I was in the hospital room with my mother when she died. It was just Mom and me. Her death was a little unexpected because she had been in very good health. I honestly don’t know what caused her death. It had something to do with an infection, but maybe it was congestive heart failure. I feel a little guilty that I don’t know the exact cause. She was doing well, and then she got sick, and then, three weeks later she was gone. It wasn’t traumatic, like suicide or an accident. I would say it was peaceful, but was it really that unexpected? She was eighty-seven after all. Same with my father. He died at eighty-two. Who didn’t see that coming? He had smoked most of his life and had been diagnosed with emphysema, and later with COPD. He had been on oxygen for probably a year, maybe longer. He told us that he wanted to be cremated because the thought of being in an enclosed, confined place made him feel panicky.  Even now, my heart goes out to him.

Because I lived a hundred miles from my mother, her death feels like those videos on social media that you see when you’re scrolling through your newsfeed.  I remember it as a series of video snippets..

Snippet 1: 

I see her sitting in her recliner, watching Bill O’Reilly. She tells us she has an appointment with her doctor this week. A problem with her heartbeat, she tells us. 

Snippet 2:

I see Mom in the hospital bed. Family members gathered around. Visiting with my sons, Derrick in person and Trevor by Facetime. 

Snippet 3:

I see the southern Indiana landscape passing as I drive from Louisville to Evansville to spend time with her.

Snippet 4:

A few days before her death, I see the family gathering around her again as the doctor examines her. There is concern on everybody’s face. 

She’s moved to the hospice ward.

Snippet 5:

My oldest brother calls me on a Wednesday afternoon and tells me that Mom isn’t going to make it through the night.

Snippet 6:

I see the sign on Interstate 64 telling me that I’m now leaving the Hoosier National Forest. Later, I take the exit to Evansville.

I arrive at the hospital and enter a hospice waiting room. It’s full of siblings, nephews, and nieces. All told, Mom and Dad had over fifty grand and great-grandchildren. They were there to spend a few moments with Mom. One of my sisters suggests that I sit with Mom for a while. 

The lights in her room have been dimmed. She’s lying there, breathing peacefully. Her red hair is no longer red. No more twinkle in those blue eyes. The frail exterior belies her strong interior. She looks as if she has just completed a half-marathon. 

In that fading frame was the woman that bore 12 children, endured my father’s big ideas, to include two farms, a horse stable, and a strip club. In that frame was the dim light that guided us to adulthood. 

I sit in the chair and take my mom’s hand and I said, “Mom, it’s Kimmer, I’m her.” No one called me that but Mom. I was born Kimberly Mark Neese. For reasons that I do not want to explain, I changed my name to Mark Kimberly Neese. I spoke with Mom and Dad when I changed my name. I explained my reasons. They were so gracious. Having said that, my parents never called ‘Mark.’ It was either ‘Kimberly,’ or ‘Kimmer.”

I hold her hand and in that dimly lit room, on a cold, rainy October evening, my mother stops breathing. 

She had been there for me at my Baptism and First Communion, my two hospitalizations, and had been there to witness my older brother Timmy drag me home, half-frozen during a winter storm. 

She had been there for me to shoo away Feezoff, the hermit that lived adjacent to our property, when he accused us of shooting one of his dogs. 

She had been there for me, sitting in that theater, as we watched Sound of Music for the 5th time. 

She had been there for me, and she stayed up with me, just me, to watch the first man land on the moon. 

She had also been there to smack me for being, in her words, a brat, when I demanded that we watch something other than the coverage of Robert Kennedy’s assassination. 

She had been there for me when I enlisted in the Air Force. She had been there when I went to Bible College in Portland, Oregon. She had been there for me when I moved to Louisville to attend Seminary. And she was there for me when I divorced. 

From the very beginning, she had been there for me, even to witness my first breath.

And now, I was there for her to witness her last. 

I went to the nurse’s station and let them know that Mom was gone. I asked them to tell the rest of the family. I couldn’t. 

We gathered around her and baptized her with our tears. No one requested a prayer, because nothing could have solemnize a life that was pure.  While they prepared her body to be taken away, we gathered in the hall and began making plans for the funeral service. The sadness diminished ever so slightly as we began living our lives the way that Mom would have wanted them lived. 

In those moments, Mom was being resurrected and becoming the reference point between us and everything else.

This is part seven in the Healthy Aging Series, written by Mark Neese, LCSW, BCBA. To see more entries in this series, click here.

The first dead person I saw was my Grandpa Pat. I was thirteen-years old. He was sixty-nine. 

We walked past his open casket after the Pentecostal minister preached about heaven and hellfire. He had heard it a thousand times before, mostly from Grandma. Grandpa was unmoved. 

As I grew older, I learned that old people die. The next person in my life to to die was my Grandma Louise. She was sixty-four when she died from colon cancer. Grandpa Jim died at eighty from a stroke. The same for Grandma Lulu. 

Then my sons’ grandparents began dying. Grandpa Al died from a heart attack at seventy. Grandma Barb died at eighty from congestive heart failure. My father died at eighty-two from COPD. And Mom, Grandma Betty, died at eighty-seven from some kind of systemic infection. Old people die. In fact, all people die. 

No matter how healthy you are, no matter how well you prepare for your later years, no matter how much money you have, no matter who you know, no matter what kind of life you’ve lived, you will eventually die.

The issue isn’t if you’re going to die, but how you’re going to die, and by that I don’t mean which illness will you succumb to. I mean, how will you emotionally and psychologically handle the process of dying. How will your death and dying affect others? How well will you divest from this life?  

As a psychotherapist, I often say to my clients. “You die the way you lived.” If you were a generous person in the years leading up to your death, you die a generous person. If you were a comforting and reassuring person, you will die that way.  Of course, this does not apply to the people that suffer from various forms of Dementia, Alzheimer, or other neuro-cognitive disorders. 

People that struggle with living, with the thought of dying and letting go, also struggle with dying. 

Jimmy Carter knew about dying because he knew about living. In his book, “The Virtues of Aging,” he answers the question that he was often asked: What have been the best years of  your life? 

“Now is the best of all,” was his answer. He has lived a full life. He’s ninety-six years old as I write this. If you consider the word ‘dying’ as synonymous with ‘aging,’ he is dying well.

Betty Neese, My Mom

My mom’s favorite word was ‘serendipity.’ “What a nice serendipity,” she would say when we visited unannounced. I’m sure she saw her death as a serendipity. 

Mom was happy, healthy, and non-judgmental most of her life. She was always learning new things and was conversant on almost any topic. She practiced the Golden Rule. She wanted to know what I had been doing since our last visit. I rarely heard her complain, except to hear how she missed my father. 

My mother died well, because she lived well. Living is Dying. 

The evening that she died, I stayed the night in her very small apartment at the senior-living complex. I slept in her bed. The next morning I explored her bookshelves. I looked around the sparse apartment. She didn’t have much. She had already let go of the things that most of us value. I gathered a few books and left.

I remember her memorial service vividly. I was asked to deliver the eulogy, the good words. I talked about all the difficulties that Mom had experienced, including the loss of three children and banishment by her mother for leaving the Catholic Church. I traced Mom’s footprints through her religious journey. I reminded my siblings that Mom (and Dad) loved us all despite our mistakes and bickering. We used to joke about Mom and her Bubble. Very little seemed to shake her. I concluded and said, “Mom didn’t let stupid shit rob her of her peace and joy.” 

Now, I think, we envy her. 

This is part five in the Healthy Aging Series, written by Mark Neese, LCSW, BCBA. To see more entries in this series, click here.