In the span of four
months, both of my parents died from aggressive, terminal cancer. My
father was 75, and my mother, who died 2 and a half months after him, was 67.
They left behind 5 children, all of which were present at their deaths.
Long story short, my
parents had been separated for 20+ years (never being able to settle on a
divorce), and had a volatile relationship during those years, and in the end,
both of them recalled on their death beds, in their own tender way and tinged
with their own regrets, how they met and their wedding day. I have yet to
understand the nature of their relationship and why this lifetime was such a
struggle for them both. All I know is that love can be fierce… and even on the
flip-side of anger, that fierceness is there and linked with love. The sad part
for them both is that so much perceived anger was pushed down over the years,
communicated between eachother as reaction after reaction, doors slammed,
feelings hurt, on and on. My 3 younger brothers were caught in the crossfire,
and my older brother and I couldn't leave home fast enough. I have a very
strong feeling that their aggressive cancer was a result of this anger, and
even though regrets were expressed leading up to their deaths, by then may have been too late.
My Mother was a
'collector' of beautiful things. The expansive nature of this scenario is that
she had a very serious case of OCD along with a very large emotional gap she
was trying to fill. Her compulsion to collect knick knacks led her to having a house,
5 storage lockers and an apartment FULL of collected items, all of which we
have been left with and which my younger brother and his wife generously
volunteered to sell off over time. In the end, Mom let go of some of her
special things, slowly and gracefully at times, not so much so at other times,
and the last week she spent in hospital, she had nothing of her personal
belongings with her except her pajamas, which she told me to take away. She had
completely let go.
My Father had very
few belongings along his death journey… essentials. Hospital living provides
very little space… access to a drawer and table top, at the most, if one is
bed-ridden. Dad had some special books and some crystals which I brought to lay
on his chest as a daily ritual for healing. Every day, I would bring my little
crystals, and lay them on his chest and he would also hold one in his left
hand, which he had lost function in. I would sit with him for a few hours like
that and we would talk about everything under the sun, which also include the
Sun, the Universe, the Great Beyond, where Dad came from... his experience of
when Atlantis sank (he was there and remembers it very clearly), and his
childhood, growing up and adult life stories. We had the best talks... and then
again, he and I have always had the best talks... highly spiritual and so very
inspiring and energizing.
I spent a total of 9
weeks in the hospital with both my parents combined, on a daily basis. If I
never set foot in another hospital for a good, long while, that is fine with
me. It is a distracting place, too sanitary, all kinds of people
with all kinds of ailments. My heart would break on a daily basis, making eye
contact with people in the halls, in their rooms, faces paled by pain and illness...loved
ones coming to hold their hands. Nurses, some with soft voices and soft manners
and some with a hardness that repels. I came to love those soft spoken ones,
with a slight sense of humour...like a mother or sister. They made such a big difference in the day-to-day. I am grateful for these loving souls.
My parents were not
big drug or hospital people, my Dad didn’t want any morphine whatsoever, and my
Mom was given just the tiniest amount and it hit her like a freight train. She
had much more pain than Dad did… the large tumours in her abdomen swelled
quickly and began pressing on her inner organs, eventually causing her to
hemorrhage internally and shut down her kidneys, causing the fluid to migrate
into her lungs. My Dad had a very rare, very quick spreading spinal tumour that
metastasized into his lungs, collapsing one which was remedied by a chest
drainage tube, and eventually after a course of radiation, there was internal
bleeding for him as well. He became toxic and went into hypoxia and never awoke
after his last breakfast.
I have been dancing
all around 'the cancer thing' for years now, as a Nutritionist and in my
studies and research I have come across numerous books, sites, and videos of
people curing their cancer with natural remedies and therapies. I even
attempted to open a non-profit society for those people, upon hearing their
diagnosis of cancer, to have a place to stay to process what their next actions
would be… all the while surrounded by loving individuals, music, drumming,
dancing, healthy food and others in a similar situation to talk to about their
feelings. The bureaucracy of achieving charitable status was a huge deterrent
for me… a square box the government required me to put my very rounded project
idea into, and the whole project began to lose it’s shine after too much
trimming and was dropped. It just wasn’t the right avenue for what I wanted to
achieve. Perhaps some road will open for it one day… I still think it is a very
valuable project. When one is presented with the fact that they are going to
die, even though it is the case for all of us and we somehow forget that, life
changes. Drastically. How are we supposed to hold this knowledge on our own? We
need community. My project was all about community and holding eachother, with
the knowledge that yes, we are going to die. How do we now shape that for and
with eachother?
