The miracle is here now, In each moment.  That awareness is, perhaps, the greatest gift that I received from being a witness and escort to my mother’s end of life process. I am grateful for every moment.

Lasting the four days in the hospital with my mother was, in some respects, an endurance test. Time seemed to be moving in slow motion and yet it was busy and full. There were visits from her friends, nurses coming and going and my attempts to gain information about my mother’s diagnosis.

At night the hospital activities surrendered to stillness with the occasional sounds of footsteps and the squeaky wheels of a cart being pushed along the corridor. That was when my mother’s worry peaked. As I lay on the lounge chair beside her bed, too exhausted to worry, I reached for any words that might bring her relief enough so that she would sleep.

Strangely, the relief came on the day that we received her diagnoses. I was sitting beside her, my stepfather was in a chair across from her bed when the team of Neurologists came in to her room. One of them wheeled in a monitor for displaying the scans of her brain. We listened.

It was brain cancer. It was large and growing exponentially. Treatment was not a realistic option. My mother took in the news with courage and grace. The harsh, unexpected diagnosis would have  stunned me more had I not been in such awe of witnessing my mother’s composure over hearing that she was embarking upon her end of life journey.

I looked at the doctor’s face as he spoke, I looked at the images of my mother’s cancer on the monitor, but mostly I looked into my mother’s face. It was as if I were absorbing her courage. she asked reasonable, intelligent questions and while she listened to the answers I saw her gentleness and her fear. Her lips quivered a bit as the news sunk in.

I told her that I loved her and would do anything needed to honor her choice in regards to her end of life. Funny thing….this woman that had been my example of independence mixed with gentleness, of courage combined with sensitivity, now turned to me and said ” whatever you decide, Barbara”.

She handed over the care of her final months to me. Until that moment I had not experienced such a profound level of love and trust.

It was easy for me to lose sight of my mother’s courage. She turned to me frequently for my opinions and advice during our years together. When I was young, I misunderstood her insightful and sensitive soul and chose to see her as unusually needy.

As I grew older, I sometimes reviewed in my mind, the many challenges that she had been given in her life. I was in awe of her accomplishments and her willingness to make changes. It was difficult to understand how this courageous, intelligent woman could also be so sensitive and vulnerable.

I had been conducting myself with the idea that courage meant hiding from my own vulnerabilities. Intellectually I knew that wasn’t true, but living that truth was not something I easily embraced.

The process of escorting my mother through her end of life, witnessing both her courage and vulnerabilities intertwined, gave me pause to consider, who would I become in her absence ? I began to experience an opening within myself, allowing the full force of my own courage and vulnerabilities to become intertwined while moving through me and outward into action and creative expression.

I love each new day and the promise of new beginnings that it brings.

I love the quiet of the night and the sight of the moon and stars.

I love the warmth from the sun and the shadows cast by the clouds.

I love thier shapes and the way they are transformed by the winds

and moved across the sky.

I love the sight of soaring birds

and the way they congregate and communicate.

I love the surprise of finding thier feathers along a trail,

reminding me that angels are near.

The power of faith is the power of love.

Thank you for the miracle that is on the way.

Thank you for the miracle that is each day.

It was a different kind of storm while my mother was in the hospital.

I stayed there with her over several days while we waited for information from the doctors.

Those few days felt like years.

She was anxious at times.The stillness of the evenings brought it out and she woke often,  wanting to talk with me about her worries. I was in a hospital lounge chair beside her bed for the duration of her stay. It had been suggested that I stay in her house and makes trips to the hospital during visiting hours. The thought of doing that was incomprehensible to me.

The storm at the hospital was centered around not knowing what was coming,  as much as it was about the sounds of footsteps, conversations and equipment being wheeled back and forth in the hallway.

The quiet moments were rare.The quiet moments were powerful.