The night before my vacation, I had a dream:
I'm a child practicing T'ai Chi movements on the grass in a freshly mowed public park. A compassionate older Asian man is guiding me. I recognize him; he has been my teacher in earlier dreams. He shows me that by moving my body in a certain way, I can learn how to cross the bridge between life and death at will. I try the exercise, and I am ecstatic at the ease with which I can traverse both realms. My teacher says that to ready myself for what is to come, I must remember that I possess this ability, and I must have faith that death is not the end.
I stayed curled up under the covers half asleep, luxuriating in the triumph of my accomplishment in traveling between two worlds. But my hands and feet turned cold as I came more fully awake and the meaning of the dream began to sink in. It was a clear sign predicting my mother's death, and I didn't want to see it. Grief welled up in my chest, a virtual tsunami that threatened to swallow me up. But I had to protect myself. This was my first day off in many months. I was too tired and depleted to dwell on the implications right then. With as much emotional control as I could muster, I suppressed my feelings before they had a chance to gather momentum. I would reexamine the dream after I rebuilt my strength.
For the entire week I rested. I soaked up the sun, read Anne Rice's
Interview with the Vampire,
an escape into the world of the preternatural, and meditated for an hour a day, slowing myself down to a saner pace. When my vacation was over, I was reenergized and my mind was fresh. I was eager to resume work. On the evening of my first day back, however, my worst fears were realized: I received an urgent phone call from my father. His voice was faint; he could have been a million miles away.
“Judith, your mother collapsed on the floor with a fever of a hundred and four. She's in the intensive-care unit at Cedars-Sinai.”
I strained to hear him, to take in the news. The words sounded long, drawn out, and deep, as if he were speaking in slow motion. Then I went numb. All was deadly silent. In one swift movement, the earth had been ripped out from beneath my feet. Unsupported, I was falling through space. Alone. Spinning out of control.
I don't know how I managed to drive myself to Cedars. I can't recall much of the trip. I do remember being dazed, wandering down the long hospital corridors past a blur of modern artwork on the wall. I took the elevator up to the third-floor intensive-care unit, where I joined my father. Although I had treated many terminally ill patients in the very same ICU, some comatose, some on the edge of death, I was unprepared for what I saw. There was my own mother, hooked up to a life-support system. Not a stranger or a patient. The woman who'd given birth to me lay in bed, tubes in every orifice, an arterial catheter in her neck, restraints tied to her wrists and ankles to prevent her from pulling out the IV. She was ranting, delirious from the fever, didn't even recognize me. I was seized by the horror of the scene, my helplessness, and the love I felt for both her and my father.
It was long after midnight when I got home. I went straight to bed but couldn't sleep. Getting up, I turned on the lights and rummaged through my closet shelves until I found the old stuffed white rabbit I'd slept with as a child. Then, again wrapped up in the covers, sheets quickly soaked with sweat, I rocked back and forth clutching the rabbit in my arms. The pain was too great; I didn't know how I'd ever get through it. I was terrified of the loss of my mother, of the hollow pit of aloneness that had lodged itself in my gut. My mind was racing; it was impossible to calm down. I got up and knelt at my meditation altar in my study, praying harder than I had ever prayed before. I made my bed beside the altar that night, and slept under a thick, pale blue down comforter. It felt safer there than in my bedroom. Finally, at three o'clock, I drifted into a dream:
I am in God's reception room waiting to be seen. God is late and I am impatient. His secretary, a radiant brunette woman, about thirty with a pageboy haircut, tells me that God has been delayed but has sent a message for me. He apologizes for his lateness, but he's very busy today. He hopes I won't get angry with him and leave in a huff. When he comes back, he promises that he'll meet with me for as long as I like.
When morning came, I arose still shaken, but I had regained my bearings. I had reached out for help and received it. The innocent sweetness of the dream, the acknowledgment that God was with me even though it didn't always feel that way, was tremendously reassuring. My mother's circumstances were no less distressing, but my panic and despair had lifted.
