Upside

Posted 1:00 AM by Gerald So

My mother passed Thursday afternoon, shortly after my brother and I got home from visiting her. We went back to the hospital to collect some personal belongings and then set the funeral pre-plan in motion. The funeral will be Tuesday morning.

Informing various friends of the family, I'm in the odd position of consoling them as they genuinely react to the news. I was thrust in charge of looking after my mother from her first emergency room visit for pneumonia two years ago. Taking that role was hard on me, but I know firsthand everything possible was done for her. Everyone who didn't see firsthand has a nagging sense of what-if, how-did-this-all-happen that I have to and am glad to assuage.

As with my father's death in 2001, I think I'll finally be relieved after the public grieving rituals. I'll be able to mourn my mother in my own way and time. That said, my father died from pancreatic cancer, my mother from heart and lung issues that left her unable to expel the harmful gasses that robbed her ability to communicate her wishes. Their deaths relieved longterm suffering and so are nothing to mourn.