"Honey, your Mother is gone, now."

Those were Dad's words to me as I drove in to Autumn this evening, returning after visiting with Drew and Jess for a while at Dad's.  Mother passed at about 6:30 this evening.

The plan had been for Drew and Jess, Charlie, Susan and Sadie to come to Dad's for breakfast this morning.  That was my small attempt at having some Christmas this year.  Then, I felt so rotten and jet-lagged, I didn't even get out to get the groceries for it and had to call and ask Drew to get them.  After the plans were changed, Drew and Jess came anyway and had breakfast and slept a while.  Jess had worked all night and Drew is always sleep-deprived, he works so much.  And he already knew he didn't want to see Grandma as she had been recently.

Charlie and Susan met us at Autumn, and Uncle Ted, Cheryl, Ted's son Scott and his girlfriend visited there, and then Dad, Susan and Charlie took a lunch break while I waited at Autumn.  When they returned, I headed back to Dad's for a Christmas visit with Drew and Jess for a while.  We had a nice visit, chatted a lot and caught up, exchanged our gifts, and played with Benji.  After they left, I started back to Autumn.  Susan had contacted me because they wanted to leave so they could have some time and dinner with their kids, but wanted someone to be with Dad.

Dad walked Susan and Charlie out, then came back and found Mother completely still.  He turned the lights on to be sure, then went and got the nurses and they confirmed, Mother had passed, just that quickly.  He called Charlie and me right away.  I called Chris, she called David.  And then the chain grew to other family.  Dad decided he should drive me back because I was pretty upset.  I was, but it was mostly relief.  I did weep over her, briefly, crying, unexpectedly even to me, "Oh, thank God, Mother!"  She looked peaceful, finally.  Dad and I stopped at two neighbors on the way home and we've made several more calls this evening.

We don't know yet when the funeral will be.  We'll be meeting with the funeral home, Thorn and Black in Cambridge, tomorrow, and with the Pastor.

That's all the logistics of what happened.

I realize I'm pretty much leaving out the emotional part, but I'm feeling strangely not as bad as I thought I would.  It has been such a long haul, and so painful for Dad and Chris, especially, recently.  Today, as we chatted at Autumn, we felt pretty lucky that she had actually been herself, almost completely, until a week or so ago.  Considering that it was stage 4 glioblastoma, and so many tumors, and such a large one that they removed surgically, that's pretty remarkable.  And we realized that ending with "only" a week of the gut-wrenching agonizing pathetic pitiful state of being she has been in was not as bad as it could have been, either, although the weeks leading up to this last one have been no picnic.  She was not in pain, even at the end, just struggling hard to breathe, but not aware of it, really.  There was absolutely no expression of anything, least of all struggle, on her face.  It was more like she was absent while her body still struggled to finish.

We're going to miss her every minute of every day.  I already do.  I've been walking around for weeks thinking, "My Mother will never do this again.  Mother will never smell a flower again, never have a meal at a restaurant again." And so on.  The grieving has seemed endless.  I found when I visited Joann Fabrics that it was like she was right there at my elbow, commenting, talking to me.  It will always be that way.  We will all carry her with us.

I love that she died on Christmas Day.  Dad kept saying how nice that was, that she would surely have a first-class ticket to heaven.  There's something that just feels right about the way it all ended for her, with loyal and loving family around, with Christmas lights and Christmas songs and Christmas cheer all through the building at Autumn.  Here, unlike in other parts of the country, folks are un-apologetically Christian and celebrating Christmas.  What a great place to come home to at Christmas.  What a great time for her to go home to heaven.