My mother's passing

There is nothing I can't recall about the last days and weeks of my mother's life. She had struggled with cancer for five years off and on, and I had grown the impression that her life was about to end fairly soon. One of my friends at the university, Åsa, and her friend Therese, had gone through the same thing and handed me a little pamphlet with instructions to prepare. I gave it to my mother's husband, which is the only thing I regret, because what if when he made that call for the ambulance, it wasn't necessary yet. She just needed to sleep. She had screamed No! for 45 minutes before she accepted going in.

After about a week in the hospital, after all her friends, my Dad and my brother, came to say their goodbyes, we had all went home temporarily but her husband, who had gone down to the cafeteria in the early evening. Her face had become so smooth and free of wrinkles, I couldn't help but thinking how close birth and death are to each other. Both part of life's cycle. That day, I was back in my hometown Malmö, sitting in the sun downtown, having an ice-cream, when I suddenly felt her soul leaving her body from afar. I walked home and went into my apartment in silence and darkness, and sat down on my couch with my phone next to me, anticipating a call.

The call came.

At that very moment, she had taken her last breath. We can't always explain life's mysteries or the mysteries of death, which I spoke to about with my therapist yesterday. We agreed upon, that whatever isn't hindering us in our day to day life, doesn't need to be solved. Or even understood. My faith and belief is, that there is a space in between life and death, from which we can receive messages or dreams.

My Mum and I spoke about how she wanted her funeral and made silly jokes about the fact that a funeral home was located on the bottom floor of their apartment in Helsingborg. Her husband was her physical support, although I remember the odd feeling of having to help my mother get dressed just a month prior. I tended to her spiritual and emotional needs the best I could. And my brother, who lived in the Netherlands at the time, was simply frozen in disbelief.

A few weeks after her funeral, I decided to stop wearing black clothes.

Photos from Portugal, where she went for her last vacation. Read more about my process to heal in my books, and in my blog category Bookbonus.