My mother passed away on Thursday afternoon. It happened while I was in Los Angeles with my son Bryce. The morning had been spent on the phone with my siblings who were with her in Utah, and it was clear she was spiraling down rapidly. I left my phone vigil to have a late lunch with Bryce’s friend Rio and his mother, artist extraordinaire Susan Kaiser Vogel. Seated in the unexpected beauty of their post industrial/deconstructed garden patio, Rio made a heartfelt toast to mothers and mothering as we broke bread over a hearty artisanal meal. It was a crystalline moment; an intoxication of sumptuous food, captivating companions and the ineffable joy of being with one’s own child, full grown and compellingly complex.
I didn’t hear the phone ring, pinioned in my bag in a back room, so I didn’t get the news that she had gone until after our en plein air repast was over. But that gap was a gift. My memory of my mother’s final hour is permanently nested in the soft nap of a velveted afternoon spent celebrating life in unadorned, simple sensuousness.
Her wake is Thursday, her funeral on Friday. I’ll be back in Boston on October 10th and will post again here at that time.
Thank you to all of you who have walked with me during these last few months of suffering. Her final lap completed, I can return to celebrating a woman of extraordinary vitality, strength and selflessness.
Elizabeth Call Barlow, 1922-2007
As your mother was moving on, you and your son and friends paused to celebrate her life, to think on her – how beautiful this is! What a beautiful, open expression she has in this photo. Cling to your family in this time, and be well! G
A beautiful memory of your mother’s last afternoon. She has kindness pouring out of her eyes. I’m sorry for your loss.
She has a gentle face. Two sons toasting their mothers — this does strike me as being a moving tribute to your own mother.
Deborah, I am so sorry. But it is wonderful that your mother has found release. At this same time in my mother’s life, I was so frightened for her: knowing almost nothing of what was going on around her, she just might have pulled through, to find that a Nurse Ratched ran her life. That, she would have understood, and I am deeply grateful she never had to.
What a good thing, the cell phone muffled in a distant room while you were taken up with something beautiful, companionable and exhilarating that celebrated your mother in a way that rushing to the phone could not have compared with.
I think everyone experiences this rite of passage differently. A slightly older friend once told me that the death of her mother was — she realized when it happened — the last thing about life that she knew to expect in the normal course of things. She was supposed to outlive her mother, and she did. Now, anything might happen, for she had ascended to that peculiar loneliness of being an elder, with no one on deck ahead of her. It was dizzying, a whole new walkabout, where resources are suddenly scant, demands high.
There are good and needful things to be discovered in this terra incognita, and I know you will find them.
Thank you, all of you, for your kind words and thoughtful comments. It is a profoundly personal and yet universal experience, grieving the loss of a mother.
She looks very strong and loving in that beautiful picture.
Deborah, while your Mother was making her final journey you were celebrating her life with mothers and sons, how beautiful! Her final moments marked with this sumptuous interlude, the passing of the torch, one encompassing remarkable mother leaving this world for another encompassing remarkable mother to carry on.
I never met Elizabeth but I have met her in you, and I have seen her reflection in Betsy and Rebecca within the brief encounters we have had.
My deepest sympathy in the passing of your Mom, she will be sorely missed.
Much Love, Diana
A very late comment: I’m very sorry for your loss Deborah. You wrote some beautiful things about life and death in this post.
Jenny