My mother was the only girl in her family, 2 older and 2 younger brothers growing up in Chicago. She was super close to her kid brothers, not quite as close with the older ones. Her elder brothers did quite well becoming millionaires. She loved to tell the tales from her youth. Not on the thread track; but I’ve been always curious on the life & death cycle of people – like a video tape coming to an end. One elder brother drowned at age 59, on a Hawaiian vacation, one from MS, another from skin cancer at 88 living in AZ a couple decades loving swimming and the – sun, her youngest died at 84 from a sudden respiratory ailment that just devastated my mother, wishing she would depart before he did. She made it another 6 months to 89, the last of the siblings.
Odd, as I took her to the ER the evening before and she was so alert and as always, when we would part, the ‘I love you’s” leaving her in her room around 9PM. Got a call from the doc next morning at 7AM saying I should come as she was ‘dying’. Then he said, I’m sorry, she’s passed. Got there about a half-hour later, as the hospital I took her to was closest to her. They knew I was coming so they left her in her bed. Wow, what a shock to view her lifeless, my ever-talkative-feisty mom silent for the first time in my life. Tubes disconnected, but the needles still stuck in her hands. Spent 45 minutes talking to her about all the loving memories, hoped she could ‘hear’. My brother was out of town a 1000 miles away.
We all go through this, but makes me wonder how my kids might respond, praying I go long before them. As I get older, the viewing of others close for so many years, seeing their lives...until they run out of their life's tape, never is easy.
I digress, my apologies, back to the – thread.