This morning, I’m thinking about Mom, and where we were this time last year.
It was her last day on this earth.
Mom & I didn’t have a very good relationship in her later years. Looking back now, in all actuality, I think the relationship deteriorated to varying degrees after the death of my dad decades before.
The last several years before her death were the hardest on our relationship whether it was because verbal filters had faded with old age and familiarity (for the both of us), or through her declining health.
For as long as I can remember, my mom had been into something. She was the type that never sat down. Always on the go, she was cleaning the house, cooking, or crocheting or cross-stitching or messing up the entire house while she deep cleaned something.
She worked hard.
And she taught me about hard work.
She taught me how to dress for an interview and gave me the best work advice I’ve ever received, “Make your bosses’ life easier, and you’ll always have a job.”
I still follow that wisdom.
or I try to.
Younger generations could stand to do the same.
But I digress.
A little known fact about my mom is that she quit a forty year smoking habit through hypnosis.
Yep.
You read that right.
Hypnosis.
Forty years.
Cold turkey.
And as far as I knew she didn’t pick up another cigarette for another two decades.
Like I said, she was always into something.
And always researching the latest longevity plan.
The sheer number of vitamin supplements I threw away are a testament to that.
For better or for worse.
In her last days, I had the very humbling and absolutely heartbreaking privilege of sitting by her side. And even though our time was short, those days are precious to me.
There is a scene in The Shawshank Redemption where Andy says to his fellow prisoner, Red, “Get busy living, or get busy dying.”
And I think that is a good description of how my mom lived her life.
She valued it.
Yes.
Absolutely.
She fought for it.
Almost to her detriment.
But I have to hand it to her, when the time drew near, and she knew what was happening, she made up her mind to let go and went out on her own terms.
That might sound morbid to some, but here’s the thing...
Our culture - and heck, even our DNA - tells us to fight and cling to life.
It worships youth.
It rejoices at anti-age.
It spends fortunes trying to live forever.
We pop pills to prolong our life.
We spend hours at the gym.
But watching my mom in those final days left me thinking about something else.
This world is not my home.
I don’t want to fight when the end is near.
I want to be like my mom.
I want to make up my mind with the confidence that she had when she spoke these words:
“I am getting a new life.
I’ll rise up but you won’t see it.
I will, because I’m going to heaven.”
And I whole-heartedly believe that is where she is.
And I’ll see her again someday.
But for now, I guess “I’ll get busy living, or get busy dying.”
And for today that means living.
Gosh. I sure hope I make her proud.