By Pam Stone

Paul’s mother, Christine, left us on Thanksgiving Day but it is not the devastating, “this will ruin every Thanksgiving from now on,” grief one might suppose. She had been, quite literally, dying to go for the last couple of years. At 94, as her body began to betray her with its frailty, she declared to all and sundry that, “This body isn’t mine and I don’t want it anymore.”
Yes, ma’am.

No one was going to argue with Mother (never, ever, ‘Mom’). You don’t challenge the will that got her through four years of internment camp by then Japanese occupied Indonesia at the beginning of the Second World War. “You have no idea what it feels like,” she once offered during a rare occurrence when she chose to talk about being held prisoner with her twin sister and family, “when an occupying force comes down your street to take you away.”

No, ma’am, I don’t.

And so, like everything she’s ever done in her life, with the respect and support of her children, Christine declined her medications and simply, well, willed herself to die. There was an overwhelming outpouring of love from friends and congregants from church, all coming with glorious bouquets of flowers, glasses of sherry (“over ice, please”) and when she mused that she could go for a glass of red wine, I was stoutly reprimanded when I dashed to Food Lion and returned with a bottle of Sutter Home Merlot.

“I’ve never tried that because it’s cheap.”

Yes, ma’am.

But after the first glass, she acquiesced and remarked “Smooth,” and by the second glass, “very nice,” and just as I was about to breathe a sigh of relief, she added, “but it’s cheap.”

Christine knew that her twin granddaughters were coming to visit on Thanksgiving, one bringing the great granddaughter she had met months earlier, when the child was kindly baptized at our local church so that Christine, deeply devout, could witness the proceedings as well as the multi-generational Christening gown, worn once again. Always remaining a Dutch citizen (“I simply cannot swear off my loyalty to Queen”), she did, however, have a great love affair with Thanksgiving, proclaiming it her favorite American holiday “because it’s all about family.” So even though she had known the twins were coming on this great day, her mind, by this point, had become muddled and now bedridden and sleeping deeply for the last several days, it would appear to all that she would have no idea what time or day it was, or who any of us were.

Her great grandchild, not yet a toddler, was placed on the bed beside her hip and smiled sweetly and burrowed her face in the folds of the quilt. Private words of affection were given and after we departed, leaving only Paul to remain, holding her hand, she left us only an hour later.

“She knew,” Paul said. “She hung on. Everything she wanted she received, and then she left.”

The obituary he wrote for her was beautiful and filled with lengthy detail of her fascinating life from concentration camp to assisting the translation for the Marshall Plan at the Dutch Embassy in D.C., to moving to Chicago as “there’s no men I want to marry in Washington,” to bumping into a fellow Dutchman, three weeks later, marrying him promptly, and bearing three children early on in their 52 year union.

“I feel pretty O.K,” said Paul, when I asked if he was feeling very sad, “because I know I did everything she asked me too. Everything.”

Yesterday, having packed up her apartment, he found a few pieces of paper on which Christine had written what she would like for her memorial service. It was dated 2009.

“To my children,” it began. “I want a short service.” Check.

“Hymns: ‘A Mighty Fortress is our God’ and ‘Naval Hymn.’” Already discussed and done.

“23rd Psalm.” Check.

“I want to be cremated and ashes scattered at sea or a river leading to the sea. NO URN ANYWHERE.” Yes, ma’am, charted boat standing by in Charleston.

“No long obituary.” Oops.

“All my love and thanks, Christine.” and then she added, “Mother, NOT ‘Mom.'”

Yes, ma’am!!