The call came at 9:17 on a Friday morning. I remember because I was meeting with a potential client who wanted my help with a major project. When I saw my sister’s photo pop up on my iPhone, I declined it thinking I would call her back later in the day. Within five minutes it buzzed again, this time a text from my brother. And then again, another call from my sister. “This can’t be good,” I thought, so I wrapped up my meeting, downed the last of the foam from the bottom of the mocha, and walked outside to call her back.
“You need to come to Florida,” she said. “Mom has decided to die. It will happen tomorrow night.” (note: she probably said “Mom has decided to withdraw care” or something technical like that. But that’s not what I heard.)
Tomorrow night. Those words weighed on me as I phoned my husband and made plans to hit the road.
My mother always knew what she wanted and what she did not. Not that she was pushy. Far from it. Growing up, when I wanted her opinion she always took the middle ground. “What do you think about this dress?” I would ask. “It looks nice,” she would reply. Always nice. Not awful, not awesome. Nice. She was not quite stoic, but reliably moderated, probably the result of growing up with Depression-era parents raised on the edge of Pennsylvania Dutch Country in what James Carville once referred to as “the Alabama” between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia.
But on death she was resolute. She did not want to live attached to machines. She had labored for years with emphysema and chronic bronchitis. When the shortness of breath and wheezing got too severe, she was forced to wear a nasal cannula, attached 24 hours a day to an oxygen canister. Of course, my brother, sisters and I knew “24 hours a day” was a lie because every few hours she would remove the tubes, sit down at the folding table on the back porch, and smoke a Winston Light. It was a habit she had been perfecting for more than half a century and a comfort she had to surrender when, three days before her 72nd birthday, she suffered a panic attack and was rushed to the hospital. The doctors had to put her on a ventilator. Two weeks later they told her there was little hope of getting off.
The Dutch have a saying — “goede dood.” It means good death, a concept with roots in the ancient Greek word “eu” (good) and “thanatos”…
