Even in our final days, we may have one final lesson to learn. For Mom, it’s acceptance.

How can we know when it is time to accept something and when there is still time to change things for a different outcome?

Hint: when your 92-year-old body no longer works, and there is nothing left to treat or rehab, it is time to accept that you are dying. Unless, of course, you are my mother. In that case, you resist and drive your loved ones to exhaustion.

Yet this level of denial has been vital to Mom’s lifetime of success.

 The word “can’t” was accepted as a challenge—a throwing down of the gauntlet. “I will have a career and be a good mother and wife, and I will get two college degrees. I will travel throughout Europe and Asia even if my husband doesn’t want to go.”

And so she did despite a limited budget, cultural norms, and societal expectations to the contrary.

It has served her well… Until now.

Now, entering day nine (as of this writing), lack of acceptance is holding her back. Never did I imagine having to tell my mother it is time for her to go. But, alas, that is what we (my brothers and I) keep telling her. It has become a friendly conversation with the hospice staff. They tell us that generally, those who enter active dying (a hospice definition) and continue this long without food and water are those with some meat on their bones. Mom weighs 85 lbs. There is no meat.

Her sheer lack of acceptance is keeping her here, believing she will get better because, dagnabit, she is going to live to be 100. “This wasn’t in the plan.”

Woman plans, God laughs.

We are all this powerful. We are also powerful enough to accept what we cannot change if we so choose. And we are never done learning.

Peace,

Mary