I have never felt more alive...

than when I sat by your Hospice bed, my hands reaching through the rails that held you safely inside, my fingers clutching your graying hand, withered and now unburdened. Caressing your fingertips as if my love could be imprinted on you forever.

I have never felt more alive

than in those last moments of counting your stunted breaths, measuring each inhalation with hope, each exhalation with release, conflicted between desire and promise.

I have never felt more alive

than when I witnessed you leaving the body that long ago moved bones and ligaments and tendons to say “hello” – to cradle my first cries, to swath me in tenderness. The body that now moves in anchoring waves past me, traveling towards another birth, and bears bones that ache under the weight of pain, with ligaments that no longer stretch and move with life, and tendons that now fail to give permission to breathe, altogether culminating in a concerted effort to say a frozen “goodbye”.

Pauline Marie

I have never felt more alive

than when I searched your face for evidence that you had not left me yet: a twitch of your eyelids or a splash of color in your paling cheeks. I sat secretly blowing air to your bluing lips, muttering quiet prayers that you stay – louder prayers that you go and move past the pain.

I have never felt more alive.

I’ve heard all my life that time can stand still, that our perception of the clock hands ticking and the calendar pages turning is a lie. We create the façade of a chronological existence. An orderly and controlled, measured and documented, appraised and valued, as if we can determine the weight of each second, heavy-laden under the tonnage of our lives. We plunge and plunder the weeks that become months. The months that evolve into years. The years that transpire into the chaos of memory. All the while believing that we are in control. I never fully understood that falsehood until I found myself by your side, Mama, feeling as helpless as when I was a babe in your arms. Attempting bravery. Masking courage as I did my absolute best to talk you Home.

When I was a little girl, you used to help me go to sleep. I was terrified of nightmares stuck on repeat. I fought the heaviness of my eyes closing, with all the stubbornness of a maverick stallion – penned behind miles of barbed wire, pounding his hooves into the dirt, grittily determined to be free. You said, “Don’t think about anything. Just say to yourself over and over…I’m going to sleep. I’m going to sleep. I’m going to sleep.” You gave me a taste of meditation that would later grow into deep practice. I trusted your words beyond the horror of terrible dreams. Instead of hearing my own repetitions, I listened to your soothing declarations and they lulled me into safety.

I have never felt more alive

than in the moment I tried to return that gift, give you back that warm sense of protection, listening to my voice and succumbing to a familiar void: “It’s okay, Mama. It’s time to go. Your little body is worn out. You’re so tired. Everything will be alright.” In familiar fashion, you pushed back against my counsel, suddenly opening your bruised and swollen eyes, and said with pointed exasperation, “Stop rushing me!”

I could not believe the uncontrollable laughter that erupted from my mouth, bursting past a sharpness in my lungs that squeezed a tight anticipated grief.

I have never felt more alive

than when I sat scrutinizing for any signs of life, a statement of presence given with each labored breath. I watched your mouth open and close like a gasping giant sea bass, carelessly flung onto the beach from a passing storm.

You moved then, a restlessness, and your body became flushed with an unexpected heat. You tugged at your cotton nightgown and the layers of blankets that had kept the impending cold of your blood at bay. I shifted – half raising to stand, half glued to my seat. Kept palming your hand in one of mine and reached with the other to soothe you. I felt the tinge of a cold sweat as my fingertips moved across your shoulder, shushing you like a baby that is hungry and incomplete. You pulled away, complaining “No, you’re too hot” and I crumbled with the realization that nothing I did would keep you with me.

I have never felt more alive

than in the instant you opened your eyes, Mama, wholly lucid, and time became elongated. In every respect, our journey together came down to these words. A closing sentence. A gesture that required all you had left. Every moment of struggle to produce air, each finishing swirl of motion with your tongue, a concluding attempt to say the impossible summation of who we are.

I witnessed the fiery love you held for me in your dimming eyes. I tasted the salt of my own skin, cleansed by loss sliding down my face. I clung to the feeling of your hand in mine, knowing the warmth of it would soon fade. I breathed in deeply to capture the scent of your essence. Then, I heard the last of you say, “But it doesn’t mean I don’t love you.”

Your lips pursed, and with your final breath, blew me a kiss.

I have never felt more alive

I have never felt more alive

I have never felt more alive

than when you died.

~ In memory of Pauline Marie Richards Thomas

July 13, 1944 - March 2, 2019