Within twenty-four hours, my mother's fever broke. I visited her in the hospital late that afternoon. She was limp with exhaustion and could barely talk. In one brief, lucid moment, she said, “Judith, I've passed the power on to you. It's yours, and you're ready to take it.”
“Stop being so melodramatic,” I said. But I understood. I saw an image of my mother handing me a priceless golden serving platter piled with luscious fruit that would remain perpetually ripe. The generational gift in our family—our psychic heritage—had been transmitted.
For me, the most difficult part of this time was watching the intensity of my mother's anger about being sick and out of control. She didn't want to die. She held on to life with the tenacity of a prizefighter, bloody and knocked down, but continuing to drag herself back into the ring. Sometimes, when I arrived at the hospital after a long day's work, my mother looked like a wild-eyed demon spitting fire at me and my father, relentlessly criticizing us for almost everything we did. I fought to remain patient; the few times I lost my temper only made things worse between us. Then one night, I had another dream:
I am in a prison cell, all alone, raging at the universe. I raise my arms into the air and scream out in frustration, “Why is all this happening to me?” Not expecting a response, I crumble to my knees. Then, although I can't see whom it belongs to, a genderless voice tenderly speaks out to me: “As you watch your mother deal with her illness, you are learning compassion. This isn't easy.”
It was difficult to be compassionate when I took my mother's anger so personally, but the dream allowed me to see her behavior from an entirely different point of view. My mother was tormented by her fear of death. In the middle of the night she would wake up from nightmares, panicked that she was going to die. Once, in a dream, her parents came to visit her and asked her to join them. She pushed them away, furious at the offer. Suddenly I understood that her anger wasn't directed at me. Rather, she needed to remain as disgruntled as possible because lashing out was her only remaining lifeline. I knew that this wasn't a conscious decision on her part, but rather an instinctual reaction to her feelings of spiritual emptiness. Judaism had always been important to her. She had attended services on Friday nights and on all the Jewish holidays for most of her life; and doing that had given her solace. Since getting sick, however, she felt that God had abandoned her, devastated that God would have allowed her to become so ill. As she lost faith in the religion that had previously sustained her, anger was all she had. In order to survive, she was holding on to her rage; it was like the last ember in a dying hearth.
At the same time, however, pieces of her armor were cracking. Many nights she would melt into my arms and ask me to lay my hands on her to help her sleep. It had become a natural part of how we related, and she willingly participated. I was honored that she allowed me to help her. She didn't have to hide anymore, to keep up pretenses. She responded to my touch and had grown to trust me. Once, at her request, I sang her the same lullaby she sang to me when I was a little girl, and I watched her face grow younger. Not caring if other people knew what we were doing, she would relax like a child while I transmitted all the love I could summon through my hands, as she peacefully dozed off in my lap.
She told everyone proudly, “My daughter's a magician. I don't need sleeping pills when she comes to visit. Judith puts me into a trance with her hands.”
Despite my mother's praise, I knew this was something we all can do. I had learned never to underestimate the power of love. When our family or friends are despairing or in pain, we don't have to sit by helplessly. Our love can be sustaining. True healing is put to the test in real life. This is when we can act, can apply everything we've been taught. For me, years of spiritual study were brought to bear as my mother lay dying. It was as though I'd been preparing for this moment all along.
When I sat with my mother, I often felt my grandmother's presence in the room. Three generations of women were gathered at my mother's deathbed.
Before this period, much of my energy had been tied up in grappling to find peace with my mother, in striving to make our relationship succeed. For the first time, I felt we had reached a resolution. All the barriers were gone. Even though, when I turned forty, I believed that I had come to terms with not having children, I now ached to have a child of my own. I wanted to pass on the gifts to keep the hereditary link unbroken.
