What Happens When We Die?
A Shared Death Experience with Mam
Dear friend,
Sunday will be Mother’s Day in the UK.
Our culture has a way of glossing over the bitter sweet nature of our experience. Christmas is a time of warmth and togetherness and commerce. Easter is about chocolate. Mother’s day, flowers.
The culture ignores that the winter holidays are a time where the pain of loneliness can be even more acute, that Spring may remind you of endings, not new beginnings and that for many, our relationships with our mothers can be complicated.
I had just finished teaching a drama class when my mobile phone buzzed in my pocket. Usually, when a number shows that I don’t know, I’ll let it go to voicemail. If it’s important the caller I presume will leave a message. If it’s a sales call, best not to waste their and my time.
Some internal prompt made me answer, ducking into the male toilets I took the call.
“Mike? It’s Dave.”
Dave? Who? For a moment I’m scanning my memory banks for a Dave.
“Look I’m sorry, I’ve got some bad news.”
Oh Dave! My cousin, at the time a police officer in Cumbria, now a sergeant.
“It’s about Auntie Shiela.”
Dave had heard on the police radio that my mam was in an ambulance, she’d collapsed at home and was being rushed to hospital in Whitehaven. She was breathing but was not conscious. I was to get to there as soon as possible.
You go into coping mode. I knew what to do. Good in an emergency. Something takes over. Some people panic. It depends on the situation, but the need of another I can cope with.
I told my colleague Fenella the outline of the story, gathered my stuff and was out the gates and heading home. I can’t rely on my memory for the next bit. I think Chiara was home, when I saw her my insides began to give way. Somehow telling Chiara made it real.
Maybe she was at work and I called her.
Memory.
The way two people relate the same incident in completely different detail. Each sure of the other’s inaccuracies. I think she was home. I remember packing my overnight case. My mam in the care of strangers, by now hooked up to machines. Dad, cognitively and physically disabled.
The time for the grown up in me, the capable one, his time.
I’m in Clover. It’s a six hour plus drive. I’m flirting with the speed camera’s. She’s an old car. Noisy, uncomfortable. I’m glad of it. The cabin and engine noise a comforting drone, something to focus on. Don’t get nicked, keep the car on the road, get there.
A massive brain haemorrhage, in the shower getting ready for a dental appointment. Mam had decided to get her teeth fixed. Dad heard her collapse, was able to call 999 and alert Jean next door.
Later he forgot. Dementia. Asked where she was. Over and over. He thought she’d run off to Australia.
My brother and brother in law on a flight. The details escape you. I think Dave called them. The nurses were angels. Chiara followed me up. We stayed in the family room in the intensive care unit.
You hang on to hope.
In the unit I knew that mam could hear everything we were saying. I watched how she’d react to conversations. She was with us. We with her.
It’s all that matters in the end. Connection. Our love. Presence.
There was this moment when the doctor asked my brother Kevin and me to step into the corridor, into a new reality. A ‘do not resuscitate’ form. We sign. Even then, you grasp on to something, the last finger hold as you make your mark in ink on a photocopied form. Someone opens a trap door beneath your feet and you’re falling.
Dad was at home. In his chair in front of the TV. I get him and the wheelchair into his car. Stall the thing. We’re moving as fast as we can, me now running at the ramp to the main hospital entrance, the momentum getting us in the building and to the lift.
I park Dad by mam’s bed. He doesn’t seem to know what’s happening. The machines have been unhooked. Mam’s head is tilted towards me and Dad. Kevin and Peter are on the other side of the bed.
I repeat a prayer in my mind, holding her hand.
She has one blue eye open. We never break eye contact, not even to blink.
“I love you, don’t be afraid, there is no death.”
The prayer starts to repeat itself, like a prayer wheel turning in the wind.
Mam takes her last breath. Deep inside of her a rattling sound. We keep the eye contact. I sense the energy of her leaving, first it’s as if her feet have become empty.
“ I love you, don’t be afraid, there is no death.”
The emptiness reaching closer and closer to her heart and suddenly both her eyes open. Her face lights up with delight. A pure joy I hadn’t seen for years. Years and years of caring for Dad.
Eyes open I go into a vision.
The blue of Mam’s iris expands, a great circle of blue like a bud unfolding in stop motion. It fills my entire field of vision. Then figures of golden light enter coming in through the ceiling. Figures I recognise. Nana, Grandad, Grandpa Joe, Chester the cat, Robbie the dog, Auntie Doe and Uncle Steve. Others I don’t recognise.
Mam leaves her body. Through the crown of her head. She goes with them and then like a book slamming shut, the vision ends.
There’s an empty shell, on a bed under fluorescent lights in the daytime.
Why are the lights always on?
The nurses leave us. We look at one another. Mam isn’t there anymore. Dad has become quiet. No-one knows what to say. After what feels like a respectful time has passed, we leave the room. Take Dad home. Go to the shore.
That’s how it ends.
That’s how it starts.
A long time passes before the world will reform itself anew.
Here on the other side of it, if that’s you now my heart goes out to you.
My friend Luke said, “She brought you into this world and you were there to guide her out of it.” He’s always has the best one liners.
What happens when we die?
I can tell you what I experienced, what my mam taught me.
Our loved ones come and get us. After that, who knows. I can tell you what the books say, but that’s book learning.
That we are eternally loved. I know that.
This Sunday, I’ll be hanging out with Mam. We’ll have a Kit Kat and a cup of tea and a chat. Our loved ones never leave. Other cultures know this.
It’s time for our culture to return to wisdom.
The soul is eternal.
We are spirit soul.
Be gentle with yourself.
Know that you are loved.
Eternally.
Till tomorrow
Love
Mikey