There was only mom

One morning I got a call from my younger brother Jaime. He was crying. He tells me my mom’s health, which had been slowly declining over the past month from advanced cancer, had reached the point where not much time was left. I was shocked. I felt the inertia of my regular life: not wanting to let people at work down, the meditation retreat I had booked for next week. I cried in the shower. I cried on the way to work as I listened to these Zen chants.

Everything just seemed to hit harder. The strikes of the singing bowls sounded definitive, saying “Hurry up! Hurry up! Time is running out! Everything that begins ends!” By chance I had a session booked with my therapist that very day and once again I cried. “How can someone love me like this [unconditionally]? I don’t understand”. My therapist had lost her own mother some years prior. “That’s a mother’s love”, she said.

I booked a one way ticket to the Canary Islands where she lived, and three flights and 20 hours later I got there. There were many moments where I also cried on the plane. “What if I arrive and she’s not alive?” “Will I be able to talk to her?” When I arrived I was greeted by my brothers, and we drove home. My dad just had surgery and couldn’t come, so it’d just be the three of us, and my mother’s own family, over 13 siblings.

My mom never went to college, and shortly after marrying my dad she stayed at home raising me and my brothers, working tirelessly. I remember that was most of what her life was. Sometimes she would hang out with her friends and watch TV, but that was it. She also used to smoke a lot, which is why we were here this early, she was only 61, the youngest of her siblings, with the oldest being 82 now. I remember being very young and horrified at seeing her addicted to tobacco while at the same time she would remind us to never start smoking. I tried to help her by hiding or throwing away the packs of cigarettes if I could see them, to no avail, she really wanted to smoke. At the time I didn’t understand what need the smoking was serving, but now I do.

Her past few years, with my brothers and I now independent, were much happier: she quit smoking, became more social. She even joined a motorbiking club! In her youth she used to be a party girl and she was back.

She always loved me. Even when I was clumsy or socially awkward, or when I thought I was broken, she always loved me. Even when I got in my own way and was blind to the ways she loved me, she loved me still. No matter what I did, and no matter what I said, she loved me as I was.

When we got to the hospital room, I cried yet again.

I sank my head by her side and she stroked my hair. She could no longer speak, a tube coming out of her throat let her breathe, and a whiteboard let her write a few words to communicate. At least she was fully lucid. She knew who we were, she could communicate well. Her face didn’t have much expression, perhaps as a result from the constant stream of painkillers pumped into her by an ungently-beeping peristaltic pump. I cried “this is how it was”, “this is how it is supposed to be” “this is what was missing”. I felt very very small.

I asked her for forgiveness for not having seen her more often since she was first diagnosed with cancer back in 2019. “Do you forgive me?” She wrote “I forgive you” and I cried yet again. She had an utter lack of ill will towards me whatsoever.

I didn’t sleep or eat much for the following three days. My brothers and I took turns to stay at the hospital overnight, but even when my body was in my own bed at home my mind was still in the hospital.

I felt like I was in a dreamworld where only my mother was real. Parts of me asked why were there other people? From within that world I tweeted “there’s just me and my mom”. At times I was whispering to myself in third person amid the tears “José likes the sound of the birds” as I lied in my bed, “José doesn’t like the sounds of the hospital” as I lied in a sofa-bed at the hospital. “José loves his mom”. “José’s mom loves José”. At some point a friend of my mom that was visiting her asked me if I remembered who she was. I said “No, you don’t exist, only my mom and my family exist”.

My conceptual mind was trying to make sense of all of this. Was that dissociation or derealization? A regression to a younger self? Toddlers speak about themselves in the third person sometimes. It felt endearing. The truth is that once upon a time, a long long time ago, even before my brothers were there, even before my dad saw me, that was the truth: There was only mom.

I showed her some pictures from my life, I pointed and explained. There was some excitement there as I brought her my life for her to see but the overwhelming sadness was still there. “Look this is my best friend and ex roommate”, “Look I went with her to burning man”, “Look this was my first girlfriend”, “Look this was my last girlfriend”. I read her my 33 things I’ve learned at 33 post, translating to Spanish as I went. I read her the Metta sutta.

Whatever living beings there may be; Whether they are weak or strong, omitting none, The great or the mighty, medium, short or small, The seen and the unseen, Those living near and far away, Those born and to-be-born May all beings be at ease!

Let none deceive another, Or despise any being in any state. Let none through anger or ill-will Wish harm upon another. Even as a mother protects with her life Her child, her only child, So with a boundless heart Should one cherish all living beings; Radiating kindness over the entire world.

