The Call

You get the call you dread. Get home, your mother is dying. You make it home, no thanks to the airline with an overnight delay, and make it there just in time. You look her deep in the eyes and smile and say ‘hello Mommy’. You don’t show any fear or worry. She is clearly looking to you to explain, trying to read you and you can see in her eyes she knows if you have flown all the way from England to Jackson, Mississippi, the prognosis must be bad. Everyone decides to not tell her what is going on. A shock to the system would be the final blow and she would likely have to be sedated for the rest of her days, three as it turns out. You decide to get the family around her to just be with her. She watches everyone. She tries many times to take the mask off of her face. The C-Pap machine that is pushing the oxygen in and pulling the C02 out. She probably doesn’t have the stamina to speak. Things are kept upbeat. But she knows. At some point she reads the room. She looks at everyone. She is desperate to drink water as the machine has parched her mouth and throat like Louisiana asphalt in late August. It isn’t what anyone would have wanted for her but it is what is necessary. It is the best decision for her care and allows the family to be with her, because as hospice has explained, once the mask comes off, she will be administered medication to keep her comfortable and an oxygen mask to give her all the air she can manage on her own. The mask is removed and she falls asleep instantly. As if she was staying awake for us all. Doing us a favour. Forty four hours later there are no more breaths to be had, she has used her allotment as a beautiful mortal and is sent off to become a guardian angel, a cardinal, a butterfly, and remain with us as a bucketful of photos, memories, tears and the very creator of my own breath.

This pandemic would have scared her to no end. Afraid of anything, a cold, a cough, she would have driven my father crazy with her worry for her as well as her worry for him. A pair of COPD sufferers, one further along than the other, often conversations were about ‘if I go first, but what if you dad goes first…’ Worry about the future was always present. And I listened, as much as I could. I even wrote her into a song about my guilt as an inadequate daughter, partner, mother and person. I could have called her more but often lost track of time, as the lyric goes ‘one day becomes two’. I would give anything to have a ‘do-over’. But life doesn’t give us do-overs, usually. If you can say goodbye and allow the person you love to leave you with their wishes honoured, their love expressed and their dignity intact, you have won the lottery my friend. Nothing about this death felt like I had won anything. I was devastated because my flight was cancelled in Dallas, missing my connection and sobbing like a mad woman in the corner of the boarding lounge. I was devastated because when I did arrive my mom couldn’t really say anything. And I was devastated because when they did remove the mask I had hoped to hear her tell me she loved me one last time, but it was beyond her capabilities at that time. I had tried to phone her the previous week over the course of two days with ‘she can’t come to the phone, she’s not feeling that great’ as my father’s response. I should have trusted my instinct then and there. Alas, I didn’t. We all, her two daughters, her son and her husband, thought she’d bounce back. Not this time. The doctor did a CAT scan of her lungs and that was the answer no one wanted. With no response to the steroids, nothing more could be done.

So all of these people having to send their loved ones to hospital alone, saying goodbye just in case and then their worst fears being realised, it’s a horrible experience. Mine allowed me to stay at my mother’s bedside. Folks today are being phoned by someone at the hospital to deliver the worst possible news. My heart breaks for them. If I didn’t have this album release to focus on, I would be sitting on the sofa more than I already am. I would be a zombie of the depressed kind more than I already am. But my mom would have wanted me to carry on. She was my biggest fan and a massive part of this album. It wouldn’t exist without her support and encouragement. She was so excited. Sometimes what hurts more than losing her is knowing she’s not with me to experience this part of the journey. She lived vicariously through me. Singing, gigs, articles, radio, anything at all, she made it sound like I had just won a Grammy or been featured on a music television programme. She made me feel good enough and always said, ‘I just don’t know why this hasn’t happened for you’. It made her sad. Sure, it made me sad but a musician cannot just snap their fingers. It’s great songs, sure, but it’s timing as well. I’m just so incredibly sad that her time ran out just before this album’s time had started. At least she heard it. I think she got her copy just a few days into February. She was hospitalised in ICU on the 19th.  We had shared it with her before but she was so proud of the cd with the cardinal on the front. And now so many songs seem prescient. I Try, The Last Branch, He Doesn’t Know He’s Gone, Cardinal in the Snow. It’s funny how songs’ meanings can change just like that. I hope that people find comfort in these songs, that they resonate with people on some level. Mostly I want people to not wait to tell someone they love them. Show your love TODAY. Call them if you can. Tell them how you feel. It could be, unknowingly, the last time you talk to them.