The next morning, my mom came downstairs all excited and asked how I liked the movie.
"It sucked," I said. "It was the most depressing thing I had even seen. The guy gives up all of his dreams to take care of other people? We got to the part where he was going to jump off the bridge and we stopped. We couldn't finish it."
My mom looked at me dumbfounded.
"You need to watch the end," she said. "You need to watch the end."
That was probably the best advice my mother ever gave me, strange as it sounds, telling me to watch the end of It's a Wonderful Life, but it is true. The ending makes all of the difference, the difference between hope and despair.
My mom died two days ago as a result of Alzheimer's, which she battled for ten years. My dad called me a week ago Saturday to tell me she lost her ability to swallow, which meant her body was shutting down. For the following week, it was wait and see, wait and see. Friday morning, she passed.
About twenty percent of my friends have lost a parent, and now I am a member of that club.
When I first heard the news that my mother had died, I was relieved her suffering had ended, that both her soul and her body were both at peace. Now, relief is slowly being replaced with quiet grief.
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