All is said. All is done.

By SCOTT SAALMAN

Reporter Columnist

“There’s a train leavin’ nightly called ‘When All is Said and Done.’ ” – Warren Zevon

In 2017, my terminally-ill mother announced, “I want you to write my obituary,” leaving her word-guy son wordless. I was not ready to even remotely consider facing the finality her request represented. Melancholic thoughts associated with her obit request perpetually orbited my brain until, four years later, she finally did die, leaving me with the most dreaded of deadlines.

. . . Patricia Lee “Patty, Patsy, Pat, Grandma Bird” Saalman passed away 5:40 a.m., Oct. 14, 2021, at her home, after a long-fought battle with cancer . . .

So began the obituary, a fairly standard death notice. I was too distraught to apply much creative thought beyond the basic, historical facts of her life.

Photo provided

What I didn’t reference in the obit was Oct. 12, 2021. That’s when I found my 77-year-old dad on a ladder attaching Christmas lights to the house’s front gutter. A vintage Santa Claus already stood on the front patio, facing Brushy Fork Road. It was odd seeing Santa there at a time when a Jack-o’-lantern was more appropriate.

A few days earlier, Mom expressed a wish for Dad to hang Christmas lights, sensing, rightfully so, that she wouldn’t be “home” for Christmas. He had considered holding off one more day but changed his mind.

“They look great, Dad, but I think we need some lights inside so she can actually see them,” I said. I turned the plastic Santa 90-degrees to face Mom sleeping in her hospice bed. Though mid-October, Walmart’s garden center had already been transformed into Christmas town. I spent about 100 dollars there, decorating the family room with multi-colored, non-blinking lights, wreaths and a small, pre-lit, table-top, fake tree. I draped Mom with a new Christmassy blanket. As 1957’s Elvis’ Christmas Album played, I anxiously awaited her wake-up, experiencing a tinge of Christmas excitement that I had not felt since my single-digit years in this very same house. Her eyes opened. Sleepily, she said, “I don’t believe it. It’s so beautiful.” Those were the last lucid sentences I would ever hear Mom say.

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What I also didn’t reference in the obit was Oct. 13, 2021. That’s when I returned to my parents’ house the following afternoon, only to learn that Mom had experienced a textbook hospice night: restlessness, disorientation, confusion and agitation.

The ethereal glow from the Christmas lights seemed lost on her now, though Dad refused to extinguish them. When open, her left eye, the good one not blinded by cancer, seemed to stare beyond the strung blue, green, red and yellow lights framing the trio of front windows. The red and white glowing Santa still stared in, as if a sentinel. “Blue Christmas” replayed every half hour.

Though asleep, she frequently startled us with anguished words coming from out of the blue: HELP ME! HURRY! She repeated them throughout the day, mantra-like, baffling us. Was she having bad dreams? Was it unconscious gibberish? That night, I used the phone to relay my confusion and frustration about this to my wife, Brynne, and our friend, Nancy, a former hospice nurse. Both women were certain it was Mom’s way of asking for pain relief. A nearby bottle of morphine – apply every 15 minutes, instructed the label – had been the elephant in the room. We were reluctant to reference, let alone administer, it. To us, morphine represented the final goodbye. Nancy’s shout over the phone, “YOU WILL GIVE HER MORPHINE NOW,” brought me to my senses. Mom’s comfort was all that mattered. One full medicine dropper’s worth of morphine relaxed her, quieted her, transitioned her to a permanent state of incommunicado. Elvis assured us “there will be peace in the valley.”

HELP ME! HURRY! I regret not hurrying to help her. I hear this trio of words in my guilt-ridden nightmares.

. . . on December 31, 1962, she was united in marriage to Marion Jr. “M.J.” Saalman . . .

What I also didn’t reference in the obit were the earliest hours of Oct. 14, 2021, how Mom’s mouth remained agape, eternally wordless. Her eyelids were partially opened, but there was an unsettling glaze to her gaze.

Her breathing became shallower, and the distance between each drawn breath grew wider. For a few hours, we expected each feeble breath to be her last. Was I selfish to feel disappointed with each surprising inhale, to hope for her final breath?

I told Mom it was OK to let go, that she was a great mother, that I loved her. Dad held her head between his palms and whispered into her right ear. He kissed her mouth, as he’d done daily for almost 60 years. Mom’s friend Bev kept vigil with us.

While Mom was heroic during her five-year, stage-four-colon-cancer battle, the true hero was Dad who continuously tended to her needs once she was diagnosed in 2016 on, of all days, his birthday. He seldom rested.

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At about 3:30 a.m., I fell asleep in my brother’s childhood room. About two hours later, I awoke due to a sudden sensation of something passing through my body. I sat up, startled, just as Dad banged on the bedroom door. “Bev believes your mom took her last breath,” he said through the door’s crack, though I already knew this.

Her obit is written now.

All is said.

All is done.

Scott Saalman also writes columns for the Dubois County Herald and the Evansville Courier & Press. He is now a proud Fishers resident. You can reach him at scottsaalman@gmail.com.