I was with my mother, Norberta Lewis, when she died last April, 2020. The day started out with a later start, as I had telemedicine at 15:00 - 15:30 Central time USA on April 23. It was a new moon. I left the telemedicine call and tried my hardest to get to the hospital but I could not make myself move. I had not had coffee and I finally took the time to make a pot of coffee and have a cup. I made it to the hospital at close to 17:20 and the doctor was gone for the day. They told me that I did not have to wear the protective gowns and things they had had me wearing yesterday.
This stay in the hospital had only lasted a few days. The doctor had explained that he was getting a response from the treatment he was giving her for her liver but her kidneys were not doing well, the day before. Her prognosis was guarded, at best. He did say that she might pass that night, but I was sure she would not, tomorrow another day. I was correct. I went home on that night, April 22.
Again, April 23, when I walked into the room and looked at my mother, I knew the gig was up. She was certainly and definitely dying. I am certain that she had had a fit and had tried tearing the IVs out, judging by the blood traces on her arms and the fact that she was no longer hooked up to all the monitors and mechanizations that 21st century medicine has relied on since late in the 20th century and will probably improve on but not abandon until perhaps. later this century when even more radical refinement and improvement might remove the need for monitors placed on the patient's body. She was aware that I was there and she tried unsuccessfully to speak a few times, twisting her head and flapping her jaw. After an attempt or two I told her that it was too late, that she was dying and just to relax. She was pulling at a monitor block adhered to her forehead. I went out to to the nurses' station, and asked them to remove any monitors, and mentioned the sensor on her forehead. A nurse went in. The sensor was not even connected. All I could do was to help her get comfortable. I had arranged her pillows so her neck was straightened and she could lie comfortably, and the sensor mom was swiping at was removed.
After mom was lying comfortably I sat on a chair on the right side of her bier and held her hand lightly. I had a set of prayer beads in my pocket. It was an orange stone bead mala that HH Sakya Trizen had given me. I prayed Vajrasattva. Vajrasattva is associated with the hundred deities of the mandala of peaceful and wrathful deities of the Bardo of Reality, after the Bardo of the Moment Before Death. Each of these deities represents an organ of the body, a psychological state or a function of living. I did not cry or feel sadness. I felt an exhilaration at being there. I tried to speak to her calmly and clearly to simply relax and let go. It was too late to stop her from dying. There was only the possibility of guiding her gently to the end. She endured so much to raise her family. She endured so much to maintain her personhood. In my final analysis, it was an honor to attend the death of such a fine warrior.
We sat quietly, I watched her and prayed on my mala as she relaxed. Her eyes closed and she was taking, quiet, labored breaths that rattled in her lungs. But she was calm. And then her arm stretched out and lifted my hand, I stood up with the rising of her arm. It felt like a heavy weight was clinging to my hand. At that time the room flooded with medics, nurses and CNAs and Physician's Assistants. More than one of the women there, as I was the only male in the room, was taking turns going over her front and back with stethoscopes. Then they all left and my mother's arm had relaxed and was once again lying at her side on the bed, I was still lightly grasping her hand. One woman, who I thought might be a Tibetan, I never asked her but she had the look of a Tibetan woman, stayed after the group had left and was still going over her with her stethoscope. She was a PAC and I noted that my fingers were lightly on my mother's upturned wrist, and that there was no pulse, which I said, and the PAC noted and pronounced her dead at 7:20 pm (19:20). Her veins or blood vessels were a brilliant royal blue.
I had already made a request for the Catholic rite of Extreme Unction be performed when I had spoken to the nurses when I had come in, and had asked them about taking any sensors off. There was no priest at the time of death, but I left the room after the death, I think at the request of the staff. I went into the visitor's lounge and started texting my siblings. I first called Eric, my father's first, and of another mother, but Eric has been a pillar in the family as a counselor and source of support and responsibility. As I was going out to my car to have a cigar and text my other siblings, I saw the priest walk out. He was not a priest who I had seen at Saint Patrick's in Mauston, where the hospital was. He seemed somehow upset, maybe at being called so abruptly.
After my cigar and text messaging I asked if it was alright to go back into mom's room. The staff had arranged her body straight and flat, removed the pillows from below her head and tucked her body in a blanket around her. I kissed her on the forehead and said goodbye. Her body still radiated a soft balanced pulse that flowed easily outward, and glowed faintly. This was my perception.
