My mom died a few weeks ago. She was 94 and, like many people in their 90s, had been suffering from a variety of ailments, thyroid cancer and dementia among them, which led to a fall, which led to a fractured vertebra, which led to a cervical collar being placed around her neck, which led to a nasal feeding tube, which led to aspiration, which led to pneumonia, which led to her leaving this world. Obviously, her death, even after a long life, was a devastating experience for me, my sister and our whole family. It also taught me a lot about the cross and about compassion.

My sister Carolyn was my mother’s primary caregiver, lovingly and rather heroically visiting her upwards of four times a week, and managing all her doctor’s visits, financial records and the rest. (About 10 years ago, my mom moved to a very pleasant retirement community outside of Philadelphia, near where my sister and I grew up, and with the onset of her cancer moved into the skilled nursing section at the same facility.) Early on, my sister kept a notebook binder filled with my mom’s medical records and appointments. At one point, my mom joked, “Will there be a Volume Two?” (There would be three or four to follow.)

The day she fell, I was on my way to Los Angeles for a series of talks and agonized over whether I should go. I’m not embarrassed to say that I stood outside of JFK airport and cried out of sadness and confusion. But initially, it seemed that my mom would be released from the hospital and back home in a few days, and a Jesuit friend who is also a gerontologist said, “Your mom is going to be falling a lot. You can’t cancel a trip every time she falls.” It was a good decision. Still, I felt guilty.

As her condition worsened, so did the weather: A blizzard on Monday and Tuesday made travel nearly impossible. Then my sister called with the news that I had been dreading: My mom had developed pneumonia, often a precursor to death for the elderly. 

I will spare you the details of how I made it home, but I’ve probably never prayed harder in my life—specifically, that I would be able to see my mom before she died. Since my father died in 2001, I had called my mom every night (even when I was in Rome for the Synod meetings in October 2023 and 2024) and in the last few years I had visited her every Saturday, to help her walk outside when the weather was warm, watch “Gunsmoke” on TV, show her photos of recent trips, bring her galleys and copies of my books for her to show off, tidy her room or just sit and talk. 

To my distress, my flight was delayed several hours. I arrived at JFK Airport at 1 a.m., reached Manhattan by 2 and then drove to her hospital in suburban Philadelphia, arriving at 4 a.m. I had made peace with the possibility that I wouldn’t see her before she died, but I begged God in prayer to let me see her and say goodbye.

On the Cross

When I arrived, she was still alive. Entering her hospital room, I saw her frail body in the bed and started to cry in front of my brother-in-law, who was sitting next to her. (My sister was taking a much-deserved break for a few hours; the nurses had said that it wasn’t clear when she might die, though death was imminent.) My mom was gasping for air and agitated, touching her neck every few minutes. Instantly I was consumed with fear that she was suffering physically, perhaps from the fracture in her neck, even though by this point she was on some pain medication. 

Sitting beside her bed, watching her thin  body move, I immediately knew I was seeing a kind of crucifixion. No one had done violence to her; in fact, the doctors and nurses were reasonably attentive to her needs. But stretched out on the bed, under the sheets, her neck slightly arched, I thought of not only my own life with her, but also of Jesus on the Cross. 

I don’t mean to say that I was focused on Jesus. I was not. I was focused on my mom. And I don’t mean to say that I was spiritualizing everything. But I felt so powerless that it was hard not to imagine that Mary must have felt the same way looking at her son on Good Friday. But here I was, the son looking at his mother. I begged Mary for help.

And I would have done anything to lessen whatever suffering she was going through.  

Then, looking at her old body, I remembered the passage from Isaiah that says that just like the rain and snow that waters the earth and do not “return to heaven until they have watered the earth,” the word of God “does not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” 

I looked at her body, which seemed entirely spent, having finished what God had asked her to do with her life. Now, like the rain and the snow, it was getting ready to return.

Eleanor Spano Martin (Courtesy of author)

When my brother-in-law left the room, I knelt by her bed, held her overheated hand (perhaps hot from the pneumonia) and thanked her for all the things she had done for me. The pastor from our home parish, where her funeral Mass would be celebrated, had selflessly driven through the snow-clogged roads to visit her (and was met by a seminary classmate whom the hospital called for the sacrament of the sick), but I prayed the prayer of absolution over her anyway. And I anointed her with water from Lourdes. Then I sat down and prayed the rosary. I couldn’t say it aloud because I was too upset, but the phrase “now and at the hour of our death” made me cry.

Also, any lingering negative feelings about any disagreements we had had (and there were only a few) and any lingering anger I might have felt from any past hurts (and there were very few) burned out of me. And are burned out of me now. Only love was left.

When my dad died 25 years ago, I stood outside the hospital and called a Jesuit friend and, through tears, told him, “I didn’t know I could be so sad.” If possible, this felt sadder. My mom’s suffering was coming to an end, but so was her time on earth. I would miss her so much.

Then, still feeling completely powerless, I knelt at the foot of her bed and prayed to every saint I knew to ask God to take her soon. 

