In the past 1 1/2 years, I was caring for my mother, who passed away in October of 1996. She had suffered from multiple illnesses (lupus, diabetes, heart disease, kidney failure, to name a few) and was living in New Jersey until it became apparent that she could not get the care there that we could offer her if she were in closer proximity to us.

We helped her move to Wisconsin in January of '96. To do this required a lot of letting go for me: of statements I had made like "I'll never have her live here" or "she never took care of me, why should I care for her"; of fears, that caring for my mom would take over my life, that I would be inadequate to the task, of her dying; of any predesigned notions of what caring for my mom would look like. Finally, after a lot of prayer and meditation, I found a still place in myself that whispered to me. It asked me why I didn't have the compassion for my mother that I would have for a stranger. It said, how long will it be...is your life so short and self-centered that you have no time to stop and care for others? I found the place of compassion in myself and made a conscious decision to put aside my inner turmoils in favor of offering care to another human on this turbulent path of life.

Ironically, the universe had cleared the way for this, with the preceding events around us moving to Wisconsin, my giving up my counseling practice, not having the general busy-ness of my life back east.

The resulting time has been one filled with pain, beauty, love, turmoil, and most of all the greatest spiritual lesson I could ever have received about living in the moment. For the next 10 months after my mom moved here, until she crossed over, there was not one predictable second in any one day. For myself and my family, this necessitated living in the present to the fullest extent we had ever been called.

I found that this was easy at first, while the call to compassion was still fresh. Then I grew to resent the inability to plan, and got to see how much of a controlling person I really am. I did finally settle into an acceptance of what was, just as my mom was losing her mental faculties. This allowed me to simply be with her wherever she was, and help my kids to be there too. We learned to joke with her about her 2-second memory and take flowers, herbs, and foods that triggered her memory through smell.

I felt good as we approached the time of making decisions about how much more medical intervention would be allowed. It became apparent that she would not "recover." Again I had to let go of some fears and negative thinking to contact my brother to be a part of this decision.

We were fortunate to have a doctor who is very spiritual centered and was able to admit to us that he was having a hard time facing my mom's death because he had his own struggle with facing that there is nothing more humans can do but pray. But he clearly laid out for all us what all the options were, including what my mom's life would look like in the future if we kept on medical paths, and what her death would most likely be like at different levels of stopping intervention.

My mom and I had talked extensively about "no machines" meaning no new tubes, breathing apparatus. But she was on kidney dialysis for the entire year before, so it was difficult to discern where that fit.

In the end, the fortuitous universe stepped in and let me hear the under-his-breath comments of one of the specialists, "It wouldn't be a bad way to go, really..."

"What!" I said, as he looked up to see me. He proceeded to explain that patients taken off dialysis and medication for infection will just slowly drift off and finally go to sleep, with out much awareness of what is happening or pain. So we decided to continue insulin, food, fluids, but discontinue dialysis and antibiotics. If we did not, she would be facing an amputation of her leg from which there was still no guarantee she would recover. She had always said, "If they try to take my legs, put a bullet in my head." I couldn't have done that, but somehow compassion spoke that it was time to admit that the end was here.

It took another week for her to cross over to being freespirit. In that time, she forgot about the wound on her leg and the infection in her body. It was confusing to her why she was in the hospital and then a care facility, but she was too weak to get up and go. She remembered her grand-children's names and who they were to the end, but confused the rest of us with people from her past. She saw and had conversations with people who had already passed over, and kept asking me who that man was standing at the end of the bed in the white robes, motioning to her.

At this point my 10 year old son made the decision that he did not want his grandma to be alone in her last few days and asked me if he could take off from school to be with her. My 8 year old decided that she wanted to keep the good memories she had and said good-bye to grandma at that point. Stefan came with me to the nursing home for the next two days, holding his grandma's hand and talking to her, and asking questions as they came to him...I have never seen such power and clarity in such a young person.

At about 5 o'clock the second day we were sitting with her, Stefan said, "Mom, I have the feeling that grandma doesn't want me to be here when she dies." (At this point she had not spoken or opened her eyes for a day.) I said, "I don't know, we should probably ask her." We did this, holding her hands, and the resulting was a powerful squeeze to both of us and a resounding "Uh-uh" Based on this, we went home to rest and Stef said his good-byes. Three hours later we were called at home to say she had died.

During this time, all of what I believed was called to use and at time to question. The year was not without its toll on me physically. At Christmas, having still not given myself time to let down and grieve, I got the flu, and have been sick off and on since (over 1 month)..I had kept saying through all of this, "I just feel like I can't get my breath..." Now I developed asthmatic bronchitis, and literally couldn't get my breath unless I laid down and rested. Still it was hard to let myself stop moving. Louise Hay talks about asthmatic problems as "stifled tears." That is where I am...my body wants to keep running, but I can't. When I finally stop, I cry — not just tears for my loss of my mom, but tears that feel age old, very deep, about resting and accepting what is. Finally, in this third week of January, I have surrendered once again to what is in my life.