(Originally published on Motherless Mom, July 6, 2019)
I wanted to write about shedding old identities and went to Google “molting,” the process of snakes shedding their old skin as they grew, but accidentally typed “mottling” instead. Google very quickly corrected me with the top links from hospice and palliative care sites. Mottling is what happens to human skin, often prior to death, and it is actually something I have direct experience with.
Instant Grief Trigger.
I was immediately thrown back to a day all those years ago, sitting on the floor at my mother’s feet. She was upset, looking at me quizzically as she motioned to her dark purplish, almost black in spots, feet. She was shaking her head in disgust as I gingerly touched one of them. It was ice cold.
My mother had had circulatory issues all her adult life: Ice-cold feet and hands were par for the course. This was not the same and we both knew it.
I grabbed the lotion bottle and went to work rubbing her feet and legs as best as I could, trying to get the blood flowing down her legs into her feet again. After rubbing for a while, the dark black spots would lighten to purple and the dark purple spots would lighten to red and her feet would just look bruised rather than… dead. I remember that first time, I slipped a pair of socks on her afterwards and felt so relieved to see her thick white scrunch-style socks pulled back over them. That was my Mom. Thick white scrunch-style socks. Not these dark purple/almost black, dead feet.
There were other changes in that last week, too. She quit eating. That didn’t feel too hugely significant because she was never a big eater, especially while sick. She always said it was from her modeling years in the 70’s; She learned how to “eat” without really eating, which basically just meant she would make a plate and pick at it like a bird.
A couple of days before she died, I thought I had convinced her to go out to her favorite local Mexican restaurant. She sat herself down in front of the mirror in her room and went to work with her makeup, for the first time in the months since she’d been home from the hospital. What I saw when I came back just 10 minutes later was probably one of the most heart-wrenching things I’ve ever seen in my life.
Mom was sitting completely still, staring into the mirror, her makeup “done.” Except it wasn’t.
My mother was a very vain woman. She owned this completely. She was from a generation of women that believed strongly that you did your hair and your makeup completely before you left your home, and her final health challenges had dealt a huge blow to her vanity. Her ostomy bag left her believing her life as she wanted to live it was over. She used to be the type of woman that wanted to see and be seen, but in the year after her colostomy, she often hid herself away. On occasion when she would venture out, she would return home uncomfortable and pissed off, saying everyone must know what she hid beneath her baggy tops, designed to blouse out and hide the ostomy bag.
Her zodiac sign was Leo, and she would talk about her “mane” being her red shock of curls that she liked to tease up on top of her head. Mom getting ready always seemed to involve a couple of hours and at least one can of hairspray!
This day, however, what I walked in on was a punch in the gut.
Mom was still seated on the edge of the bed, her makeup strewn out beside her. She was looking into the mirror, but the expression on her face was one of the most heartbreaking expressions I’ve ever seen in my life.
She looked… lost. My 55-year-old mother looked like a lost little girl. Like she had somehow stumbled onto the scene and didn’t know how she got there, like she didn’t know where she was or who the reflection in the mirror staring back at her could be.
Just as lost as she seemed to be looking at herself, I also felt as I looked on from the doorway. Her usually dramatic eye makeup, consisting of shimmery goldish-brown shadow and thick black mascara, looked like clown makeup. The bold crimson rouge she always used to accentuate her cheek bones was harshly smeared on each cheek, covering most of each side of her face. Her lips, usually expertly painted with a vivid deep wine-red, looked like they had been done by a toddler with fingerpaint. I think she used the same foundation she always had, but it appeared like so many layers had been applied that you could chip it off with a chisel.
The effect was terrifying.
I don’t say any of this to be funny. I’m not trying to poke fun or make it seem like this was a comedic moment. It was not. It was the furthest thing from it. It felt like I was watching my mom realize she was being stripped of her earthly identity. It was devastating, for the both of us. It felt like I was watching her sun set.
Mom refused to leave the house that night.