Compassion

The doctors and nurses were efficient, but I also felt a kind of distance from them. Because she had fractured a vertebra, she was in the hospital’s trauma unit, not in hospice care. Perhaps they weren’t used to people dying on their floor. A social worker explained to my brother-in-law and me that the hospital didn’t have any rooms available and that she would be evaluated for hospice care later, perhaps back at her nursing home. But she was dying. I called a Paulist friend who had also been a palliative care doctor. “That doesn’t make sense,” he said. “She could die in the ambulance.” Try not to move her, he said. 

The business-like and rather confusing discussions with the hospital staff did not comfort me but instead filled me with fear. What if they forced my mom to move? Were we doing the right thing? Was she on enough pain medication? Early on, she was on only Tylenol, and then only when my sister asked for it. 

My Paulist friend told me that her movements may not have been indicative of pain, but of “terminal dementia,” in which the body begins to shut down. That was a huge relief. Still, I was overwhelmed by feelings of guilt as I looked at her pale, thin, agitated body. It was especially hard to watch her rubbing her throat. Was her neck hurting her? Did she need more morphine?

I couldn’t help thinking about Mary, and the other women and the beloved disciple gathered around the Cross, wondering if they were doing the right thing. Maybe they asked themselves: How could they help him? Could they say anything to the Roman guards to make him suffer less? How would they deal with his body after his death? Their confusion must have been awful.

Then, suddenly, something beautiful happened. A hospice nurse happened to be passing by the room with a nursing student in tow. She wasn’t part of the trauma unit; rather, she was on that wing teaching about hospice care early that morning. And she overhead the word “hospice.”

She entered my mom’s room and quickly assessed the situation. (Later, she would work with my sister to make sure that my mom wasn’t moved.) 

As soon as she entered the room, the atmosphere changed. She immediately moved close to my mom and felt her forehead. “Oh, honey,” she said, “You’re so hot. Let me cool you off.” Then, like Veronica did for Jesus, she pressed a cold cloth against my mom’s forehead. My mom’s body relaxed and the features of her face, so familiar to me, softened. Then the nurse wiped her eyes and her face with the washcloth. Then she said, “Oh and you have so much saliva in your mouth, let me take care of that,” and reached over to a suction machine on the wall that the nurses hadn’t used. My mom relaxed more. Finally, she took a sponge and passed it over her dry lips. My mom was still agitated but seemed noticeably calmer.

It was impossible not to think of Jesus on the Cross. I couldn’t believe how powerful this was. And I thought, with regret: Why hadn’t I thought to do this? I learned more about compassion in those few minutes watching the hospice nurse than I would have in a year of homilies. 

When my sister returned after a few hours, I drove to a nearby Jesuit community, at St. Joseph’s University, and dropped off my bags and took a brief nap. But almost as soon as I woke up, my sister texted me: “Come over now. She’s going.”

When I returned, my mom was dead. She had died in the room with my sister and our cousin Rosie, who were both devoted to her. A neighbor who knew her well and my nephew were also in the room. I won’t tell you all the feelings I had, which are too personal, or what everyone in the room was doing and saying, which is also too personal. But anyone who has lost a parent will understand. 

After a time, my family left me by myself with my mom’s body, which was still warm. I had been expecting this moment for many years, but it was shocking.

In a day of sadness, one of the saddest things I did was to hug her goodbye. How many times had I done that as a boy, going to elementary school; as a teenager, going out with my friends; as a college student going back to Penn; as a young adult, returning to my apartment in New York; as a Jesuit, after visiting her at home; and in recent years, after seeing her in her retirement community. I couldn’t believe that this was the last time I’d say goodbye in this physical way.

An Offering

Over the years, I had heard stories of dying people staying alive until a loved one came to visit. I think I believed it but also thought it might be a bit of wishful thinking. Don’t people just die when their bodies give out? How could anyone force themselves to stay alive?

But after my mom’s death, enough physicians and health care professionals told me this was the case for me to believe that my mom had waited for me to come. The day before I left Los Angeles, I told her I was coming and through her oxygen mask, she said, “Goody gumdrops,” which turned out to be her last words to me, which is sad and sweet and funny. 

It must have taken all my mom’s remaining energy to stay alive. And I thought that this was her final gift to me. My mom wasn’t perfect (whose mom is?) but she was my mom and loved me and was, as she was for my sister, my biggest fan. And this final offering on her own cross was a gift whose meaning I can’t put into words. And it was something like Jesus offering his own self, at great physical expense, on the Cross. 

My mom’s funeral Mass was a few days later at our home parish. By then I had cried so much that I was able to celebrate her Mass, preach a homily I had been thinking about since my dad died and pray at the cemetery, all with mostly dry eyes. I prayed with our family and friends, grateful for her long life, happy that her suffering was over and joyful that she had now started Volume Two of her life, now in heaven. After all these years, she was united with Jesus, who suffered as she did, and with Mary, who watched her son suffer and who was with my mom “at the hour of her death.”