Good Grief and Mine Was

Good Grief and Mine Was

Readers mail….
From Hugh Jarss….

It is nearly 30 years since my mother died, but I still remember the day of her death quite clearly.

It all began many years before when my mother discovered that she had some form of cancer affecting the gums in her mouth.  Despite treatment, the problem kept recurring, and she lost her teeth on one side of her mouth.  Later, the cancer progressed to her jawbone, part of which was cut out.  Her jaw was reinforced by a graft from her collarbone.  Very clever, but it did not solve the problem.  Once more, the cancer returned inside her mouth.  This was treated by the then novel experimental photo-dynamic therapy.  This involved exposing the cancer to special infrared radiation.  That may have worked, but it also burned off all the flesh inside her mouth, causing her enormous pain for many months.

As my parents lived in Australia and I lived in England, I didn’t get the full details of her treatment despite being in touch daily via the magical fax machine.  However, it was obvious that some of the treatment she received was causing a nearly intolerable strain on her morale.

Once more, the cancer returned, this time in her tongue, and the “cure” involved the removal of part of her tongue and a slice of her throat.  In consequence, she was no longer able to control swallowing and so took her food via a tube plugged directly into her stomach.  She was also unable to articulate sounds that I could understand, although my father was able to translate for me.

I saw her directly after this operation, whilst she was still unconscious.  She was surrounded by bleeping machines and tubes and wires, and her face was bleached white.  The sight of her brought tears to my eyes, and I thought to myself that had she been my dog, I would have been praised for having it put down.  Especially with cancers, there is often a conflict between the suffering from the disease and suffering more from the treatment, which is given even when there is no hope of a cure.

My Mother’s end came many months later, despite her fierce resistance.  On that day, my father, my brothers, and myself surrounded her bed, holding her hands.  As she slipped into a coma, my brothers, both doctors, objectively described the stages of her death.  Firstly, the conscious level of the brain closes down leading to the loss of contact with the world.  Then the intermediate, “reptilian” level of the brain, which controls a lot of major body processes, also shuts.  Finally, the brainstem slowly closes down. Breathing stops.

Whilst holding her hand I was also feeling my mother’s pulse.  What had been a steady beat became an increasingly weak and ragged one.  It stopped; then, after what seemed an age, it began again in a slow, tremulous fashion.  It stopped again, but after a few seconds, I felt the feeble flutter of her heart pulsing once more, another pause, and then, like the faint touch of the tip of a dying butterfly’s wing on my finger, came the final whisper of her heart.  The last section of her brain had completely stopped.  She was dead.

My feeling at that moment was not one of weeping grief.  I felt, we all felt, a strange gratitude that my mother had been released from her dreadful physical ordeal after such a long period of suffering.  I also felt an almost childish wonderment at how her life-forces had struggled to keep going.  It didn’t feel like a defeat by death, more a demonstration of the great power of life and of my mother’s indomitable spirit.

A Life Ends And A Life Continues

Shortly after, the family came together with friends to say goodbye to her in a service held at a pretty local church.  Whilst neither of my brothers nor I were religious souls it was not hypocrisy to have a church service.  The sharing of grief with family and friends within the familiar funereal rubric is a wonderful way of letting go and calming the worst aspects of our sadness.  My brothers, both well seasoned in death, found as much comfort as me in the final blessing given for the departed soul of our mother.

I returned to England just days after the funeral, and any sad thoughts that I may have had were distracted by work and friends.  Without that, I possibly would have been more sad than I was.  I do not know how my father felt after more than half a century of marriage and a decade caring for my mother.

The most remarkable thing from my mother’s death is that I still feel that faint touch of the butterfly’s wing on my finger nearly every day. It reminds me of the strength of life; it reminds me of that marvellous living woman, my mother, who shaped my boyhood, my manhood, my life.

Mine was a very good grief.

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