Famous Last Words

December 21, 2020

Oh boy. Those were my Dad’s nearly last words. I don’t remember what else he may have said, it couldn’t be much because immediately afterward, he dropped into a coma and emerged just once, for a brief flutter. The short swim up into consciousness was to express disgust at an embarrassing physical incident. He was fully awake a second and I leaned in to hold him out of the mess, reassured him the nurse was coming to clean up. He returned to Morpheus’ embrace and died about 5 days later. As to actual last words, there could have been something further, I guess. I don’t remember. Memory fails on all the details but I do remember he said, “Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy”. He repeated that phrase in urgent whispered, rapid succession. He knew what was going to happen, I think. Beyond that last expression, the aware communications I had with him were twice and of non-verbal nature. The first, he looked at me in a very child-like way, smiled and gave a little-boy cheerful wave. It was later he woke to frown and show utter disgust. I think I shall remember only the sunny little boy wave he gave me.

My dad was an ordinary man, a good man fundamentally. That means, at the base, at the foundation, he was a good man. He had a lot of flaws, lots of weaknesses. Maybe more than others? I don’t know. Most of his flaws came back on him, not anyone else. Some of them involved us, of course…that happens in families, but his flaws didn’t involve allowing hundreds of thousands of people to die. His flaws didn’t involve imprisoning innocent people who ‘snuck into the country’ illegally. My dad was a racist who knew he was wrong in that and never exposed his children to that point of view. He tried to change. I think he did, in the end. My dad was a homophobe, too, yet when I sat him down to tell him I was gay, he said, “Oh! Well, you were so nervous, I thought you were going to tell me something serious.” He acted with love and his heart changed. My dad was able to work around his flaws and be decent. His last words meant something.

The last words I heard from Ed’s mom were, “We are glad you came!” She spoke carefully, with certainty and meaning but one word at a time. It was Christmas and we were at the dinner table, finishing up. Some of the guests already had their coats on, having additional engagements in the busiest season of our Christian year. Mum thought the party was breaking up and she was saying her goodbyes. She didn’t remember who I was and I knew that in the moment. She didn’t remember my name or what my relationship to her was but she made a point of saying those words to me. She was nearly fully aware and she wanted me to know how she felt. It was sincere. When I returned a day or so later to visit, she no longer spoke, she just smiled or frowned or sighed contentedly. I treasure her last words to me. When I am too much for myself, I can try to remember what she said to me and I can keep going.

Ed’s mom was ordinary, she wasn’t rich or well-educated or glamourous. She didn’t cook brilliant meals. You were invariably going to have pot roast, sliced tomato, thin sliced cucumber, mashed potato and jello for dessert at her house. She wasn’t brilliant in the kitchen but she was giving, she WANTED to cook and do for others. She might have seemed common to many but her talents were great. She was remarkable in her own fashion. She kept an incredibly clean house, was great at mathematics and she was honest. Honest to the bone. She never used her skill with numbers to screw people she owed money to. When she said something, she meant it and everyone loved her for it. Her last words were the most important she ever spoke. (…and she did love to talk!)

My own mother’s last memorable words in my prescence were, “Well, it must be worse than I thought. You are ALL here.” That revealed her true wit and cleverness, summed it right up. The remainder of her communications were all matter-of-fact, “…yes, another blanket…could you ask her to turn the television down…no, I am not really hungry.” My younger brother was in steady conversations with the nurses after that, since the home was locked down and none of us could visit. We couldn’t do window visits or even Facetime visits. No one was available to move her to any window we could have seen her from and she us. The border quickly closed and I couldn’t travel after that. Complicating matters was that she wouldn’t answer or talk on the phone and was never much bothered with any other, newer technology. The nurses had to relay her condition and concerns to my brother. Her care-givers were good to her and they were the only ones to hear her final words. I think those words could honestly have been, “…may I have something to make me sleep?” as reported by the nurse. The humility of those words rings out loud and clear.

Mom was always respectful, always polite, always well mannered and intelligent. She, too was an ordinary and flawed person. Her flaws kept her in a dark place the whole time she was living. Her salvation was the love of reading, the love of knowledge, the love of handwork. She was a master at knitting, crocheting and sewing. Her upsy-downsy finances never allowed her to buy much of anything. If she needed something, she had to make it. She would not be Barbara Striesand’s favourite person, in that she never accomplished much, apparently. There was the matter of personal survival, though. Mom did that extremely well. In her surviving life, I don’t remember a time she was ever rude or selfish or cruel. No matter her own situation, she never put herself above another soul. She didn’t have much but she had that and it’s so much more than many do. It’s more than many so-called ‘important’ people have.

When I woke today, the first shot of news was frightening. The province goes back to full lockdown, Christmas Eve. We will be back to the initial frozen movement in just a few days. Then, two minutes later, came news that an extremely contagious variant of the virus is breaking out in the U.K. We are in it deep, my friends. My great fear is that things are just beginning, not nearly ending as we thought. I was allowing relief to creep in (on little kitty-paw feet, Like Sandberg’s fog). I was relaxing. I wasn’t thoroughly fearful before but am becoming so, now. (Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy).

The U.S., particularly, is in dire shape. I believe that the fibres are separating, the fabric rent. The leaders, the bright, the influential, the supposed ‘best of’ are not that, they are more common and seem to be lower than dirt. If (and I do sincerely hope the otherwise comes true) leadership fails, the fully exploding country will spread a wicked poison around the world. I am mindful, fearful of that as Covid also moves it’s way around and insinuates itself. A great number of us ought to be writing our last words or planning them. We can make them famous or we can make them infamous – as some other ‘last words’. The other words I mean are those of the would-be triumphant king, Donald Trump. I can be honest and say I hope there are no more of his words disseminated! He is a paradox. He is everything our society despises, all wrapped up in a package that claims to be ‘larger than life, the best, the most superiour, the greatest ever seen’. He and his cohorts drip with everything negative that was ever said of my Mom, my Dad and my dear Mother-in-law. I hope that his last words were “It’s just the flu, it will disappear…just like that” …because I can’t hear any more!