Life to the End2--The Moments Now
Posted: Tuesday, March 10, 2009
by Jean Purcell
OpineBooks.com
Five days ago, a Friday, Helen, or Mary Helen as I sometimes call her, moved from end-of-life hospital care to hospice. The transfer came quickly on that clear, blue-sky Florida afternoon.
The special, tenuous moments of "living now" continued between her and her family.
That night, Helen's first grandchild, my oldest, arrived from Massachusetts. She stayed the night in the hospice room. The gift she brought for Grammy rested folded at the foot of the bed.
"What color is it?," she asked.
"What would you call the color at the ends, Mom?"
"Raspberry," I said, touching it. It felt as soft as a baby's blanket.
The center yarn, woven from different shades of pewter and light grey-blue, interspersed points of a very light raspberry.
It was without doubt the most beautiful thing at that moment. It was part of love, which always gives. I stared at it as Helen continued to move her hands over it and squeeze it.
Special living moments fill the deep core of life and love. They transcend any accomplishments or possessions.
Words can never adequately describe love; love must be given and received to be known. In the midst of love, moments expand. In the expanding moments come tastes of bliss.
"I fell in love with you the first time I saw you," Helen said to me the previous Sunday evening. I had stood by her hospital bed and we held hands. Since I married her son, Helen and I have had a special relationship of intense liking and respect.
Yet, she had never expressed love to me in that way.
When she said it, her condition did not look good. She thought and hoped to move on to Heaven that night.
The subject of our first meeting came up again with Helen last night, two nights after she was moved to hospice care.
"Come up here. There's room," she said, making a big effort to try to slide over on the bed in her new room.
"Don't move," I said. "I've got room." Already sitting on the side of her bed, careful of tubes running here and there, I could lean over and put my head, face down, next to hers.
As our heads touched, I had an impulse to sing, softly, "O, my darlin', O, my darlin', O, my darlin' Clementine...."
Helen stayed still and calm, so after that I went into "She'll be comin', 'round the mountain when she comes."
In recent years, with Helen living with us in Maryland, I have heard her sing. Somehow, on the edge of life, her voice was still a soft soprano. I know, for she began to hum after I stopped singing.
Life at the end of it takes many different routes. Outside of the physical changes the body goes through, the person is fully there. In Helen, we see the strong and humorous traits we know her by.
Between consciousness, sleeping, or heavy medication, the person at the end of life can still reveal the rich depths of an already profoundly alive person. That is what I see in Helen now--in the reservoir of her love of others and of life.
Love is like faith. It must be experienced. Once experienced, we realize in the exchanges of love that its depths really are surprising, delightful, profound, and immeasurable...we see even now the limitations of words when speaking of love, the character of the infinite God.
There is no moment in life that is minor or of little consequence when love is in it. Love outweighs everything.
Our faces touching, our voices singing, there was time and aloneness for me to tell Helen, "When you told me on Sunday that you fell in love with me the first time you met me...that made my day... and more."
"The end of all things is near.... Above all, love each other...." --1 Peter 4: 7a, 8a
Mary Helen lives in Maryland and was visiting family in Florida when she became ill. Her full life, rich in meaning, is not done yet. She is my mother-in-law.
Tim Bowen's article, "A Better Choice," in The Gainesville Sun, editorial page, on Wednesday, March 4, 2009, inspired these articles about this experience of a family at South Florida Regional Hospital and Haven Hospice.
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