terrypetersen

Life is an opportunity, benefit from it. Life is beauty, admire it. Life is a dream, realize it. Life is a challenge, meet it. Life is a duty, complete it. Life is a game, play it. Life is a promise, fulfill it. Life is sorrow, overcome it. Life is a song, sing it. Life is a struggle, accept it. Life is a tragedy, confront it. Life is an adventure, dare it. Life is luck, make it. Life is life, fight for it.  (Mother Teresa)

When my mother lay unresponsive waiting for her heart to stop on another December day, I tried to fill the vacuum with something positive, something that could transcend loss. I crawled into the middle of my bed with my guitar and picked and strummed Christmas carols. Silent night, holy night. . . The moment felt silent and holy enough, but lacked calmness and brilliance.

I felt a deep reverence for Mom’s transition into another dimension although I never had a best friend relationship with her. When I was born there was a hole in my umbilical cord; it severed some larger maternal connection before I faced daylight. Mom never had a chance to count my fingers and toes until I was ten-days old.

Even so at Christmas time as I grew older  we harmonized as we washed and dried the dinner dishes. I sang soprano and she added the alto: The First Noel, Oh Come All Ye Faithful, We Three Kings.

Harmony, it can’t be accomplished alone, in music or in life. And a lot of dissonance intrudes along the way. Some of it can be rearranged; some must be discarded to make way for patterns that work. Eventually, I learned who my mother really was. And I finally grew up and stopped fighting shadows.

Years later, this November and December, I observed my father’s silence and jerky sleep in the nursing home. His decline was in process.

“Hi, Dad!” I  kissed him on the forehead. The noise in the elevator and dining room was enough to jar anyone. An alarm went off in the hall. He grimaced—but the response was pain. I could only guess what he needed.

Eventually his final days arrived: twenty-four hour hospice care, lowered blood pressure, less blood flow to his extremities, a sudden change of color, from pink to waxy white, his breathing paused and threatened to stop.

“I love you, Dad. I always will,” I told him. “But it’s okay to join Mom now.” One more kiss on the forehead. One of my brothers, my husband, and an ex-sister-in-law joined in a few silent tearful goodbyes. I turned around. Dad’s hospice aide also wept as his spirit departed.

Back again in the center of my bed, guitar as a companion, I play and sing as if I had an audience of two: one woman who would have been 91, and one man who would have turned 92 on the first of January. She joins in with the alto and he grins, completely happy. “Sleep in heavenly peace. Sleep in heavenly peace.”

my parents on their wedding day 4/4/45