A Mother's Gift
Music: Adagio from String Quintet in C Major
Artist: Franz Schubert
Shared by: Greg for his Mum
“A person’s first breath comes with a clamour, but their last breath is just one that doesn’t have another following it.”
Mum followed what I know now was a recognisable series of steps in her dying. I truly wish I knew then what I know now – it would have taken away so much of the anxiety, fear, confusion, feelings of helplessness. We had not discussed anything about her End-of-Life care, other than we would try our hardest not to medicalise it – keep her at home and away from hospital - as I had been able to be her carer, and had had support from her doctor and the other health professionals. All mum had asked me was that she would love to listen to the Adagio from Schubert’s String Quintet in C Major as she died.
I didn’t know when to play it. I didn’t know what her final stage would look like. How far away we were. Naturally I didn’t want to start the music and have her wake from her deep slumber and, for the last time, be disappointed in her son...
Dying proceeds in the same way for almost all. The sleepiness that has been around for days or weeks, becomes times of deeper slumber. A sleep that becomes harder to be woken from. That lasts for longer periods of time. And then that sleep becomes a falling into an unconsciousness. A deep, deep relaxed state, where even the swallowing mechanism stops – giving what is commonly, and rather brutally, known as the death-rattle – where saliva deep at the back of the throat bubbles and pops with each passing breath. I didn’t know this was about profound relaxation, I read it as distress, it caused me distress.
But I figured that this was Schubert time.
A gentle trilling violin over fragile pizzicato strings. A lyrical last questioning in C major, the key, apparently, of sadness and yearning. The final journey in its beauty and simplicity, bringing joy, nervousness, anxiety, darkness on its way, but ending in a hopeful, peaceful place of calm.
A person’s first breath comes with a clamour, but their last breath is just one that doesn’t have another following it. And breaths at this stage of the dying process can be imperceptibly shallow and very far apart. This is what my sister and I learned as we sat in a quiet, focussed listening. Was this the last? No, here’s another. Was that one mum’s last breath? And is the last breath an inhale or an exhale – do you breathe in the death, or breathe out the life? The Schubert piece embodies this - he wrote it as he, himself, was dying - the breath of the violin, the heartbeat of the pizzicato lower strings, drifting, seemingly coming to a conclusion, but continuing, until the final, drawn-out chord of resolution...
I fulfilled her wish. We shared this beautiful music. And I have returned to it, now and again, over the years since she died. Wherever I am, in whatever state I’m in, instantly transported back to that garden room, sitting on a bed, sitting in a time of dying. The most intimate moment I had ever shared with my mum. My intense gratitude - grateful for the moment; grateful for having been able to care and bear witness; grateful for my life, sitting beside a life ending.