"His Three Daughters" & Watching a Parent Die

I watched His Three Daughters, and it brought me right back to the death vigil for my mom, which lasted five days. I was reminded of how differently I grieved compared to my dad and sister. Although it was the same family member dying, our experiences could not have been more different. I will not speak for how they processed it, as it is not my place. I can only share my own experience.

The Preparation Period:

About seven months before she died, I began preparing. My biggest fear was not that she was going to die. Intellectually, I had accepted that. She had been suffering from Alzheimer's for nearly 14 years. The things keeping me up at night were twofold:

1. That I would be too sick myself to be of service to her. My chronic illness was hitting me hard during that time. Some days I could not get out of bed—so how was I supposed to manage a death vigil and keep my shit together?

2. That I would panic and flee and simply not manage to adult. I didn’t trust myself to be able to put my mom’s needs before my fear of the process and bodily fluids in general.

I had identified these weaknesses, and I knew there was nothing I could do about #1, but I could work on fear #2. So, I got to work. I started working with a professional who helps both patients and families navigate the death process. I researched extensively about what scientifically happens when we die. I read books. I talked to others who had lost a parent, and prepared for my mom’s death in the same meticulous, detailed way I had prepared for Pod's birth.

I am so grateful that I attacked my fears because when the time came, I was able to step up. The days came, as they inevitably would, and they were nothing like I had feared. Oddly enough, it was an honor—that's the best way to describe it. If anyone had suggested to me before that watching your most important person die was an honor, I might have punched them and asked what they were on. Don’t get me wrong; those days were hard, at times grueling, and strangely interspersed with serious boredom. I had thought death would be more dramatic and sudden, but instead, it was drawn out and mostly calm. The craziest moment was when a nurse pulled me into a room and asked if I was suggesting she give my mom too much morphine and if I was that she needed to report me. I thought she would be more discreet in catching my drift. I was wrong. This was before we entered the calm phase when my mom was still suffering.

Besides having my own pulse drop to 25 and feeling strange three days before my mom drew her last breath, my health cooperated. I think it was the same day as the “nurse incident” when I was overcome with a feeling of helplessness in not being able to help my mom. It’s amazing what our bodies can do when they know they must get through something. My body pushed through, as did my mom’s, for another three days.

In His Three Daughters, the dad told his partially estranged daughters that once he was gone, they would grow closer because they would only have each other. The movie did not show the aftermath, but I hope he was right. In our case, we all took our own grief and went to our separate corners, and the existing gap between us only widened. Mom was the glue in our family—the reason the rest of us were in each other’s lives. After she passed, I think we pretended for a while but our family, as I knew it, was over. At least it was for me, my family of origin was gone. It will be eight years in January since she died. It’s lonely without her. She was with me when I was born, and I was with her when she died. There is something poetic about that.