What my Mother's death taught me about being truly alive

Today would have been my Mother’s 63rd birthday.

On the first day of this near year, my Mom began the first day of her new life “on the other side” after a 23 year long battle with cancer. Being with someone during their final days of life, their final breaths and heartbeats, is a profoundly powerful experience. It’s an honor, it’s gut-wrenchingly tender, and it’s heartbreaking.

There are so many things I could share about the experience, and there are so many precious private moments I will forever cherish.

What I do want to share is this: I want to talk about the power of being present and how it is the secret to being truly alive and aligned, even amidst the most heartbreaking moments.

My Mother had cancer for most of my life, almost as long as I can remember. When you live life with someone sick, and especially when their sickness becomes terminal, the awareness of death becomes very real and highly anticipated. This looming awareness manifested for me in a variety of different ways through the years.

Sometimes I was consumed by the fear of her losing her, unsure whether or not something like this would “destroy” me.

Sometimes I distanced myself from her, not wanting to get “too close” in an attempt to protect myself from the anticipated pain of loss.

Most recently, as doctors shared that there was finally nothing more that they could do, I became obsessed with preparing and planning for “closure.”

For many many months, all I could think about was the end of my Mother’s life and how to make sure that I “close out” our relationship well. How do I ensure I won’t have regrets? What do I need to ask for forgiveness for? What apologies am I still waiting on? What questions have I never asked? What do I let go of, and what still needs to be addressed? Have we said all that needs to be said? Does she know how much I love her, and do I know she loves me?

The week that my mom began to rapidly decline and it became clear that we were entering into her final days was incredibly surreal. It was a profound experience that is difficult to articulate into words. What I can clearly articulate is this: nothing that I had planned for or thought would matter in those moments did.

Chalk it up to the exhaustion, the adrenaline, or the hyper-vigilance that comes when you’re finally approaching a climax you’ve long been anticipating… but something happened in me where I became tunnel visioned to the present and each new moment. I knew it was the end, and I knew I wanted to soak it all up. Every single heartbreaking, scary, precious moment.

Here's the beauty of what happens when you get out of your head and into the present moment. Objectively, those final days of her life were the saddest, hardest, and worst days of my life. Experiencing them FULLY though, while certainly painful, were some of the most cherished moments I ever had with my mom. Never have I felt so raw and in tune with my emotions. It’s weird to say this, especially in light of talking about death, but I’ve never felt more alive than I did that week. Nothing else mattered except for what was right in front of me, and even though it was breaking my heart, being totally present with each moment brought a powerful sense of peace and alignment.

I have wasted too many precious moments of my life carrying the burdens of the thoughts in my head instead of being present with the realities right in front of me, which has kept me from truly LIVING. All of that time I spent thinking about her death, trying to emotionally plan for it, kept me from being present with her while I had her. Thankfully there were also many moments that I was present with her during her final year of life, and I’m so grateful for those. But the truth is that I also wasted time and missed out on actually experiencing certain moments because I was too stuck in my head, living in a moment that wasn’t even happening yet.

As I ride the waves of grief, it is also not at all like I planned for or thought it would be. Some aspects are far more difficult, while other things I thought I’d feel or experience, I am not. The days that I am able to be patient and present to the truth of whatever is coming up for me, those are the days I am grieving the “best.” When I stop resisting and just embrace what is, I feel alive and aligned.

Being present is the secret to being alive and aligned because you’re feeling and experiencing ALL of what it means to be human. The beauty of the human experience is not just about chasing the highs or avoiding pain. We can’t be selectively present with only what we want to feel - what a cheap human experience! Being truly alive is being present to feel it all, even if it sucks.

This first birthday without her here sucks. I feel the temptation to resist - I don’t want to feel or deal. But that’s not living… I choose to honor Liza’s life today by LIVING in the present and embracing every complicated, tender, painful, and precious moment.

Thank you Mom for this lesson. Happy Birthday.