when death brings you closer to life

honoring my mother on the one year anniversary of her death

On his way down the stairs from my mother’s bedroom one year ago today, the hospice doctor looked at us with a strange finality in his eyes.

“She’s going to die today.”

He seemed a little scared to say it, as if one of us would burst into tears or fall down in shock. I’m sure he’d seen it all, and then some.

But we knew. Of course we knew. I had just been up to see her and had heard the death rattle in her throat. I had been googling for weeks, “how long does it take somebody to die?” and I knew the signs.

Truthfully, I was relieved. At that moment, I wanted her suffering — and honestly, all of our suffering, too — to end.

The only thing worse than your loved one dying is having to watch them die slowly and painfully.

Over the past month it had been agony watching my mother deteriorate, slowly losing all the parts of her that we loved. She lost her handwriting, her ability to text, her ability to drive, and then eventually her ability to get out of bed.

She’d been in a dream-like haze for over a week, and today she could no longer speak. Her breathing was loud and sharp, labored like a dying animal’s. The edges of her face were angled and pointed, her lips drawn back to expose her teeth in a way I’d never seen before. She looked so strange.

The night before her death were the last words she’d ever speak to me. My stepdad and I were huddled around her, each holding one of her hands.

Suddenly she looked at us both with perfect clarity in her eyes, and we knew she was saying goodbye.

“Bye, I love you,” she said over and over to each of us. “I’ll connect up with you again soon.” I know what the exact words were because I went home that night and wrote them down — along with as many details as I could in the six months leading up to her death. I knew I would want to remember her words, and I’m so glad I wrote them down because even now, a year later, the memories have begun to fray at the edges.

After that moment, where death was so close I could almost tasted it, I was shocked to find that everything around me was teeming with vibrant, brilliant life. I noticed the bees buzzing, and it felt like the air and the trees and the flowers were buzzing too. Ah, I realized, death and life are one and the same.

That night I recorded a podcast episode about my mom’s journey with cancer and my journey with grief. It was the last night my mom would ever live to see. I wanted to record myself, whether I ever decided to share the recording or not, to have as a keepsake. To hear in my voice where I was in that moment. I still haven’t been able to listen to it. One day I will, when the time is right.

I have letters from her but I wish I had more videos, more voicenotes. So many things I wish I’d thought of. She hated having her picture taken. I wish I’d ignored her and taken more anyway.

Sometimes I watch the few videos I have of her, over and over on loop, just to remember her voice. To remember the way her body moved. I can no longer smell her or hold her but I can see her alive in the small flat square of my phone. I realize one day with deep sadness that I’m growing and changing, as is everyone around me, and she’s forever frozen in time. The thirty seconds of footage, these few words she’s saying out of a lifetime of words spoken — this is what I have to hold onto.

Of course her love lives in me in more than just memory and video clips. Her love is baked into my bones. Her love is knit into the fabric of my flesh.

And on the one year anniversary of her death, I realize that grief has become a companion of mine. A newer companion, maybe, but one I know will be close beside me for the rest of my earthly days. My relationship with it will grow and change, as all relationships do. But it will always be there.

Some days its a few steps behind me, content to give me a bit of space. Some days it decides to suffocate me and it feels like I can’t breathe in its grasp. Some days it quietly links its hand in mine, like a gentle lover, whispering in my ear that yes, this life is full of sorrow and that’s what makes it so achingly beautiful.

It’s the ache that makes us. It’s the ache that shapes us. It’s the ache that reminds us that if we’re still breathing, if we’re still reading this, if we’re still feeling it, we’re still living and it’s not yet our time to go.

One year is not in any way the end of grief. One year is a deepening of grief. One year is a way to say, I have survived. One year is an opportunity to slow down and remember the steps of my dance with death. To remember that death is close to us all, always. Closer than we think or would like to believe. And instead of fighting it, we invite it to dance.

One day it will take us, too — but not today.

One year later and I miss you more than ever, mama. Everything I do and everything I am, each word I write her, every step I take in the dance of life, is in honor of you.

Until we connect up again soon.

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P.S. If you’re looking to come home to your creativity after birth, death or grief, I’d be honored to support you through one-on-one mentorship, monthly sacred writing circles, or monthly grief ceremonies. Our next writing circle is Tuesday, June 24th at 5pm PT.