(This column is part of a new series in the Catholic Standard newspaper and website about the Catholic response to end-of-life care.)
My mom, Mary Zimmermann, was quite a talker. Sometimes when I would return to our family home in the Missouri countryside for a visit, Mom would breathlessly tell one story after another in rapid-fire fashion. Later on phone calls to my wife Carol back in Maryland, I would say, “My ears are tired!”
Especially after my dad, Wesley Zimmermann, died in 2016, I tried to call Mom every day. When I called her in mid-February, something seemed wrong. Her voice was weak and her speech sounded slurred. She had been in hospice care at an assisted living facility in the St. Louis area for about a year. A text message confirmed that Mom’s health had taken a turn for the worse. I caught a flight to St. Louis, landed late in the evening, and by the next morning, I was able to join my sister Julie and brother James at Mom’s bedside.
It was quite a privilege to hold the hand of my mom, who had held my hand when I was a little boy, who had encouraged me to do well in school, fostered my love of reading through regular trips to the library, and drove me to art lessons and speech and debate meets and picked me up after I worked on the school newspaper. Then when I landed a job with the Catholic Standard newspaper in Washington almost four decades ago, she had remained my most faithful reader and the top fan of my writing.
Mom’s breathing was labored, and she was only able to speak softly. I felt privileged to pray for my mom at her bedside. I knew that over the years, she constantly prayed for me, as had the cloistered Redemptoristine nuns whom she had befriended after attending daily Masses at their chapel.
Mom’s middle name was Faith, and her Catholic faith was central to her life. She had converted to the Catholic faith before marrying my father, a sheet metal worker who knelt and prayed at his bedside before going to bed. Mom lived out her faith by getting groceries for her mother, being at the bedside of her father as he was dying of cancer and by assisting our elderly neighbors. She also helped out at a nearby Benedictine abbey and retreat center, and she volunteered at local elections, at a science fair for students and as an adult leader with a 4-H group.
Spending those hours with my mom, I was in awe of the loving care that she received as a hospice patient. Mom had been bedridden for the past year. The workers all knew her by name and spoke to her kindly as they tended to her needs.
Joining my brother and sister at Mom’s bedside provided many moments of grace for her and for us. My brother James, a retired scientist and teacher, sang “Ghost Riders in the Sky” to her, which she thoroughly enjoyed. My sister Julie – a university anthropology professor – joined me in singing duets of some of the songs we remembered from Masses at our Catholic Church. Julie also kept the bird feeder outside Mom’s window stocked with birdseed that drew a conclave of cardinals, several woodpeckers and other small, jostling birds.
During that week as Mom slept, I jotted down a cascade of memories about her, like how with her outgoing personality, she could strike up a conversation with anyone, whether that be with the grocery store cashier or in chance airport encounters she had with baseball great Stan Musial and with civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks. And I remembered how Mom was easily distracted by the views along the road, and after a couple of people had fender benders with her, Dad had our Uncle George paint Mom’s Plymouth a fluorescent yellow color, so people could see her coming.
It was especially moving for me to witness the priest from the local Catholic parish come on the Presidents’ Day holiday and anoint my mother. My experiences as mom was dying reaffirmed what Saint John Paul II wrote about in his 1995 encyclical Evangelium Vitae (“The Gospel of Life”), about human dignity in all stages of life, about our vocation to love and serve others as Jesus did, and how Jesus’ss death on the cross and His resurrection made possible our ultimate destiny, eternal salvation.
That week, my sister, brother and I often told our mom that we loved her, and she would quietly respond, “I love you, too.” In the middle of the week, the hospice nurse told us that Mom’s end was probably near, but the next morning, Mom seemed revived, chatting away again without her words slurred, and without her breathing labored. That afternoon, the nurse smiled and said, “Well girl, you’re hangin’ in there,” and called her, “Miss Nine Lives.”
At one point during the week, Mom in a weak voice said, “I could talk for years,” and I have no doubt about that.
And that week she often expressed her love for her family, her five children, 14 grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren. In a soft voice she offered her us three simple words of advice, “Love each other.”
Mom died a few days later on Feb. 26, and my heart is full of gratitude to her and to Dad for all the love they showed us, and for my siblings and other family members, for the love they showed to Mom and Dad over the years.
When I moved to the Washington, D.C., area in 1984, I was 800 miles away from home, but I never felt apart from my mom and dad, they were always in my heart, and they are still with me in that way. Always.
For Mom being such a talker, my daily phone calls to her were almost always brief, like clockwork, she would cut them short. She’d often joke, “I’m still here.” She would say that she loved us and was praying for us. Sometimes she would say, “If I don’t see you here, I’ll see you upstairs,” meaning heaven.
Just before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Mom had moved into an apartment in the assisted living facility, after several falls made it unsafe for her to continue living alone at her home in the country. And in our phone calls in recent years she would often say, “I’d like to be home.” Now she is at home, with God.
(For information on the Catholic response to end-of-life care, go to: https://adw.org/living-the-faith/marriage-family/end-life-care/ )
