I lost my mum two weeks ago and all has not been well with me. Death does that to you. It’s true Mother had been sick for some time and that enough should have prepared me and my family for her eventual demise. It didn’t. We kept hoping…perhaps we needed to talk to yet another doctor, perhaps we needed to go to yet another hospital, perhaps we needed to buy one more breathing enabling machine and every machine we bought had a backup just in case it stopped functioning leaving us and Mother distressed.
We moved from pillar to post, literally, as we made different decisions and choices as to her upkeep and comfort.
Mother knew all of these. She was well aware of how we would all drop everything we were doing to be with her or take her to wherever we needed to or pay for whatever was needed to make her comfortable. This added to her anxiety.
Mother had a heart of gratitude
“I never want to be a burden to my children.” She would often say. And we would always reply, “You are not a burden to us, we would move mountains for you.”
At the end of every hospital visit…and these visits were sometimes five-six times every month in the last few years. Mother would thank and pray for every one of us who was present with her; from the doctors to the nurses, to my driver, mother’s nanny, my sister, my aunty…everyone who made that hospital visit with mother got a warm embrace and whispered prayers.
Mother never failed to show her gratitude, every single time for six years. Looking back at how remarkable that was, I wondered why she felt she should thank us, her children. We were performing our duties to a woman we loved infinitely. She was a mother who moved mountains to help us succeed. She sold her jewelry for us to have provisions in school, sold her George wrappers to make up the balance for a trip that one of us needed to make one time… so us doing the same, to me, shouldn’t be the reason for her to be so thankful and even very prayerful.
But that’s my Mother.
When death came, it came one Friday with a video call from one of Mother’s live-in nurses.
“Mummy is refusing to eat.” She said.
Every time I get a call from my parents’ helpers, I turn to water. Even though I had instructed the nurse, nanny and cousin living with my parents to call me or my sister at the start of any emergency, every time I see them calling, I melt in fear… “Ki lo tun de o”
I barked out a few commands, I wanted to see Mother’s face, to cajole her to eat something while I sent my driver to go get her to the hospital. The nurse turned the video to her face and I died instead.
Letting go is hard
I didn’t recognize the face staring blankly ahead. I screamed to get her to look at me but she didn’t. That was when my head began to spin. I told my partner, “ I don’t think I am ready to let this woman go, after all.” Even though hours before, when I woke up that morning, I had told him, I was ready to let Mother go. We had been in and out of the hospital in the last few months more than the usual 5-6 times monthly. It had become like every two to three days, we were taking Mum to the emergency ward. This was exhausting physically for all of us. It was exhausting financially. It was exhausting emotionally and I can’t even begin to tell what it had on my mother herself.
But we kept hoping…oh it’s this new growth on her neck…oh it’s the new drugs messing with her system…oh, we should go do another scan…
It was all of these and more. It was time.
Death isn’t something you accept easily. I wanted to be by my mother even if these were her final days. The doctors confirmed my fears on the phone when I asked to speak to him. “We lost your mother briefly in the emergency ward…”
I knew I had to go home.
My partner, bless his soul, was arranging my flight ticket while I bawled my eyes out with my siblings. I wept so hard that I became hoarse and developed a major migraine.
I knew I wouldn’t be ok if I didn’t meet Mother alive; never be fully recover if my last time with her was when I announced I was travelling. She held my hands, whispering prayers but I pulled away because I didn’t want her to see my tears.
I bawled long and hard when that memory came to mind. Would me pulling away from this woman that I love so much be the last thing I have of her?
I didn’t want the image I saw in the video be the last living image in my mind? Would this woman I wake up every night to pray for, just slip away from me like that?
Time to say goodbye
Thankfully I made it to her hospital bed before she passed. Thankfully I got to tell her how much I loved her and how much I am thankful for her love and care over the years. I even joked through tears about her reprimands…Mother didn’t smile. She was too weak.
She passed away after doctors convinced me to go home and come back to her bedside the following day. They told me to get some rest as I had stood vigil for more than 16 hours at her bedside. “…you can come in by noon tomorrow…she will still be here with us,” they lied to me. I went home. I had barely got home, was telling my son about how Mother was not doing good…when I got the call, “Good evening madam, are you the daughter of Mrs. Titilola…” I didn’t let her finish, I knew immediately she was calling to tell me about Mother… “Your mother passed away at …”
“You’re evil!” I screamed. “I shouldn’t have left!”
All that is in the past now.
Mother is finally at rest. It is painful, it is hard but finally, Mother is at rest.
No more drugs or tests or new doctors or hospitals or… it is done.
Do I have a release from all of these?
Not yet
I still feel raw. It still hurts. I have no idea when I’ll stop gasping for breath just from merely remembering Mother.
I hope to see life in a new light; to appreciate the things I have learned from Mother. The life she led, the beauty of sleeping and waking up and being in good health. The benefits of being grateful for everything and to everyone who make life easy. Yes, these are simple lessons I am learning after death came for Mother.