17 September marked six months since Mum’s death, although 11 March was the last date on which she was conscious, and it is that date that I will mark in future years. Yet six months ago I watched her move for the last time, until, after her tongue moved slightly in her mouth (probably an involuntary movement, but who can say?), she was finally still. Mum was not one of those who was reconciled to the idea of death – I recall, some years ago, her telling me that when she felt unwell in bed back in her home, she had wondered whether, somehow, “this was it”. She had had a near death experience when one of my sisters was born, in the 1950s, and said that she had seen her father, then recently deceased, and he had said that she should go back, as indeed she did.
That final day of consciousness on March 11, which I will write about some time, remains very poignant. I recall feeding her with cold tea in a beaker, and her pursing her lips; an odd crossover from the kind of helplessness and weakness that I must have displayed 60 years. Now it was my using my stength to tend to her needs, rather than the reverse.
I remain uncertain about Roman Catholic doctrine and Mum’s feelings about it – whether there is an afterlife that begins with death, making it a mere transition. I used to believe firmly in an afterlife, and when we talked about it Mum used to concur. I no longer feel that – it is a possibility only; but to all those who scoff at any belief in an afterlife, I can only record that to live in a world from which an afterlife seems unlikely, feels like a bleak finality, an infinitely empty void, and no comfort at all. Maybe my agnosticism provides a basis for reconciling an irrational belief in continuing life with the hope that this might just be the case. To know, rather than to suspect, that I may never see my mother again feels much more devastating than a temporary, if perhaps long, separation.
It feels odd to be in a world that she does not influence (although there is much that her past life influenced), but it has been some years since she consciously provided much influence.
Increasingly, I am looking back over the life that she enjoyed before the final four years, which feel more and more like the “lost four years”, although there were some positive experiences here and there. The earlier life is the one that I will try to chronicle, to consider its meanings for myself and for others whose lives she touched.
This is inconclusive, and maybe confused – but I stress that these are only recorded musings! Since her passing i have ben conscious of my own disorientation and displacement, and the need to reach a position of stability. To contribute to this website seems to serve this purpose.
Joan Boughey Recalled 