Grief, The Final Act of Love

Last Words

“Listen,” her voice is but a whisper and her children lean closer to hear her, “this is important. Look in the…” Her eyes grow blank and her hand in her daughter’s, slack.

“Mom?” Her cry is disbelieving. The hospice nurse shakes her head. 

“I’m sorry.”

“No!” Her brother takes her in his arms and they both weep. 

The cancer had been aggressive. It came in hard and despite treatment, they all knew it would take her life. A month previous, they were called into the oncologist’s office.

“It is time for hospice. I’m sorry.”

A month. It should have been enough time to accept what was coming, enough time to say goodbye, to say all that needed said. It wasn't.

The next few days are a blur of grief and the mechanics of death. The arrangements were already made, one benefit of knowing it is coming. Still there are people to call, equipment to return, forms to fill out. 

She wanted to be cremated and the urn was already picked out. A simple ceremony at her church. They get through it, somehow. The funeral food fills the kitchen so cooking can be put aside too. Room to mourn is good. Tears are shed. They dot the journal her daughter keeps. Her brother takes long walks. 

A few weeks pass. The heaviness is still there but there is some room to breathe. They start to talk about it.

“She was trying to tell us something. I wonder what it was.” 

“I don't know but I wish I did. It seemed important.” She answers.

The weather turns bitter as a cold wind comes down from Canada. Still, she finds herself, wrapped in her mom's robe, sitting on the porch swing. Her eyes are vacant and far away. 

“What was it?” Her mind goes over again and again. The hospice nurse told them that it could have been nothing, nothing more than the final thought of a dying mind. Her brother wants to believe it, she knows. It is easier that way, not to wonder about what was left unsaid.

She can't let it go that easily. “Mom knew she was leaving. She knew. She wouldn't just say something unimportant.” She muses aloud with only the squirrels and birds to hear her.”Mom please, a bit of help. Look at what?” She addresses the sky.

He comes out and frowns at her. “Come inside. It is freezing out here.”

“I know I just… I feel closer to her out here.” he sighs. It makes sense. Mom would spend hours out on the swing. After her treatments, she would swing for hours, wrapped in the same robe her daughter has donned and wrapped in a blanket. She was always cold with the chemo.

“Yeah. You're not still obsessing over her last words, are you?” he wraps his arms about him as the wind picks up.

“I know she was trying to tell us something.” 

“You heard what the nurse said.”

“She didn't know her. We did. Do you really believe she would have her last words be nonsense? You know she was lucid.”

He must admit that she is right. Mom never got dementia, never spoke out of her head, despite the pain.  “She was,” another sigh, “What do you want to do?”

They have avoided going through her things. Her room is the same as it was the day she passed, minus the hospital equipment. 

“We need to search her room.”

“Okay.” 

Walking in was like walking into the past. She tries to think of the time before, the time before the doctor ‘s words, ‘It is cancer.’ When life wasn't full of sickness and grief.

Running in, hair flying behind her, to tell her about the boy that gave her her first kiss. Crying in her lap when he dumps her. Arranging her hair into a tight French braid for her high school graduation. Brushing her own hair out when her hands were too arthritic. 

Her brother remembers standing nervously at the door when he was preparing for his first football start. She laughed and drew him to her side. “You can come in.”

“It is a lady’s room.”

He recalls the look of beaming pride she showered him with. 

Her makeup still lines the top of the dresser. Lotions and pictures intermingle with them. Her clothes still hang in the closet and fill the drawers. Her bed, pressed flush against the wall to make room for the hospital bed, is still made up with her favorite bedding. 

“Where do we start?” His voice is a whisper. She feels it too. This is a sacred room, the last room their mom was alive in.

“Drawers, closet,” she feels it too, the solemness. 

Looking through her clothes brings back thousands of memories. Bedtime stories, game nights, cutting fabric for quilting. For him, he recalls seeing her screaming encouragement from the stands, the look of pride the day of his prom. They both remember the comfy clothes moving to the front, the nightgowns, sweats, warm sweaters, as she got sicker. 

She lifts clothes out, gently searching through them. He moves through the hangers, looking in pockets, in sleeves. 

“We should donate them. She would hate them going to waste.” She says.

His sister is right, he knows. It is just… these are the jeans she wore all the time, the nightgown she wore every Christmas morning, the flannel shirt she did her gardening in. How.. 

He doesn't realize he is weeping until he feels his sister's arms around him. She is crying too. They sit on the floor of her closet and mourn her once again.

As their sobbing fades, they notice an envelope taped to the back wall. 

Inside is a letter in their mom's handwriting.

My dearest children,

‘I write this knowing I will soon be gone. To leave you so soon, it is untenable to me. Nevertheless, I know my time here is almost over. 

I don't want you to focus on these last days. Mourn and move on. As you have found this, you are cleaning my things out. Remember, they are just things. Hold fast to the values I have taught you, the lessons, the memories. 

There are people that can use my clothes, my makeup you can just throw away. This room, as we talked about before the blasted cancer, make it a room for foster children. 

Move on, my loves. I love you. I will save you a spot in heaven. 

See you then

Mom.’

“This,” she is torn between laughing and crying, “is what she wanted us to find. She knew we would put off cleaning her things out, put off living. Maybe she meant to tell us it was here or maybe she wanted us to search. Either way…”

“We need to do as she wants.” He completes.

“Yes.”

Six months later a little girl sleeps under their mom's favorite bedding.

The end.