A Long Goodbye

I’ve been very quiet here over the last couple weeks. My mother, Delia Maria Johnson, already in hospital since 5th November or so, took a turn for the worse and began a rapid decline. She died peacefully after some days, and to be honest I’ve really not been myself since then.

There’s an extra element to the sense of loss when (as it approaches) you are powerless to do anything because of being thousands of miles away. On the plus side, because of the ease of using video calls, and with the help of my sister being there, I was able to be somewhat present during what turned out to be the last moments when she was aware of people around her, and therefore was able to tell her I loved her one last time.

Rather than charging across the world on planes, trains, and in automobiles, probably being out of reach during any significant changes in the situation (the doctors said I would likely not make it in time) I did a number of things locally that I am glad I got to do.

It began with visiting (and sending a photo from) the Santa Barbara mission, a place she dearly loved and was unable to visit again after 2019, along with the pier. These are both places we walked together so much back when I first lived here in what feels like another life.

Then, two nights before mum passed away, but well after she’d seemed already beyond reach of anyone, although perhaps (I’d like to think) still able to hear things, my sister contacted me from her bedside asking if I’d like to read mum a psalm, perhaps one of her favourites, 23 or 91. At first I thought she was already planning the funeral, and expressed my surprise at this since mum was still alive and right next to her. But I’d misunderstood, and she’d in fact had a rather great idea. This suggestion turned into several hours of, having sent on recordings of the two psalms, my digging into the poetry shelf in the study and discovering long neglected collections through which I searched (sometimes accompanied by my wife and son) for additional things to read. I recorded some and sent them along, as well as one from my son, I’m delighted to say. Later, the whole thing turned into me singing various songs while playing my guitar and sending recordings of those along too.

Incidentally, the guitar-playing was an interesting turn of events since not many months ago I decided after a long lapse to start playing guitar again, and try to move the standard of my playing (for vocal accompaniment) to a higher level than I’d previously done, by playing and practicing for a little bit on a regular basis. I distinctly recall thinking at one point during one practice that it would be nice to play for mum, although I did not imagine that playing to her while she was on her actual death-bed would be the circumstance under which I’d eventually play for her, having (to my memory) never directly done so back when I used to play guitar in my youth. (Her overhearing me picking out bits of Queen songs behind my room door when I was a teenager doesn’t count as direct playing for her.)

Due to family circumstances I’ll perhaps go into another time, there were long key periods of my youth when it was just me and mum facing the day to day ins and outs of life together, and as a result I think of her not just as my mother but in fact the closest friend I’ve had on this earth, so I’m having to adjust to the absence that this has left me with now that she’s gone.

Of course it has to be said that I already, for the last four or five years or so, went through a period of such adjustment, mourning even, due to the effects of dementia, which rather took much of her away already. As a result, perhaps a part of me has been gradually saying goodbye for some time now. However there were still moments where the mum I knew could return for a short while, and even outside such moments she never lost her delightful laugh, and you could regularly catch a twinkle of merriment in her eye, and a readiness to get up and dance, even if it was not clear if she knew that she was talking to her own youngest son, instead of maybe some stranger who seemed vaguely familiar. With her death has come the removal of even the possibility of those glimpses of the old mum I once knew, and so indeed a second mourning has begun, the goodbye irreversible.

In helping (as much as I can remotely) with the preparations for her memorial service and her being laid to rest, and on the long journey to come home to her for one last time, I’ve had the chance to begin to reflect on her long 92 years and 11 months, and marvel at how hard she’s worked over all this time, all the wonders she achieved, the love and kindness she shared, and the good she has done, and also how difficult things must have been these last years due to health, the pandemic, and more. It is good that she is resting now. She has seen and done a lot, her work is done, and it is time to rest.

But I’ll miss her, deeply.

-cvj