A Reluctant Goodbye

My mentor/friend/aunt/surrogate mother died on Saturday June 9 at 11:30 a.m. I had the great privilege and honor of spending her final days caring for her beside some truly incredible people.

She was diagnosed eight short months ago with advanced lung cancer. Those eight months were filled with doctor visits, chemotherapy, blood transfusions and blood tests. She also spent eight months lunching with friends, vacationing in Hawaii, cramming an early retirement into a finite space of time. And more importantly she spent the time learning just how loved she was.

Six weeks before she died, she and I began a list of gifts that had come from the cancer. Among them was her ability to let go of money worries, and to understand that the things that needed to get done, would. No less than two dozen people were in her home the morning she died, five of us were at her bedside, her oldest son holding her in his arms as she took her last breath. Beginning Thursday and stretching into late Sunday, the house was full of people who loved her. People who came together to celebrate her life and mourn her passing. How many people can inspire a four day house party? Miriam could.

As sad and painful as death is, if you pay close attention, it can also be an incredible experience. I was in the room when Miriam's soul left her body, leaving only a thread to hold her to the earth as her shell finished out its last hours. From the outside, the leaving resembled giving birth. It began as a struggle to cough, to breath in enough to expel the cancer from her lungs. But instead of expelling the cancer, her body mustered the last of its strength to bear down as she did during childbirth. She fought to release her soul and end her own suffering, to begin a new journey, a new life, a new form.

A few short hours later, I felt her pulse move farther in and away from my fingers, while her breathing slowly diminished. Afterwards as the body lay with Henry her bear cuddled up beside it, each person in the house visited one last time. Her dear friend, a Southern Baptist Minister who had agreed to act as her rabbi, performed a blessing and then two Buddhist Monks chanted over her. Hours later Hospice bathed and dressed her and her body was taken away.

We won't officially say goodbye until her birthday in late July. She wanted a service outside where we could all gather and share our stories of her. She also wanted to be there (ashes and all). Truth be told, she is still here with me even as I say a reluctant goodbye to her physical presence.