I often question the
choices my parents made with regards to their 'treatments'. Would I ever chose
that route? My heart says NO after seeing what I saw. My Mom chose chemo and
actually did really well on it... surprisingly well. My Father was encouraged
by his doctor after his tumour returned, to have it radiated, and he chose a 3
week, daily treatment option. Because his tumour was so rare, he was also being
closely monitored… a case study of sorts. I didn’t realize until later that he knew
this, and he was offering himself to the study… as a way to help the doctors
learn what worked and what didn’t for his rare tumour. After an earlier surgery
to remove the tumour, he had a one-of-a-kind, newly fangled contraption called
a ‘squirrel cage’, made of titanium, holding his upper spine together. It was a
miracle that he could even walk after the surgery. He lost alot of motor
function and had extensive nerve damage from his chest down to his toes,
however, he could walk. He walked for 6 months until one day he fell down and
had a very hard time getting back up. His Soul-companion of 9 years, Maureen,
who was living with and caring for him during those 6 months, called his doctor
and the next day brought him to emergency to have a scan. That scan revealed
his tumour had returned and was growing fast. So fast that he would be
completely paralyzed within months. He lasted two months… and was almost
completely paralyzed in the end.
I had a deep
yearning, the whole time my dear Dad was in hospital, to take him home and
nurse him myself. I even had an initial plan for him to spend the winter with
me on the West coast, flying him from Alberta. I had the electric hospital bed,
and the cane, and all the plans… but then he fell, and landed in the hospital,
so I went to be with him there instead… for two wintery months I walked,
bussed, caught rides… whatever I had to do to be by his side on a daily basis.
You couldn’t have torn me away from him. I was committed to be beside him until
the end, and I never knew when that end would be… even though I tried in my
super-human way to make plans, every single one would fall through as something
would shift or change for him. So, I surrendered to go with the flow.
After three weeks of being in Edmonton at the very busy and chaotic Cross
Cancer Institute, however, both Dad and I were ready to go home. We had plans,
and the nurses and doctors were setting it up for Dad to be released to his
home-town to rest and be comfortable in palliative care and stop being tested,
radiated and poked and prodded… and then his condition shifted drastically one
morning as he began hemorrhaging internally and the next evening, he died.
Shortly after his
death, I had a dream. I was nursing him by myself, in his home. Because of the
huge amount of work nursing someone takes, we didn’t have time for all of our
awesome conversations, and all our time was spent changing diapers, linens,
preparing food… and Dad was not too happy about me wiping his butt! The
interesting thing is that the sequence of events was identical… the cold
setting into his lungs and turning into pneumonia, the collapsed lung, the
chest tube insertion, the paralysis, the internal hemorrhaging… it all still
happened. His death still happened. There was nothing I could have done to
shift the course of how this was all going to play out for him, because it was
destined to play out this way… and I woke from this dream with a strong feeling
that all was as it was meant to be. I felt more at peace after the dream,
though still deeply grieving the loss of my IDEA of the perfect death for my
beloved Father.
After having him
cremated, I flew back home to my family, and was only home for a month and a
half when my brothers and I learned that our Mother’s cancer had returned. She
also, about a year or so prior, had surgery to remove an aggressive tumour
within her uterus. She had a complete hysterectomy, as well as removal of some
of her surrounding inguinal glands, followed by radiation of the area and a
round of chemo. Her one-year follow up showed that she was ‘clean’. When my Dad
was in the hospital after his fall, I remember visiting with Mom, and she was
very stressed and not looking so good… kind of grey in the face. When Dad went
to the Cross Cancer Institute in Edmonton for those 3 weeks in November, Mom
had an appointment there as well for a check-up, which she missed because of
snowy weather. Had she gone at that time, I bet they would have revealed that
her cancer had returned and she would have been admitted for treatment. By
mid-January, she was on the edge of death when we learned about what was going
on for her, which she was withholding from us because she was worried it was
too soon after our Dad’s death (Nov. 29th) and that we were still heavily
grieving. We were, and yet she was in a very grave situation and we had her
rushed to the hospital with the help of our youngest brother and his wife who
lived close-by. They stayed with her there for a week until the rest of us
could fly out and drive up. Mom had indeed almost died, and she had two very
large tumours in her abdomen, some spots on her lungs, two thirds of her
kidneys had failed, her adrenals were being pressed by the tumours and she had
a bladder infection and blood clots in her leg. A blood transfusion perked her
up enough to have some quality time with her family and get her plans in order,
however, the doctors gave her a prognosis of 2 weeks to live.
