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This work by Janice Elshiemer is displayed with permission from the author. Janice is the author of The Creative Call |
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Janice Elshiemer |
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Fading Into White March 30, 5:30 a.m. I’m lying in Mom’s double bed, journal on my lap, pillows at my back and coffee steaming on a tray at my elbow. I look around the room at pieces of Phyllis’s past, a past that is sliding away like a watercolor dropped into a running stream; ribbons of color ripple, tint the water and disappear, washing the paper white. My mother has always been the colors of her garden: pink complexion, lavender dresses, blue eyes, green thumb. But now she is dissolving, disappearing, fading into white, and I am powerless to gather her colors back to her, or to me. On Thanksgiving weekend, Mom’s lower back began to ache. Doctors blamed arthritis and osteoporosis. But in February, X-rays revealed a shadow in one of her lungs, lungs that had never inhaled a breath of cigarette smoke. The cancer was inoperable, incurable. Her eyes are fading from hydrangea bright to powder blue. The colors of her hair, skin and lips are melting into one another. She is becoming, if not colorless, one color—white. My mother is becoming white light. White light—the blending of all colors of the spectrum. We are in the end times for Phyllis Rose, my mother and my friend. These days are rich with wonder and the deepest kind of sorrow; I am sad and awestruck at the same time. Watching her fade away is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.
On the evening of March 30th, only hours after I had journaled from the pillows on her bed, we sat by her side and said goodbye. Frank Sinatra crooned on the stereo, paving the way for the tearful renditions of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” and “It Is Well With My Soul” that followed. We read out loud from her journals, for the solace it gave us and to fill the spaces between each labored breath. Then her priest anointed her for her journey and led us in prayer. We circled the bed and sang “Amazing Grace.” “Mom,” I said finally, “we love you, and wish we could keep you, but if you see a shining light when you close your eyes, just follow it home. It’s alright for you to go. Just fade into white, Mom, into the arms of God.” Three ragged breaths later, she was gone. The room filled with the whitest light, and for a moment our sorrow was swallowed in luminescence. “Phyllis” comes from the Greek, meaning “Leafy foliage; green bough.” In mythology, Phyllis was changed into an almond tree after her death and bore no more leaves until her lover returned. I believe that Mom will bear new leaves—white flowers, sweet fruit—because she will be with the lover of her soul, the One to whom she is even now returning. |