Would you want advanced knowledge that your parent is about to die? Or would you rather not know that the moment of their death is coming and have it surprise you? A good friend sent me this text recently, and it got me thinking about whether it’s better to know or not to know that your parent is about to die:

“I’m in Denver now (very last minute)
My mom will pass in next 24 hours (most likely)
FYI
Sad but we’ve been feeling this coming for a while.”

I didn’t get to choose. My mother died suddenly and unexpectedly almost four years ago. When I heard the news I crumpled to the dirty patio tile in a Florida hotel. The news of her death pulled a long, guttural groan from my body that seemed to go on for longer than any other sound I’ve ever made.

So many times I’ve wanted to ask her questions about her life or my childhood or her family. I want just one more conversation with her. One more hug. I need clarification on an old family recipe, and I will never know if I’m supposed to let the dough of my grandmother’s Polish yeast coffee cake rise all together in one bowl in the fridge, or if I need to separate it into the loaf pans before it goes in the fridge to rise. Every year I wonder if I’m doing it wrong.

But imagine the frantic and desperate knowing. How terrible it must feel to have the foreknowledge that death is approaching. What about knowing that you and your mom or dad have 24 hours or less? How much love can you spill out in 24 hours or less? I would turn myself inside out with the effort. I would panic about the or less part, wanting to smile and be reassuring, but constantly looking over my shoulder with fear, knowing what is coming.

It felt agonizingly unfair to be surprised. It also seems unbearable to know in advance. Or possibly it is better to be able to prepare? To slowly say soft goodbyes over several weeks or days. To prepare them and yourself, to understand their wishes for their final moments, and to be able to deliver on that promise.

I can’t shake the habit of picturing and playing out my mom’s final moments. Did it take minutes for her to pass? Hours? Was she aware? I wonder if she called out for anyone. What is death like when one has a loving and trusted person there holding their hand, so they do not go into death alone? I wonder how it feels in the moment when you realize the hand you are holding no longer holds life. Is there a jolt of electricity? Or does it feel like a fading? How are you supposed to let go? I don’t know if I could.

I’m just not sure I would be strong enough to watch my mother actively die if I had the foreknowledge. It would unhinge me and undo me. I would be a sobbing, incoherent mess. Though I felt just as shattered to hear that her body was found on the floor of her house, possibly up to 72 hours after she had died. She was alone.

What are we supposed to do when we have to witness our mother or our father suffering before they die? What if they have a debilitating illness or cancer or dementia or Alzheimer’s? Is that time somehow a painful blessing?

In a way, I had it both ways. My mother’s husband suddenly and unexpectedly died of a heart attack, and in grief she spent the next year quietly unraveling herself, like a piece of knitting she decided not to complete.

I thought she would be sad for so very long, and then I would help her pick up the pieces and slowly trudge forward. Instead for about a year I watched her deteriorate before my eyes, though I didn’t know death was coming. I didn’t say goodbye. In fact I have a lingering text from her that I never responded to because I was at the beach, playing with my children in the sun, while she bled out on her floor and breathed her last breath.

Was it a mercy that I didn’t get to see my mother’s lifeless body? My brother said that they (whoever “they” were) did not recommend a viewing. That means it was terrible. We wouldn’t have been able to hug her or to trace the veins on the back of her hands. I remember the feeling of her beautiful hands, and the way she would gently stroke my hair off my forehead when I was a kid.

Would she be unrecognizable to me if I demanded to see her body? Did I want that closure? Why did I even consider looking at her death–at the mottled, lifeless colors and sickening smells, at what remained of all her pain, the body she left behind, the battered shell that survived for so long–without her bright and brilliant, radiant soul inside?

I responded to my friend’s text with hearts and broken heart emojis. There are very few words to say when someone messages that they are living the last 24 hours or less they will have with their mother. And so I said what I thought I would have wanted to hear, if I could have been with my mom holding her hand, telling her I was there with her, that everything would be okay, and gently kissing her eyelids after she was gone.

I am here for you now if you need it. In any way.

I will still be here for you later, when you are ready to talk.

Or if you need to just sit in silence with someone.

I’m so, so sorry you are going through this process.

Whenever you want to reach out, I am here.

I’m still not sure which I would choose. To know or not to know. It seems to be a flawed choice. This or that. I would choose neither, but we don’t get to choose. Someone else spins the wheel, and we must live our lives waiting to find out which way we get.

That night I gently brushed my children’s hair out of their face as the fell asleep. My fingers are not as slender and lovely as my mother’s, but my children still sighed contentedly and sank into their pillows. Someday It will be my turn to go, and my heart aches for them.

Did you know in advance that your mom or dad was going to die? Would you rather have known or not known?

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