She was doing so
well for a bit, that we were able to take her to her apartment and care for her
there for a week. She very quickly declined however, and her brain was getting
more and more scrambled and her communication more cryptic (mini-strokes?). She
would ramble on for ours and none of it would make sense. Mom has always been a
talker... a 2 hour phone conversations would consist of a dozen Um hum's and
oh's from the other person on the line... and that's just how she was. And in
the end, it was non-stop for her as well... until it got so jumbled and even
she was having a hard time getting the words out. That week was a very
challenging, super-emotionally draining, dark week for my brothers and I. Mom's
appetite declined severely and she was having a very hard time eating and we
spoon feed her because she was becoming too weak to sit up or get out
of bed. As soon as she couldn’t make it to the washroom on her own anymore, we
all agreed she needed to go back to hospital. She lasted one week longer until
her kidneys shut down, and the tumours filled her abdomen completely, pressing
into all of her organs.
Mom was on a very
low dose of morphine and way more lucid than Dad was at the end. There was
another drug she was on too, I forget the name. It calmed her brain down enough
that she was able to speak again in a way that we could understand her and she
told us each some very sweet things before she died. She asked my forgiveness,
because I was so young and left to look after my brothers all those years ago.
I told her of course I forgive her and that I loved her and was so grateful to
have had this time with her. All of my brothers also told her they loved her
and that they were ready to let her go.
She was opening her
eyes and making small response sounds until just before she left her body. My
brother and I each had a hand on her shoulders, one on each side, as if we were
guiding her… up through the almighty death canal… she was held in love, my
other brothers around her as well. She had the death grimace a few times, like
Dad did, and her breathing softened so gently, with a slight gurgling from the
fluid in her lungs. I felt so filled with love for her as she was dying, such
relief filled my chest because it was such a gentle process. We removed the oxygen
tube from her nose as her breaths got further apart, and within a couple
minutes, she tried to draw a few breaths from deeper down, winced very deeply
(perhaps at the exact moment her heart stopped beating), and that was it. She died just after 11am on February 11th. We
stayed around her and the tears fell for a time, all of us quiet. I put my hand
on her chest… her heart chakra...and the heat was still there, even after a
couple hours of us in the room, sharing stories and experiences about Mom. It
was a tender moment, leaving the room for the last time, leaving the womb that
birthed us all, behind.
My Father passed
very similarly, his last breaths after the oxygen had been turned to it’s
lowest setting, a few deep ones, the grimace, and then the last breath. After a
few minutes of gazing in disbelief at his unmoving chest, I turned to my oldest
brother and let out a keening wail into his shoulder as he held me. I didn’t
know I could even make that sound. My heart absolutely broke when my dear ‘ol
Dad left his body. I felt like part of my soul had been ripped away as well. I
still feel that way. I have loved that man fiercely, all my life. He was and
forever will be my hero.
Despite my parents’
drama and separation over the years in this life, I had a real sense that they
were very old souls and this lifetime was a powerful one for them, leaving them
both with some continued karma to deal with, however, they did make an effort
in the end with their attempts to resolve some of it for themselves, if not
with eachother. My Dad leaving my Mom in his Will was a compassionate gesture
on his part, and my Mom finding some acknowledgement and forgiveness because of
that gesture. Before I had heard the news of Mom’s cancer returning, and just
after my Dad’s death, I had a dream about the two of them. It made no sense to
me at the time, and didn’t until the evening that my brother told me the news about
Mom’s health situation. In the dream, that same brother and I were making some
sort of plans that we were excited about, and we had one question for Dad. I
looked around and saw him lying there in a hospital bed, so I approached. As I
did so, I happened to notice that Mom was there right beside Dad, also lying in
her own hospital bed. They were both having a very heated discussion and paid
me no notice. I approached Dad and asked him the question, to which he didn’t
respond. He only looked at me very gravely, like I was interrupting something
very, very important that had nothing to do with me. I caught the hint and
moved away, leaving them to continue their intense conversation. I awoke rather
confused by the dream scenario. Weeks later, on the phone with my brother
telling me the news about Mom, I got a chill from head to toe as the dream came
back to me. I stopped the conversation to share the profoundness of the dream
and it left us both speechless for a moment. I never told Mom about this
prophetic dream, nor did I have any intention to. Again, I was left with the
feeling that the way this was all playing out was part of some much larger
plan.
