My mother died the way she lived — stubbornly and privately.

Two weeks earlier she had suffered a catastrophic stroke with no hope for recovery. She had signed an advance directive not to start or continue life-sustaining procedures and was placed in hospice care.  Two days later, I flew to Orlando to say goodbye. I was picked up at the airport by my beloved friend, Carolyn, who showed up from Tampa to accompany me. At the hospice facility, my oldest sister greeted and escorted us to my mother’s room where my father was standing at the foot of her bed. My sister suggested that I have some time alone with my mother.

As I stepped toward the bedside chair, my father pulled me toward him and whispered through his teeth, “Don’t say anything negative.”

“You mean like, ‘I’m sorry you are dying?'” I replied, thinking, Jesus, let it go, Dad. Just let it go. I showed up, didn’t I?

My mother’s left arm was still in the sling she had been wearing since fracturing her elbow in a fall caused by a mini-stroke (she had Stage Five Parkinson’s) four months earlier. Folded in her left hand was a white cotton handkerchief with a scalloped edge and a delicate embroidery of lilacs. The handkerchief had belonged to her mother, and my mother always clung to it during medical visits. I gently but tentatively stroked her hair, face and right arm — gestures foreign to me because I had never touched my mother this way. Neither had she ever touched me this way. I sat with her in silence for 10-15 minutes, then stood over her, bent down and kissed her forehead.

“I’ve worked hard all my life to forgive you, Mom,” I whispered, “and I promise to continue to work hard. May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest. I love you.” Within six hours, I was on a flight home.

Ten days later, at 3 a.m. on January 6, my mother died, alone. After my father and oldest and youngest sisters arrived at hospice, the chaplain conducted a five-minute bedside service the substance of which neither sister can remember. Less than two hours later, my mother’s body was transported to a funeral home more than an hour away; a funeral home that honored “discount packages” for veterans through the National Cremation Society.

At some point during my hospice visit, someone (I can’t remember; it could have been me) had asked about, “Mom’s obituary” or “funeral service.” In response, my father had announced that there would be no obituary or funeral service (meaning no eulogy) “because your mother was a very private person.”

None of his daughters pushed back on this. Any one of us could have — at a minimum — written an obituary for our hometown newspaper in western Pennsylvania, much like my youngest sister did when my sister, Karen, died of MS complications in March 2001. Further, I was a professional writer. Why couldn’t I simply write an obituary?

Because I was afraid. Cognitively, I knew this fear was absurd. My mother was dead and my father was 91 years old. Further, I was 64 years old. Grow up! Stop acting like a little kid, I thought. Write the obituary, for God’s sake. Your father will never find out. Neither will your mother. They don’t have the power to abandon you anymore; to pitch you into a world where parents never show up. 

But my gut — that little kid — continues to tell me otherwise. While my mother was alive, she and my father never once visited me in any of the homes I’ve made for myself after being forced to leave their home when I was 19 years old. This includes my present home in a Maryland suburb of the D.C. area where I have lived for 28 years. Two months ago, my father moved from Orlando to the middle of Pennsylvania. To get there, he and my second youngest sister would be passing the Beltway exit to my home, just one-half mile away. I was thrilled at the possibility that my father would finally see the tangible ways I’ve made a life for myself. Before making his trip north, I had asked him —  and my sister — to stop by and to call if something came up that made stopping by impossible.

They drove by. They never called.

In Part One of this post, I wrote about assisting — up until the last hour — a former client with his father’s eulogy, the theme of which was, “Showing Up.” Did I subconsciously steer him toward that theme?  Was helping him eulogize a parent who always showed up a way of vicariously eulogizing a parent who I always hoped would show up?

It’s hard to know. It should be enough to know that I’m not like my parents. I always show up.  Perhaps one day the little kid in me will stop being afraid that my one surviving parent will never do the same.