A very special friend told me DNR also means “Let nature take its course."

It was me that had to say those words  to the ICU doctor, the doctor put his hands on my shoulders and said to me, "You are a very good daughter. We will keep your mother comfortable." 

She told me she did not want to live a life in pain anymore. Arthritis was overtaking her body, leaving her right arm frozen, no longer able move. She wanted to die in her garden at her home. He couldn't do it. How could he? Married 60 years. He couldn't face or make those kind of decisions. 

My daughter came home to hold space with me to watch my mother die. Three generations in  a hospice room for five days straight. All the family members that could make it came to say goodbye. My brother had just lost his wife to cancer three months before. He did the best he could. Grief had already introduced itself to him.

We walked around all this sorrow and pain. Honoring all the emotions in the room. We hugged and cried, laughed, joked, told stories, felt crazy, held hands, prayed, played music, ordered pizza at midnight, watered flowers, said Yes, said No, walked the halls, napped in the waiting room, wrote lists, texted, made phone calls, got mad, went mad, slept on chairs and bathed in the sink.

And what felt like it would never end, did. On January 13 at 4:30 a.m., I couldn’t take hearing her labored breathing anymore. I let go of her hand. Got up and looked out the hospital window. It had snowed for the first time that year. Everything was white. It was beautiful. I put my blanket and pillow on the hospital floor in the corner of the room next to the couch where my daughter was sleeping. I cried for the first time in five days. 

At 6:30 a.m., I heard my mother breathe her last breath, a sound like no other sound. Everyone kept saying tell her It’s ok to go.

What I realize now is that it wasn't her that couldn't let go. It was me. My daughter said to me, Grandma was there for your first breath and you were there for her last.