The closer to death
Mom approached, the less fear she had. About four days before her death, my Mom
told my oldest brother “I can’t wait”. Can’t wait for what? he asked. “I can’t
wait to die”. And only weeks before, she was filled with fear, and wondering if
she would be accepted into heaven, or if she’d be going to hell. She sure hoped
it would be heaven, she said. She also mentioned to me one evening about a man standing by the mirror in her hospital room. This was a few days before she died. She said the light was shining on him. I wasn't sure who she was talking about, and I didn't ask...I just listened and acknowledged her. My Dad also had very interesting dreams leading up to his death which he shared:
He said that St. Germaine was there with him in the form of a dog, and they were running and flying together, and that he was really looking forward to meeting him on a soul-level, and that they were all waiting for him as well... and he smiled.
Dad was never
afraid, and looked forward to the liberating, spiritual aspect of it… and of
course to find his spaceship and take his rightful place at the high table. :)
In his spiritual circle of friends, he was known affectionately as Commander
Ziggy (Commander Z for short), and I had no doubt that he was a VERY old Soul
and extremely advanced among the ranks! The last night of my Dad’s life,
he had a very fitful sleep. He was uncomfortable, and every couple of hours he
would call out for me or the nurses to help him re-adjust or have his diaper
changed. He was hemorrhaging internally by this point and he said he just
didn’t feel good. At one point around 3 or 4 am, he called for me and I ran my
hand over his forehead and said quietly into his ear “It’s alright Dad… don’t
worry.” To which he replied in a very serious tone “I am NOT worried.” Ahhh,
right… because he never was. I was the one who was worried, not he… and he set
me straight! After his fitful night, he ate a fairly decent sized breakfast of
cream-of-wheat porridge and he made a special request for pears. One of my
other brothers made the run to find some as I spoon fed Dad, then he ate a few
slices of the canned pears my brother found, looked rather unimpressed, and
then asked to be laid back in his bed. I tucked him in, gave him a kiss and
wished him sweet dreams and told him I loved him. I had no idea he would never
wake up. He slipped into unconsciousness and then hypoxia until he died that evening at
6:10pm.
He found his
spaceship, by the way. :) His dear partner, Maureen, who I am also very close
with and who experiences the veils between life and death as very thin, is now
able to communicate with Commander Z and she sends me messages from him from
time to time. On the morning my mother was actively dying, I was with her alone
for a short period of time. I sat in a chair and looked out the window long and
hard as the snow fell. I pleaded with Dad to come pick her up in his spaceship
and take her for one heck of a ride, because she most certainly deserved it. I
also pleaded that he show her the ropes, and look out for her as she finds her
way HOME. My tears fell along with the snow outside the window, and Mom let out
a little whimper… and I felt she was sensing my tears. I went over to her and
ran my hand over her forehead. Very shortly after that, her breath softened. I
felt Dad was coming to pick her up. Maureen emailed me after Mom had passed,
with this message from 'Z' : "He wanted me to tell you that he did come pick your Mom up in his space ship and she had a beautiful and joyful ride. He said to tell you that she was welcomed Home with great applause and that, even though she's still orienting to having left her body behind, she is happy and enjoying laughing in ways she hasn't laughed in a very long time. He said that each of them had very successful lives, no matter how things might have looked on the surface of human appearances. It made me happy myself to hear and I hope that passing that on to you will also give you some comfort and peace". :) :) It did, Maureen. Thank-you.
We buried our Mother on Valentine's day (the same day that one year ago, Dad had his first spinal surgery) in a little cemetery outside of Camrose, Alberta. She requested a simple pine box and graveside burial, with just her children and her good friend, Norman, present. She also requested to be swaddled within the pine box in a blanket, and I like to imagine she was. My Dad's funeral in Wetaskiwin isn't until May, when the Alberta snows thaw and family can travel from afar. He came from a family of 13, so there will be many attending.
What I learned from
the experience of being with both my parents as they died, is how much love was
present, and how I have never experienced my heart breaking open like that… it
was like a physical pain, a wrenching. And it was because of love. There was
also a large amount of forgiveness that happened, both with and without the
words. I feel blessed that they both died slowly enough that us kids
could be there by their side, have time to talk with them and share stories and
hold and touch them. My brothers and I received the gift of BEING there, with
both of them, and for that I am forever grateful.
I miss them both
immeasurably, and right now, my tears fall daily. My path in life has been altered,
and I must find a new way of BEING… in my family life which now consists of my
brothers and I, with my dear husband and my 2 wonderful sons, my wonderful friends and community...yet it
feels challenging at times. Grief is a new guest in my house… passing through
at random times and asking me to work hard. Some moments I want to turn away,
and then I remind myself that the only way to the other side is THROUGH, and so
I sit down and write or listen, or look… and the tears come as I do grief’s
dance. <3
Sending LOVE to all
those who are grieving their parents and loved Ones,
~Mamaleah
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