Traveling

I was really moved to read Pam's posts about her mother who is ill. I am reminded as I read her post today of my experience during the last weeks of my own mother's life. She died suddenly one Sunday in July 2005. But in retrospect I could see that perhaps she had already begun to prepare for her death in the preceding weeks.

My mother had become frail. She was never a big woman but at 95, she had become like a bird. Her skin was translucent and nearly without wrinkles. She remained interested in reading but as her final days approached, she would gather all of her papers and notes around her as if she was trying to find something important in them. I would ask her what she was doing and she would say, "Oh I'm just reviewing things." I smile at that now.

There is a saying in the South that the dead begin to "travel" as their time nears. I've read about hospice workers who relate "visions" that the dying have. Some of the dying report visions of angels; most relate seeing deceased loved ones in the vision.

Some think that these visions are just reactions of the limbic system in a dying brain. Perhaps. But I think that the visions help soothe the dying person. And that there is more to this than science or medicine can explain.

My mother experienced a number of these "visions". A couple of weeks before her death, she told me one Sunday that she had the best time the night before. I asked her what happened, and she related to me, "I went dancing with your father." This took me aback at the time because my dad had died in 1985. Now I believe that she was reconnecting with my father who was waiting for her. There were several other instances in which she spoke of her mother and father and friends who had already transitioned to the next life.

And on the day of her death, I later learned that she told one of the workers at the home where she lived that she was in my kitchen. Her vision then was very strong and whatever prescient "energy" there is reached me because I had a sense of urgency to be with her. I wrote about that in another post.

I find these things comforting because I do believe that my mother was "traveling" beyond this life to the next. And maybe in doing so she changed and became an energy. I felt that energy in the days after her death and knew that she was still with me. While I now have memories of her, I don't feel that energy anymore and know that she has moved on and has transitioned peacefully to the after life.

Maybe this sounds crazy. But there are things that escape explanation. I believe that dying is as profound as living. And I am grateful for this experience that I had.