Last Week with my Mother

 

Last Week with my Mother

by Wil Bosbyshell

I didn't know this would be my last visit with my mother. I didn’t get an announcement that she would die the next week. My mother was 90 years old when I spent four days with her holy week before Easter in 2024. She had lived so long, I felt she was immortal. My heart hurts.

We went and did so many things. We visited the Dali Museum, the James Museum, the liquor store, the farmer’s market, the Spanish market and the Shrimp Store. The owner of the Spanish market hugged her like she was his mother. We went out for lunch to the place she said had the best people watching, “Bill Mize says everyone here is a hipster. Not that I know what a hipster is,” she said laughing. Mama just loved people watching.

I didn't rehang every painting in her apartment, but I rehung about fifteen different paintings or photos. We rearranged her display in the hallway and her refrigerator magnets. We visited a man who had a 1960s space program collection.

She used a walker, but still drove, and nothing stopped her.

She was feeling her age and said so. We worked on her scrapbooks, and she said, “Why am I even keeping a scrapbook. I'm going to die soon.”

“No, you're not! We are working on your scrapbook,” I scolded her.

My family celebrated her 90th birthday with a big party just eight months before. So, we put those photos and cards in her scrapbook. “Can you believe I'm 90 almost 91? It's hard to believe, even for me,” she mused. “Hell, Mama, I can’t believe I’m 63.”

The summer before we invited 100 folks to her birthday party thinking 35 to 50 people would accept the invitation. Over 90 people responded yes, and two people crashed the party who were not invited. My mother changed her name to Carrie for her grandchildren. I even started to think of her as Carrie occasionally.

At Christmas my son made a huge effort so his girlfriend Ember met his grandmother, Carrie. It turned out to a very important visit. Allen and Ember got engaged the following February on Tybee Island.

Mama and I watched murder mysteries on TV and had a conference call with one of her financial advisors.

When I said goodbye, “I love you, Mama.” She cried as she responded, she had done that for about four years now. “I love you too, William.”

My mother was everyone’s friend and very sociable. There was always a pitcher of sweet, iced tea sitting on the kitchen counter ready for me and my friends after school.

Of my parents my mother was the practical one. When I joined a fraternity at college, I wrote a letter home to inform my parents. I received two letters in return. My father’s letter informed me that I had joined his fraternity: Phi Kappa Psi. He wrote, “High, High, High, we’ll pay for everything.” My mother’s letter told me I could pay the dues out of my ROTC money.

My mother was one of the secretaries for Jack Bogle, the founder of the Vanguard mutual fund company. She taught me to invest when I was in my 20s. She signed me up for the Kiplinger letter and sent me money to invest. I am financially secure in retirement because of her.

As a freshman in college, I received a letter from my mother every day. Every. Single. Day. The number of letters decreased to several a week for the rest of her life. I was always William to her, never Wil. My father told me that she had cried the entire two-day trip home after dropping me off at college. An old joke goes like this. If you ask anyone if their parents had a favorite child and they reply, “No.” That means they are the favorite.

She was always thinking about me and my future. “Willliam, I had the secretary from Edwin Thomas and the dinning table from Lilla Bosbyshell re-finished for your new house.”

The night she died she had written one of her genealogy friends a nine-paragraph e-mail. Later, she had a massive stroke as she stood by her bed. In the hospital the next weekend she was severely paralyzed. She couldn't talk. Her eyes were open, but they didn’t follow you when you moved around the room. Her expression was mostly blank. She couldn’t talk.

I stayed with her one night in the hospital. I read aloud from the Wizard of Oz, one of her favorite books and movies. For years I had given her presents related to the Wizard of Oz: Christmas Tree ornaments, magnets and stuffed dolls. She even had a framed photo of the yellow brick road from the Land of Oz on Beech Mountain, NC.

In the morning, I woke and went to the window opening the blind allowing the Florida sun to shine into her hospital room. The beam of sunlight landed on my mother’s face, and she woke up. Moving to her bedside I said, “Good morning, Mama, it's your son, William.”

She looked up at me and for a moment she was herself again: happy and clear-eyed. Her whole face brightened as death fell away. She smiled at me with the expressive eyes I had known my whole life. Then she was gone again.

Her body lived another two weeks. My sisters say she waited for me to be with her to die. Her favorite son.

Sitting at her bedside, holding her hand I said, “Your to-do list is done. There is nothing left for you to teach or do for me or my sisters. You can go. You lived a good life. You did everything you needed to do for all your friends and everyone you loved.

Goodbye Mama. You were a wonderful mother. You couldn't have done any more for me than you did. I love you."

She died the next morning.