Death Watch

It’s been almost a year since my mom passed away. I was with her when she died.

I awoke with a start that Sunday morning in the cot next to her bed at University Hospital, Cleveland, aware that something had changed. Mom had stopped breathing. I hopped up to envelope her still body in my arms, and spoke of my love for her and the love and prayers of the family. She was still warm.

“She’s gone,” I told the nurse out in the hall. A grave young doctor came and hunted for a pulse and heartbeat with her stethoscope. “I’m sorry,” she said. The light that had been Mom’s life was now extinguished. She had graced this planet for 97 years and three months.

My sister Rosemary and I suspected two days earlier that this would be the end game. We got a call Friday afternoon from the long-term care facility saying my mom had started having trouble breathing, and they had taken her to University. We rushed over to find Mom in a hospital bed, eyes closed, attached to various monitors, and breathing fitfully through a mask.

By next morning nothing had changed. The doctors said her blood oxygen wasn’t keeping up with the need, even with the supplement—a sure sign of her impending demise—and asked if they could start a morphine drip to make her less uncomfortable. We said yes. The death watch had begun.

Hospital helpers—a chaplain, a social worker—came by to see if we needed anything. A complimentary snack tray arrived with muffins and juice and coffee. An official apprised us of the necessary paperwork to fulfill Mom’s wish of donating her body to science. The hospital seemed to know what to do at a time like this. For Rosemary and me, it was all new.

We improvised. What would Mom enjoy, even though asleep and engaged in a death process? We sang hymns, we retold family stories, we complained about certain nursing home staff, we laughed. We shared New York Times crossword puzzles, taking turns cheating, one searching Google while the other read clues and wrote in the answers. Some of Mom’s companions, the daily visitors to long-term care affectionately known as Team Betty, stopped in for conversation, hugs, and goodbyes.

In the wee hours I remember chatting with the night nurse about the new season of Game of Thrones and his fondness for fedoras, to which an entire fan website apparently is devoted. I slept soundly then, only vaguely aware of early morning rustlings in my mother’s bed and one murmured “oh” signalling the final moments of life. And then she was gone.

It had to happen eventually, of course, and I had wondered what it would be like to look death in the face. What I saw then was the dear face of my mom, who lived a long, rich life, at rest.