Mouprise.com

The end of the life

At some point yesterday, we lost our mom. He fell into a coma and lost the ability to communicate with us. Her gaze looked far beyond us, to a place that only she could go. I played her some Hawaiian guitar music, my brother Nick massaged her feet, my sister Lani told her how much we loved her. No response, just a deep, labored breath that shortened by the hour.

We decided to back off. No more oxygen. No more morphine. We let God and destiny take their natural course. But it is excruciatingly painful for us. We hold hands and pray. We pray for a smooth departure and a peaceful ascent to heaven. We pray for ourselves. We pray that we will find a way to move on without the only mother we have ever known.

At 9:30 pm, Mom is breathing heavily and perspiring profusely. It seems like she’s struggling, so we opted to give her some Roxinol (liquid morphine) to try and ease her. Nick brings a damp cloth and tries to cool Mom down, but her skin is wet and hot. Suddenly stop breathing. I look at her carotid artery and see that it’s still pulsating, so I know she’s alive. His chest rises with another breath, but it is shallow and weak. I put my arm around her trying to comfort her in her final minutes, but she’s struggling. In a single movement, his arms are raised in a contorted web, his eyes and mouth are wide open as his head is thrown back violently. His eyes look directly into mine and his back arches for a final push. Simultaneously, a guttural sound is thrown forward like a mortally wounded animal.

Then there is silence. No more breaths. No more beats. Reality penetrates.

My mother is dead.

A heart that beat more than three billion times during the Great Depression, World War II, the birth of 8 children, the landing on the Moon, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the election of the first black president remains the first time in 86 years. , 7 months and 21 days. I write down the time: 10:22 PM, Hawaii Standard Time. October 7, 2009.

Without the benefit of blood circulation, Mom’s face is turning pale now. His skin, yellow from jaundice, begins to cool and harden, but we are tight in a group hug trying to comfort our enormous loss.

I close my eyes and start to fill my head with as many different visions of my mom as possible. I know that if I look at the cancer-ravaged body that I see right now, that image will haunt me every time I think of Mom. I begin to separate from the body that lies in front of me. I know that the uhane (the spirit) that was my mother is now gone. It is traveling at high speed towards the White Light. She is free and strong once again, no longer burdened by this old and weak body. We will honor and care for her body, but this body is not my mom. It is only the “carrier” of your spirit, just as a car takes us from one place to another. When the car dies, we move on.

My mind is going back to third grade and I’m watching my mom and older sister Charlotte color Easter eggs with a pencil because we didn’t have the coloring to dye the eggs. A few years later, I see my mom being crowned the Queen of a Hawaiian court, maybe Aloha Week or Kamehameha Day. Her beautiful Hawaiian features and wide smile always brought the term “real” when someone described her from then on. Then I see her bathing my son, Caine, and his niece, Pomai, in the kitchen sink in 1983, when they were both just one year old.

These are the images that I want to keep. I want to remember my mom’s life at the peak of vitality and not become so obsessed with her slowly declining end. I want to remember the many times we sipped our coffee and talked about the morning news or told funny stories about my dad in the cool of the night. My mom had a rich and happy life that paved her legacy in the hearts of everyone who knew her.

The transition is made. The full circle. The end of the life.