The Gifts My Mother Gave Me

Several times while growing up, I heard my mother tell the story of her near-drowning experience when she was 9 years old.  She was with her family at a lake and was playing in the water near the shore.  She accidently stepped into deep water, and, unable to swim, she sank and was unable to surface or find solid ground.  She was drowning.  But then she had the sensation of floating above the scene and seeing the people below frantically searching in the water for her.  She saw a bright light.  She felt absolutely serene. She said she was torn between going toward the light, or returning to her body, and though she was powerfully drawn to the serenity of the beyond, she realized how sad her mother would be if she didn't return. So, out of compassion for her mother, she came back to her body.  Meanwhile, the searchers had found her under the water and had pulled her to shore.

My mother told me that she had no fear of dying.  She said her experience at age 9 had convinced her that death was not a frightening experience, but rather a positive and serene one.  She always said, "When my time is up, then I'll go."  She planned to live her life as best as she could, and then peacefully go at the end, and that is apparently what she did.  She died at home.  I was not there; my sister and her family were living with my mom at the time.  My mother's last couple of years, after my father died, were not easy.  She suffered some disability from diabetes and congestive heart failure.  She was relegated to the family room, sleeping on a hospital bed, no privacy, her home no longer her own.  She lived in circumstances that would have made many people bitter and resentful, but she accepted her fate, and, I believe, was waiting for the day when she could follow her beloved husband to the afterlife.  And so they found her one morning, at age 72, already gone.  I don't know what her last moments were like, whether they were painful or serene.  But I know she wasn't afraid to face her death.

My mother gave me some very powerful gifts.  She told me that giving birth was joyful, and that dying was not to be feared.  She was right, as I discovered, in the first case, and I have no reason to doubt her in the second case.