Closure

My friend Kristen posted this article to our Miracles for Molly Dunne Foundation page.  It's about the need for doctors to understand a "Code Death" and how a trained team of sensitive medical professionals can assist a family with making final decisions for a loved one and then support the family through the difficult task of watching that loved one die.  I absolutely agree, but it brought something home to me... because we donated Mom's organs, our final goodbyes were given in a hallway, in front of the double doors leading to the operating room, after having made the long walk through the hallways of the hospital, past people who had no idea how precious this person was and how absolutely devastating was her death.  The nurses pushing the gurney stopped, we kissed her forehead, and they pushed her through the door and that was it.  The woman from the organ donation group might have said something comforting... I don't know.  I ran out the doors and sat in my car and screamed and screamed and screamed.  

It bothers me that I wasn't there when Mom died.  For three days, I sat with Mom, holding her hand, knowing that the essential part of her being was gone, but it bothers me.  I catch myself trying to remember what it was like the moment Mom died, and I can't, because I wasn't there.   How can I have closure to a thing I didn't witness?  I have dreams where I'm a little kid, lost in a store, calling for my mom to find me.  Twice in those dreams, I've found her.  Both times, she laughs and tells me she was right here all the time. 

I don't believe in a traditional view of heaven.  I'm sorry to my religious friends, but after much reflection and thought, I've decided that eternal life is something much simpler than a Heaven where spirits wait around to be reunited with family.  I am who I am because of my mother.  My kids will be who they are because of me, and because of who my mother raised me to be.  They will in turn have kids who will be raised with love and laughter, and that will go on and on until time eternal.  I believe the same is true for everyone - the love you leave behind in others is carried on and though there will come a time when no one will remember Susan Moran or Erin Lacey, that love will still exist.