Spreading upwards to the skies, And downwards to the depths; Outwards and unbounded, Freed from hatred and ill-will.

I cried through my reading. This is who I am now, I told her. She wrote “You have good principles”. Then she reminded me to drink water. Always thinking about me, to the very end.

My dad was able to videocall and for the first time in my life I saw him crying. I told him I was proud of him. A very young part of me was happy “A family together!” Together in the sadness as we were, but together nonetheless, all of us. I hadn’t felt as connected to my family in years.

I told her I was writing this very piece you are reading right now. That not only I would never forget her but the world wouldn’t either. Many moms go forgotten. There are uncountable lives that are now forgotten. Maybe if I write this you will truly never be forgotten. “Maybe if I write this you will never die?”, thought a very young part of me.

I said that I had been thinking that if I were to get a tattoo (I didn't have any) it would be something about my mom, as her love seemed as certain as things go. We asked her what it should be. She wrote "Siempre juntos <3" (Always together) and all three brothers got that tattoo together.

I told her I’ve been doing a lot of work with emotions and meditation and that now I can feel my feelings. I told her, as I cried, that now I believe feeling anger, fear, sadness are all okay to feel. Growing up I had consciously chosen to repress them all, I thought they were bad and irrational. I remember the young José feeling pride at how well he could suppress his strong emotions.

I felt like a small child coming to show her mom a nicely shaped rock he found “Look mom! Look! Look! I found my feelings! Isn’t this great? Isn’t this great??” She was happy. For her, the most important thing in her life had been to give me and my brothers a good life. She would go in peace knowing that the one thing she had wanted the most is something she actually got.

There was something that happened on the second or third day, but time didn’t matter much in that dream.

By her bed I said, holding eye contact, that sometimes I think I’m broken. She then looked at me with an expression that I can only describe as fierce or wrathful love. She was saying ‘drop that bullshit, you are my son, you are perfectly good as you are’. The wrath wasn’t directed at me, it was directed at the delusions that kept me from seeing myself as she sees me. I instantly collapsed crying by her side, my ignorance obliterated by those eyes, purified by the flames of my mom’s unconditional love. She stroked my hair a bit more, when I looked up there was warmth. I sat on a chair and closed my eyes, trying to ground. I whispered “I’m broken” and had a flashback of that face. “Don’t even dare”. I again cried, as the thought evaporated. “I’m broken”, I whispered again, and the same happened. I kept saying it until “I’m broken” ended up sounding like something silly, like saying “I’m made of cheese” or something like that, something so obviously wrong that there isn’t much point thinking about it.

I’ve had deep meditative experiences where I’ve cried at the confusing yet certain recognition that love is woven into the very fabric of reality. That’s the recognition that underneath all there is, there's an inmovable blazing inferno of purifying love against which there is no victory possible: all delusions are incinerated, all doubts about one's true nature, thoroughly cut through. But still, there's a sense of distance.

With my mom it felt like that vastness was looking at me, at José specifically, all of what there is loves me through those eyes and sees itself through those eyes. I tried to take in as much of that as I could. My past experiences of doing the jhanas and having a kensho don’t even begin to compare to looking into those eyes.

Can you look into your mom’s eyes and in all seriousness tell her that you are broken and not collapse into a puddle of tears, realising instantly that you are deluded about one’s own nature? I certainly couldn't. I remembered the conversation I had with my therapist. “How can someone love me like this [unconditionally]?”. Now I understand. I wanted to stare into the sun until my retinas burned, and I got that wish granted.

One of the days I stayed with her the whole night. I couldn’t sleep, it was the third day in a row of not sleeping much if at all. These very words were appearing in my mind, writing themselves. At night I helped her walk twice to the bathroom so she could pee. She walked slowly. Later in the night she peed in her diaper and I helped change it. I cried: that was the first thing she did for me, and now I’m doing it for her at the very end. She smiled.

As we waited outside when they were cleaning the room one day, one of the celadoras introduced herself to us, and it turned out she was the one that used to come clean our house when I was very young. I didn’t remember her, it was too long ago. But she did remember me. She said it was a coincidence that she heard my mother’s name around and was surprised to see her there. What are the odds, I thought, what a miraculous coincidence. But also, what a lovely situation, what a lovely person: Though I didn’t remember this person, I did remember another cleaning lady we had, and they seemed like friends. That’s how she was, she saw the person underneath the eyes. She once got to meet the King of Spain and I am sure she still saw the person underneath just like she does with everyone.

As the days went she struggled to write. She had to rewrite words many times for us to understand. A growing fraction of the words she wrote in her whiteboard were the brand names of the various painkillers. She was still there, suffering. We talked with her care team and agreed that she would be transitioned to the palliative care unit, located at a small nearby hospital.