My mother slipped into a coma late Christmas Day in 1992. As I was leaving her hospital room earlier that morning, she turned to me and whispered, “I love you, Judith.” These were the last words she ever spoke. During the next week, when I went to the hospital each evening to watch over her, I knew we were irrevocably connected, clearly members of the same tribe. I became fascinated with the beauty of her body, her soft, pink belly rising and falling with each labored breath. As I looked at the horizontal cesarean-section scar above her womb, I imagined myself as a newborn infant being lifted out of her and into the world. Now the boundaries between us had become blurred. No tightening. No resistance. No more strife. We were so interconnected that it was hard for me to tell where she ended and I began.
My mother lay in a coma for ten days, but although she was wasting away, her vital signs remained stable. I had underestimated her tenacious hold on life; she would not let go of her body. In the first week of the new year, my mother came to me in a dream:
We are standing on the roof garden of a two-story apartment building on Olympic Boulevard in Beverly Hills. My mother looks twenty years younger and is robust with energy. With a whimsical look, I ask her if she wants to fly. Without hesitation, she takes my hand and we lift off into the air miles above the city skyline, ascending toward the sun. She's amazed at how effortless our flight is. Cool wind rushes past our faces. We are both exhilarated.
I sat up in bed elated, but within minutes my mood darkened. The image of flying was an apt metaphor for her imminent death. The message flashed before me like a huge multicolored neon sign: My mother would be gone very soon. Any illusions that I still had about her possible recovery vanished with that dream. I had to accept the inevitability that even her unswerving determination and her bullheaded obstinacy didn't have the power to ward off her death. Although the impending loss was unbearable, I also knew there would be relief in the end of her suffering, a freedom in the fight being over. It was time. I could help.
Once at the hospital, with tears streaming down my cheeks, I spoke to my mother, certain that she could hear me. “Mother, you can't keep holding on. You must let go of your body. There's nothing to be afraid of. Life doesn't end when you die. You just go somewhere else. There'll be plenty for you to do there. You don't have to worry about being separated from me. We'll contact each other. Our communication won't ever stop.”
I knew she was in a coma too deep to allow for any physical movement, and yet, impossible as it should have been, I felt her gently squeeze my fingertips, letting me know that she had heard me. I held her hand and went into meditation while she lay in a fetal position on her side, breathing heavily. The entire room pulsated with concentric waves of golden light, and I was filled with the profound and uncompromising love between a mother and daughter.
I was tempted to stay with her, but I didn't. I remembered when my beloved fourteen-year-old Labrador retriever was dying. Frantic, I called my mother from the animal hospital, and she rushed across town to meet me. When she arrived and saw me sitting in the kennel, holding my dog close, she advised me to say good-bye and leave. My mother believed that as long as I was in my dog's presence, she would struggle to hold on. I listened to her advice, and, difficult as it was, we both went home. My dog died soon afterward. Now I had to follow the same wise counsel that my mother had given me.
Taking one last look, making a small reverential bow in my mother's direction, I said a final good-bye and left the room. I walked to the parking structure in a trance, while an unexpected sense of calm washed over me. There were no loose ends between my mother and me, no insurmountable barriers to scale, no pressing issues to discuss. Driving from West Hollywood toward downtown, where I was scheduled to see patients in a residential drug-treatment center, I felt the fresh air rushing past my face. It had just rained, and I breathed in as if for the first time. A half hour later, I received a phone call from my father saying that my mother had died. I was filled with the grace of the moment, touched by how much faith she had in me. Despite her fear of death and her loss of belief in her religion, she had trusted me enough to give up control and pass on. She had leaped into the great abyss, motivated by the strength of our love.
For the three days following her death, I had no contact with my mother. I'd expected to sense her presence around me, but I didn't feel a thing. My father and I arranged the funeral, and the family flew in from Philadelphia. On the day of the burial, I hid an owl feather in the elastic waistband of my skirt and tossed it into the ground with the casket. I wanted to put something in the grave that I considered meaningful: This feather, in Native American lore, is symbolic of the transformation from life to death. The owl, which is believed to be able to cross back and forth between the seen and the unseen, would help her with her passage.