Removing The Mask – My Real Mother’s Final Request

Photo by Magda Ehlers

In June 2018, I received a phone call that changed everything.

It was regarding, my mother. The woman who had given birth to me. The person who left her two little girls standing in a driveway crying, as she drove away 57 years ago.

My real mother.

The call was from her doctor’s office telling me her COPD had advanced. With images from the past of a cigarette always in her hand, I listened.

“Her blood gases are life-threateningly high, and she is refusing help.” the nurse said.

Calmly, I asked the nurse to please send an ambulance to her house. Then taking a deep breath, I made my arrangements to fly to her.

When I walked into her hospital room for the first time, my heart broke into a million pieces. She was lying in a bed that seemed to devour her small, frail body.

A mask covered three-quarters of her tiny face but it was her eyes that got me. There was so much fear behind those tired eyes. They spoke to me, saying what her voice could not. She wanted the mask off. She wanted to be free.

For the next four days, I barely slept as I battled with her to keep the mask on. The strange thing was, even in those difficult moments, the thought she might die never crossed my mind. Even if sometimes she had left a path of chaos behind her, she was a survivor.

During that time, my mother hadn’t acknowledged me by name. Perhaps she thought I was just a member of the hospital staff trying to make her comfortable. I didn’t know. When I spoke to her, I always called her “Mom.” “No, Mom, please, you have to leave the mask on.” While spoon-feeding her, I would talk to her. She only ever answered “yes” or “no.” Worried it might upset her, I avoided talking about our past. Even though there were truths I desperately longed to hear, my only thought was for her comfort.

On the fourth day, her world grew brighter. A miraculous recovery? Sitting up, she asked to see her sister. While we waited for my aunt to arrive, I joyfully brushed her hair. I washed her face and feet, making her ready for her visitor. Still, I wondered if she knew who I was.

Later, I watched from across the room. Touched by, and I’ll admit, a bit jealous of the obvious closeness these two women shared. I felt the visit was just what she’d needed.

That same day, the doctors, shocked at her recovery, told her she could go home, but warned she would need to remain on the CPAP machine for 12 hours every day if she wanted to live. Learning this, my mother opted to die.

“I’ve made peace with God,” she said. “Start the morphine.”

The hospital staff removed her catheter. They took off the life-saving mask and moved her to the hospice wing. All the while, my name still had never crossed her lips.

As I watched, all I could see was her driving away again, but this time, not looking back in the rearview mirror. I stood by as she signed the papers approving her own death. When she’d finished, a nurse came in, syringe in hand. I wanted…to scream, “You may be ready but I’m not!” but I remained silently by her side.

You see, for years, I’d kept this woman at arm’s length. Afraid to get too close. In order to protect myself from the pain of her lies, and the choices she made, I managed our relationship very carefully.

As the nurse approached, I gazed down at my mother. Her eyes were closed and there was a calm resolve about her. Obviously, she… was ready, even if I wasn’t.

Then, just as the nurse was about to inject the first dose of morphine into her frail body, my mother’s eyes opened. Looking straight into mine… she said, “Now, write the book.”

In that instant, I knew she’d been aware of who I was the entire time. She’d seen me and heard me. I hoped our moments together had meant as much to her as they did to me. There were tears in my eyes, but a warm comforting feeling in my heart as her eyes gently closed. My mother died the next morning. “Now write the book,” was my mother’s final request.

Photo by Lum3n

Two years later, I sat down at my desk with those words whispering in my ear. “Now, write the book.” Now write the book she and I had joked about writing for years. The story of her life. Of our life.

Laughing, we’d joke, saying, “People pay good money for this sort of dysfunction, we should write a book.”

Still, as I stared at the blank page in front of me, I came to the realization, my real mother was a stranger to me. A fact so profound it sparked something deep within me. A longing, not just to learn about her or even to know her, but to understand. To understand what happened to my mother, my father, to my… childhood. I wanted…NO, I needed to understand what had caused her to abandon her family. I needed to find a way to connect with my real mother. So, with as much truth as I could discover, I attempted to explore her world. A world where reality and make-believe played together.

After all, the one thing that is true of both of us, we are storytellers.

Tina