when the call came

My friend S said to me in a frank manner yesterday, "You're not the same person you were last week. Just understand that whatever has happened to you has changed you." That's why I love that friend of mine. She just tells it how it is. She says, "You're one of the motherless now, just like me."


Today is a big day. It's Monday. It's Monday. Can you believe it's Monday?


Last Wednesday, the 24th of August, I got the phone call at quarter past midnight. My Dad tells me in a choked voice that Mum has died. She had been transferred to hospital only hours before to take the last part of her journey. My brother, sister, Dad and I were so grateful to see her in the ambulance. The paramedics knew things we didn't know - how to lie her sideways to ease her breathing, how to administer the exact right medicine. 

Until that moment my father had been doing the job of a hero, a 24/7 carer. It is incredible how much we can bear in the end. "Sometimes you just lift, don't you," he says to me, "You just find the strength to just do the things that have to be done."


When the call came, at 12:15 in the morning, I began to recite Om Mani Padme Hum over and over. I threw clothes on, I pulled back my hair. My partner got the car ready and we flew down the highway. Om Mani Padme Hum, I said in my mind. I lay my hands in my lap and settled my mind as my partner drove. I recited the mantra and visualised Mum's body. I thanked each muscle, each limb, each neurone for it's job. I release you and I thank you, I said. Thankyou for enabling my Mum to be on this earth. It is alright to let go. 


At the hospital was her body. My father was there, and my sister. Grief was like a dark monster eating us alive. We were consumed by it. We wailed, our hearts destroyed. I stood by my mother and stroked her hair. I said, "Oh Mum, this old body of yours finally wore out. It's alright. It's alright." I smiled at that body, which had held my mother's spirit. That fragile web of flesh and bone that had once contained her. I smiled, and smiled, and my heart was smashed and I was bent with pain. 


Today is another day to thank that body for it's service. It is her funeral day. Today I will thank her for her spirit and her wit and her merriment. I will tell the world that she loved me, and was my shelter. I will stand by my father's side and be proud and bold and strong. I will be the willow tree in the wind, and move with wild emotions. 

On the day of her death, in the front garden at my mothers, a white magnolia flower opened. Just one flower, too early for spring, it curled open like a white miracle. It was my mother's favourite flower. My Dad tells me that this day is now White Magnolia Day. The day her suffering ended, her body let go, and her spirit burst forth like a flower.