We recently posted a story about Oscar the Cat, who lives in a nursing home in Rhode Island and seems to know which patients are about to die. Mike Perry commented that his mother had spent her last years in a nursing home. That commented reminded me of the last two years of my mother’s life, which she spent in an Alzheimer’s unit.
I think of that time as the dark years, watching this beautiful woman descend into a place of such blackness, her memories stolen from her, her basic abilities to feed and clothe herself gradually eroded.
There were a number of synchronicities surrounding her death in June 2000, but for some reason Mike’s comment stirred up one synchronicity in particular.
June 2000 was a hot month, the humidity so high it took your breath away. Our home had been on the market for months and we finally got an offer and were due to close and move on June 8, a day after my birthday. My mother had been moved from the Alzheimer’s unit a couple of weeks earlier when her hip disintegrated. Thanks to the Alzheimer’s, she wasn’t a candidate for hip replacement surgery because she didn’t have the mental capacity for rehab. So she was in a nursing home, on a diet of liquid morphine. She was rarely conscious and when she was, didn’t know any of us.
On June 13, we got a call from the nursing home – my mother had developed pneumonia and how did we want to deal with it? My dad, who had Parkinson’s, was living with us at the time and probably understood better than any of us what it’s like to live as a prisoner within your own body.
“Advil for the fever,” he said. “That’s it.
Rob and I concurred. Comfort measures, that was it. That evening, we all went to the nursing home to see her. In essence, we were saying good-bye and we knew it. I think that at some level, she knew it, too.
The next day, the nursing home called to tell us my mother would be moved into hospice on the 15th. I planned on going to the nursing home that afternoon to make sure the transfer proceeded smoothly. At about 4:45 PM, Rob was in his office and laid his head on his desk and shut his eyes. It had been a stressful few weeks. Suddenly, in his mind’s eye, he saw my mother waving good-bye, then she turned and walked away. A few minutes later, the nursing home called. My mother had just passed away.
These synchronicities surrounding death are common. Clocks stop, as if to say that has run out. Dreams portend death. We have a hunch, feel a certainty. Something internal prepares us. I had dreamed weeks before about her death, as had my dad. We knew it was coming. But at the moment it happened, neither my dad nor I were open to it. But Rob was and my mother reached out to him.

