I stayed the first night with my mom. The hospital used to be an old tuberculosis sanatorium, a hospital for a disease that no longer is a concern in developed countries. I thought that the way I looked at it, something foreign in the past, may one day be how people think of HIV, Alzheimer’s, or even cancer. The hospital had large rooms, the personnel were warm and kind. They were truly open hearted. Their eyes were wet with sadness. I asked one of them, sobbing, “how is this possible?” “You see this every day?” she replied “yes, I’ve worked here for 30 years”. My eyes opened and said “30 years?? 30 years of seeing this daily?? How is this possible?” “We are made of something else”, she warmly smiled. They may as well be.

My mom was put on heavy sedation that day, later on the 27th of April. I stayed up all night, armed with a large bottle of diet coke to stay awake. Her last conscious action was asking for what she wanted: to pee. She couldn’t move at that point, so the nurses had to drain the urine with a tube. After that with a final warm look, she looked into my eyes, I held her hand, her hand held mine. There was still a person in there.

The next morning there wasn’t. There were sensations and reactions perhaps. She was breathing, but not moving. The doctors told us that at that point there are no thoughts or emotions, it’s like deep sleep. I searched online, and it seemed to be the case. There were no signs of suffering in her face or her body, no frowns of discomfort, nothing. One of our cousins came to visit, and while touching her body, we played one of her favorite songs, You’re Beautiful. “Yes you are”, I thought. Even in that sickly state.

When I got home I read the notebook she used to use to communicate. By the end of it I found “I struggle to breathe. I have lots of phlegms. I feel anxious” A quote from the Teaching of Ptahhotep came to mind. My mom’s condition was exactly the very same described there: the way life ends, with a dimming of the mind and senses and a rotting away of the body is the same now as it was 4000 years ago when these verses were written.

Old age has struck, age has descended, Feebleness has arrived, weakness is here again. Sleep is upon him in discomfort all day. Eyes are grown small, ears deaf, Mouth silent, unable to speak, Heart emptied, unable to recall yesterday. Bones ache his whole length. Goodness has turned to evil, All taste is gone. What old age does to people is evil in every way. Nose is blocked, unable to breathe, how old it feels standing or sitting.

My mom’s faculties were fading away one by one: my brothers and I wondered is she still there? Is she conscious? What is consciousness? Is she suffering? What is death? When does someone really die?

She didn’t seem to be suffering. Can there be pain without suffering? Lines from the Heart Sutra came to mind. I had been obsessed with it for the months prior and now it felt like a presage, like it was describing the passing away of my mom step by step.

Therefore, Shariputra, in emptiness there is no form, no sensation, no perception, no memory and no consciousness; no eye, no ear, no nose, no tongue, no body and no mind; no shape, no sound, no smell, no taste, no feeling and no thought; no element of perception, from eye to conceptual consciousness

My mind then hopped to other words that had seemed particularly meaningful the months prior:

Absolute light, luminous throughout the whole universe; unfathomable excellence penetrating everywhere. May penetrating light dispel the darkness of ignorance, let all karma be wiped out and the mind flower bloom in eternal spring

I cried yet again. It sounded so beautiful, so pure. Everything seemed so precious.

Through those days I ended up being grateful that derealization, depersonalization, and dissociation are there in the brain’s toolbox to cope with emotions so intense that just can’t be felt. For the few months prior I had been endeavoring to “feel everything and resist nothing”, but it seemed like sometimes the skillful thing to do is to not feel it all. Forcing oneself to feel what is beyond what one can feel is just wrong.

In parallel with all of this there was the paperwork: while trying to be emotionally present, I was also reviewing piles of old papers, learning how Spain handles inheritances, how taxes work when you live outside of the country. It was at a notary’s office, the morning of the 29th of April at 10:15 when my brother texted us that she had just passed away. It was a strange sensation. Time stopped. But also life kept going around me. Nothing had changed and everything had changed.

Her funeral was a Catholic mass, as is the local custom. Many in the family are in the Catholic faith, and though I was raised Catholic, I’m no longer. In the past I would have found mass kind of silly but this time I found myself joining the prayers. I still remembered the lines from years of Catholic school. Having experienced the transformational power of rituals involving drums, fire, and chanting, this one was underwhelming. But this was what we had. My brothers and I got to speak. I would usually have prepared something, rehearse it endlessly and then feel anxious that maybe I would say it wrong. But this time I chose to not think about it and trust that whatever came from my heart would be the right words, even if brief. What came was: