Mother's Dignity

Getting to spend quality time with your Mother is a good thing, a very good thing. And not a chore we sit with her, but a blessing of the highest sense, as she leaves us. Realizing that the person who brought you into this world is leaving in her own way is a special time for me; and I am so privileged to be with her. I have my own audience of one during my solo concert when I sing her favorite songs; in her room. And yet, sometime the most faintest of smiles cross her face as I sing other songs from my short private concert just for her; this frail woman who is my mother.

My other sisters and bother must tend to their own family and or daily tasks; as they are spread across the country and can't drop everything and share this special time with mother as she prepares to join our father, her husband, her love.

I have watched her ever changing facial expressions and wonder what she is dreaming about, or who is visiting with her; waiting patiently just across the divide calling for her to join them in their world for the next journey of her soul.

I see her slipping every slowly, every silently from the world she has known to join her family. She is free from pain and does not know hunger as we know,

We are so accustomed to demanding IV lines filled with pain killing drugs, and machines and all kind of artificial, mechanical manipulations to prolong life, keeping death a bay because we are afraid to face the end of life; we are afraid of death. We are not accustomed to letting our loved one's die with dignity, at home, surrounded by loving, patient family and with grandkids; void of artificial manipulations to force artificial life into their dying bodies.

And so I sit amazed that she has kept death at bay by her own tenacity for life, to spend one more precious hour, one more peaceful minute with those who love her, and care for her and wait with her as her body slowly and peacefully quits. And as we wait; we care for her, we make her comfortable, we give her her life dignity as we softly sing her favorite songs to her in hushed, quiet, lullaby tones.