The Living Room

Polite people don't talk about death. It is whispered about, confined to nursing homes, hospitals, and dark quiet back bedrooms. As adult children of dying parents, we are woefully unprepared for the journey that most of us will eventually take - trying to figure out how to usher our loved ones out of the world with dignity and grace. On April 20, 2012, my journey with my mother began. She was a beautiful, vibrant, independent attorney who was diagnosed with a terminal brain tumor. I became her everything - her caregiver, her advocate, the protector of her heart and her spirit. I didn't ask for this role, but I was chosen for it. For eighty days, my mother lived in the most unlived room in my house - the living room. In that time, more living went on in that room than had ever before taken place there. Family and friends from all walks of life pulled up chairs around her bed. We ate. We drank. We sang. We cried. But mostly, we learned how to live again. My mother died in that room on July 8, 2012. This is her story, my story, and every adult child's story of what it is like to be transformed by the power of death.