the temple halfway up. Walking slowly in the moonlight through the rows of tea plants, I noticed my mother was still with me. She was the moonlight caressing me as she had done so often, very tender, very sweet… wonderful! Each time my feet touched the earth I knew my mother was there with me. I knew this body was not mine but a living continuation of my mother and my father and my grandparents and great-grandparents. Of all my ancestors. Those feet that I saw as “my” feet were actually “our” feet. Together my mother and I were leaving footprints in the damp soil.

From that moment on, the idea that I had lost my mother no longer existed. All I had to do was look at the palm of my hand, feel the breeze on my face or the earth under my feet to remember that my mother is always with me, available at any time.”

Thich Nhat Hanh

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Death, Dying, and Bereavement: Reflection Essay

Terminal illness, end of life issue.

While dying is part of human life that surrounds each person, some encounters with death are more influential than others. My mother’s passing was an experience that impacted my view of life and end of life care the most. She died before her 60th birthday – her terminal illness was discovered very late, and she passed away less than a year after receiving the diagnosis. Such a rapid change in my life left a mark on my memory and reshaped my view of life and death.

It was difficult for me to come to terms with her death – the period between the diagnosis and her passing was too short. I was in denial for a long time and had trouble accepting what had happened. Looking back at this time, I see how the end of life is not always expected, and why the children of terminally ill loved ones require the attention of medical professionals as well.

End of life care for my mother took a toll on me, and I had to reevaluate my aspirations to see whether I treated life as an endless path. Now, I reflect on the feelings I had in order to remind myself that the end of life cannot be fully preplanned and that each case is unique in its own way. Moreover, I try to remember that one’s existence is finite. In some cases, the best solution is to provide as much comfort to someone and make sure they are making choices to the best of their ability and knowledge to have a happy and dignified time.

I also considered how my mother might have felt at the moment of diagnosis and during her last year. It is incredibly challenging for one to understand what knowing that you will die soon means. Such clarity is not always desired, but I believe that it is vital for people to know about their current condition because it affects their decision-making in healthcare and life, in general. Death is a part of each human’s life, but every step toward it does not feel final because it can come at any moment.

Knowing one’s diagnosis changes the way people and their loved ones think. Although I can only imagine what my mother felt, I understand what the families of terminally ill persons are going through.

If I were diagnosed with a terminal illness and were given a prognosis of six months or less to live, I would try to accept it in good faith before making decisions. Death is inevitable, but it is impossible to be fully prepared for it, even when you think that you are. So, I would look into myself to search for peace with this news in order to take advantage of the time that I have left.

I would feel sad because I would not see my loved ones and miss them dearly. Thus, my priorities for what should be done would change. I would try to see my family and friends as much as I could and spend time with them, making memories for them and myself. I would like to leave some mementoes behind and focus on the good times that we would have together. Planning for several months ahead is difficult when the exact date of death is unknown, so I would do my best to make the most of each day.

However, it is also vital to think about one’s inner comfort and peace. Coming to terms with my passing would be critical to me – it provides some type of closure and allows me to let go of worries related to everyday life. People may cover their fear of dying with activities and concentration on planning and socialization. In doing so, they may overlook their own satisfaction with life, denying themselves a chance to reflect. As such, I would spend some time searching for some last unanswered questions and unachieved goals that could be completed in the short span of time that I would have.

Finally, I would concentrate on my present and my loved ones’ future. I always strive to remember that life is endless in a way that it continues for other people. Although I will eventually die, some of my friends and my family members will continue living long after I am gone, facing problems and challenges that are inherent to humanity.

Thus, I would try to make plans to alleviate some of these issues. Most importantly, I would organize the provision for my child to finance the education – one of the most necessary, but expensive, parts of one’s coming to adulthood. If possible, I would review our housing options, savings, family and friends support network, and address other household and healthcare concerns.

Doctors and nurses in end-of-life care carry a significant burden in working with patients and families dealing with ethical and moral dilemmas. Some of these issues are also regulated legally, although the lines of what is legal or not are much less clear than in other cases. For me, one of the moral dilemmas that I had struggled with was the patients’ and relatives’ differing views on treatment planning. In some situations, the client’s family members may not pursue the same goals as the person under care. These aims can be guided by religious or personal views on health and death. Others can be motivated by financial problems, strained relationships, emotional health, and a multitude of other reasons.

For example, in a hospital, a family may not want the patient to know the diagnosis as it could scare or sadden them. In this scenario, I turn to the some of the medical principles as the basis for my value system. I would highlight the importance of fidelity – people have the right to known about their prognosis and diagnosis (Karnik & Kanekar, 2016). I think that truthfulness is a necessary part of end-of-life care and support, even though telling someone their diagnosis is difficult.

In some situations, children want to keep their parent alive as long as possible and request all possible procedures, while the client denies care and seeks comfort to spend the last days with dignity. Here, the principle of autonomy would guide my practice – people reserve the right to make decisions to the extent of their capacity (De Panfilis et al., 2019).

Moreover, it is vital to remember that rigorous treatment does not equal beneficence in all scenarios. I try to approach each case individually and acknowledge that every person has the right to control a part of their destiny through healthcare or outreach for support, and the duty of caring professionals is to inform our clients of all the choices they can make and what outcomes they can expect. In the end, medical science advances continuously, but death remains an unchanging aspect that requires person-centered thinking.

De Panfilis, L., Di Leo, S., Peruselli, C., Ghirotto, L., & Tanzi, S. (2019). “I go into crisis when…”: Ethics of care and moral dilemmas in palliative care. BMC Palliative Care , 18 (70), 1-8. Web.

Karnik, S., & Kanekar, A. (2016). Ethical issues surrounding end-of-life care: A narrative review . Healthcare, 4 (24), 1-6. Web.

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