The following day, I was able to convince her to accept a ham sandwich I had made for her. She took one bite and spit it out in disgust before opening up the sandwich and pointing to the chopped green onion on it while looking at me with revulsion, as if I had lost my mind. To this very day, I don’t know why I put green onion on it. I had just discovered green onion on sandwiches and loved it, but I should’ve realized she wouldn’t want it that way. I ruined her last sandwich on earth.
Some people might think I’m being a little overdramatic with that last statement. I don’t know how else to explain it, other than that while walking with a loved one in their final days, everything is so much more significant than it has ever seemed before.
A bad sandwich any other time? Who cares.
A bad sandwich as your very last sandwich before you leave this earth? A bad sandwich when you’ve stopped eating for nutrition and are only eating to experience earthly pleasure? This is a fucking tragedy.
My mom died just one day later. Her body fought itself for several hours, seizing, choking, gasping. Her children and siblings gathered around her for those final hours, sitting vigil by her bed until her body shuddered its final breath. Her cat was under her bed all morning long until this final breath, and I swear, that final breath is when she finally darted out from under the bed and fled from the room.
My 15-year-old sister and I climbed into bed with our Mom, on either side of her. We stroked her face and hair, clutched and caressed her hands, kissed her cheeks as tears streamed down ours. We showed her the kind of affection in death that we never had in life. She just wasn’t really that kind of mother, but there was something about knowing that the chance was about to be gone forever that made us physically bold in this way. We were desperate to top ourselves off on our mother’s touch before that was taken from us forever.
My aunt held off the hospice nurse from calling the funeral home for I don’t know how long. I think it had to have been at least an hour, but I really don’t know. Time was a paradox, stretching out languorously while snapping shut in the blink of an eye. Time didn’t really matter anymore. She was gone. What the fuck was time?
I didn’t want to let them take her. They came in with the stretcher and I asked them to let me clean her up first, as I knew her body had released in her final earthly hours and I knew she would hate the idea of people seeing that and knowing that. My aunt insisted that I let them do their jobs: That was their job, but it felt like my failure.
When my siblings and I arrived to the funeral home two days later on the morning of the visitation, we were shocked. We had given them photos of her in her prime so they could accurately recreate her hair and makeup, but they had failed in a colossal manner.
The person they led us to was unrecognizable. Her hair was in tight “grandma” style curls and her makeup was subtle and understated on her tightly drawn face. We asked if they made a mistake. Did they put our mother’s dress and makeup on another woman? We were serious. This was NOT our mother.
Once a person’s soul no longer inhabits their body, their corpse can become an almost offensive imitation of them. What was this? Where was her boldness, her sass? Where was her sincerity, her warmth? That was all gone, but we were damn sure we could do her one better than what the staff at the funeral home did.
My older brother went to work on our mother’s hair, I worked on her makeup and our little sister directed us, reminding my brother how mom would brush her hair out to one side, spray it down with hairspray, brush it back to the other side, spray it down with hairspray, before brushing it back to the other side, spraying it down again with hairspray for maximum volume. I don’t know how long we worked, digging around in her makeup bag and spraying copious amounts of hairspray and perfume, but when we finished, she resembled the Mom we knew again.
This is probably the closest the three of us had ever been, and I like to think that if Mom was able to see it, she would’ve been proud. Proud of us for standing up for her when she no longer could and proud of us for standing together when we needed to.
My mom was powerful, dynamic, and bold. I like to think that each one of us kids carry pieces of her with us to this day. My older brother has her flair in the kitchen and her sharp eye for design and fashion. My younger sister has her tenacity and strong will. Even my youngest sister who was only 8 when she died and has a different biological mother seems to carry some pieces of her, such as her love and fierce protection of the underdog, children, and animals. For myself, I think I got my passion for speaking my mind and correcting injustices from her.
Writing about her and her death has felt like throwing open the windows of a long shut house. For so long, it felt like the only way I could survive my grief was to medicate it and lock it down deep and far, far away. I don’t want to hide it anymore. Grief is a part of love. If I didn’t love her so fucking much in life, I wouldn’t grieve her loss now. I won’t dishonor the life and love she lived by pretending this grief doesn’t exist.
Her body couldn’t hold her anymore, but her spirit will forever live on in our hearts.