It has been quiet. My mother has been quiet for days. I received a message from her on Saturday morning about something that needed follow-up. I didn’t return the call. In fact, I withdrew in silence; I needed the quiet, the space.  I couldn’t listen to any more complaints, I couldn’t deal with any more drama.

I couldn’t.

I just wanted some escape, some respite.

But just when I thought there was some peace on earth, in the macro sense, Gaia got shaken to the core again, by another shooting.

Today, I swallowed hard and called my mother; it had been days since we spoke. I hadn’t heard from the aides. It was strangely quiet. She answered the phone:

She wanted to know how everyone was.

She told me the aides were at training for a few days and that the substitute aide was excellent.

She reviewed, again, all the foods she ate, when she went to bed. She is able to sleep. Able to go to the bathroom at night. I cringe.

Is it that she is calm when the world spins out of control or does the world spin out of control when she is calm? Do they feed off of one another’s energy? What happened?

My mother will soon be one hundred years old; she has lived through two world wars, the Great Depression, a marriage, two kids who are now old enough to be grandparents. I think about this all the time.

I wonder: I know that the end of my mother’s life is coming but I don’t know when. For now, at this nanosecond, all is well. I am a mirror: She is calm and I breathe a sigh of relief. I give thanks for the short-lived moments of peace during the end of my mother’s long-lived life. I marvel at how lucky she is. I think about how she used to live, not far, from the recent school shootings in Florida. I think about how she is from New York City and will end her life in a full circle, back in New York, where today, on February 22, it is 74°.

“Why haven’t I heard from you,” she says, “it has been such a long time.”

I tell her I have been sleeping a lot, resting. That is something she can understand: she is always telling me “to rest.”

And, as her life winds down, that is exactly what I am doing.

This series starts here:
Part 1: And The Band Played On … a mother’s life, a daughter’s journey

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