My Mother’s Last Words Left Me Gobsmacked

A glimpse of the afterlife came with a warning

Author’s Photo - My Mum, Yvonne, aged 66. Her last year 2006

My eyes gently opened when I heard the whispering. I was slumped in the chair next to Mum’s hospital bed which had become my home for the past few weeks. In my sleep-deprived delirium, I thought nurses had entered the room and were quietly chatting amongst themselves. The room was empty.

Frowning, I looked up at the TV, off. I scanned the room and beyond to the little kitchenette which was trying hard to impersonate a granny flat. It was an extension, a kind of sitting room with a private entrance and stairs leading down to a small car park. There was only one palliative care room in Malua Bay Hospital, a sleepy seaside town on the south coast of New South Wales. And there was only one way out of a room like that, on a gurney straight into the bowels of the morgue.

I hated everything about that room.

Mum and Dad had finally retired to their home away from home four years earlier. Malua Bay has been our holiday destination for as long as I can remember. They owned a holiday house that was more of a beach shack than a house, but Dad eventually rebuilt it into Mum’s dream home, which she’d waited her whole life for.

She got to enjoy it for about six months before her lifelong dodgy health took a turn for the worst. Mum had been a functioning alcoholic for decades, but that wasn’t the only thing that corroded her body. At age thirty-eight, she was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis. It’s a chronic inflammatory disease that affects not only joints but every organ and bone in the body. It’s an autoimmune disease when you get down to it. The cause is unknown but usually inherited. Her mother also had it, and so did my brothers. I missed that gene. Praise be.

There is no cure, only treatment for symptoms. Mum took so many drugs over the years that her kidneys failed in the end. But it was a new miracle drug that did the most damage, and dialysis was her only option. She had an adverse reaction that was so rare she became a case study in medical journals. She should have died then, having contracted Leukaemia. We’d said our goodbyes at her bedside as her doctors suggested we do.

But she didn’t die. That was the real miracle, hence the case study. Mum would live four more years until she decided she wouldn’t.

“I can’t do it anymore, love. I’m sick and tired of life. I’ve decided to stop dialysis. I need your help when I tell your father.”

Oh. My. God. My Mother was committing suicide.

She said it so matter of fact like she was deciding to become a vegan and her Neanderthal meat-eating husband wouldn’t like it one bit. She wanted me to be there when she told him.

What. The. Fuck. Mum!

“You’re the strong one, love. Your father won’t cope, and your brother will be a mess. You’ll have to take care of things when I’m gone.” As if she was going on an extended holiday and I’d need to run the show while she was away.

I felt like I’d been transported to the Twilight Zone. What the hell was happening? Who was this lady, and what had she done to my mother? And how was I the strong one? She’d been my cheerleader my entire life. She was all about the ‘never give up…chin up, love…look on the bright side…’ She was the strong one, not me.

And she was. I would come to learn a decision like that isn’t a cop-out. It takes bravery, grace, and humility to end your life willingly like that. Dad would never see it that way.

And it went down like a hair in his dinner. I’d seen more plates of food smashed up against walls than I could count. You did not want Dad to find hair lying around anywhere, let alone on his dinner plate. At least it was his plate and not my head. Thank the Gods. My brothers were lucky they had buzzcuts growing up.

Surprisingly, Dad didn’t smash anything. He’d mellowed a lot by then. His smashing days were over. It was hard to believe he became a caring, attentive husband in Mum’s final sick years. Gone was the rageful beast of my childhood. Mum’s resilience paid off. Her life was full of miracles, as it turned out.

But she was all out of miracles now with her life-ending decision. Dad ultimately had no choice but to come to a place of acceptance, and we all did. Mum’s mind was made up. She’d be having the last word — oh how the ironies of life continue.

And so, we were educated in the process of dying, and it starts from the first missed dialysis treatment. There is no going back once the process has started, so you had better be sure you want out.

Blood becomes poison and attacks each organ which shuts down relatively quickly, so they said. Three or four days should do it.

That didn’t happen.

It took twenty nightmarish days for Mum to die, which felt like months in the making. Each day brought a new set of challenges. Mum was lost in a morphine haze but not lost enough for most of it. A week later, she was still lucid, asking questions and forgetting why she was there. She thought she was sick and would get better, wondering why the medicine wasn’t working.

It was heartbreaking to witness, excruciating to bear, and infuriating to deal with doctors who followed strict rules that didn’t include euthanasia. Still illegal in Australia in 2006.

“Sorry, but it’s the process,” said the doctors, “everyone handles it differently.”

My father wanted to handle their necks, and so did Greg, my brother. Tony, my other brother, had died two years before, so he didn’t have to handle anything. I wanted to control the morphine, one hefty dose, and it would be over. Mum would be free of the madness. At least she couldn’t feel any pain. That was obvious.

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I could hear a pin drop in the quiet dark as I held Mum’s hand. I must have imagined the whispers. I turned to look at her sleeping face, so peaceful in the glow of machine lights. My heart skipped a beat as it dawned on me: did she go while I was napping?

The shock had me on my feet, and I leaned over, close to her face, so I could feel her breath on my cheek—so slight but still breathing. I relaxed, let out a sigh, and moved to sit back down when I saw her mouth moving.

It was Mum whispering.

I put my ear to her mouth so I could hear what she was saying. Clearly, it was something relevant. Her eyes were still closed, and her mouth had the slightest upward turn. She was trying to smile.

“What’s that Mum? What are you saying?” I didn’t expect a response. I was a bit baffled that she was even whispering. She’d been in this coma-like state for days, so it didn’t make sense. No one speaks at this point.

And with crystal-clear precision, her whispers became audible.

“They’re waiting for me, Marce.”

I don’t know how she knew I was there. I was taken aback at the mention of my name. My heart pumped loudly in my ears and tears filled my vision.

“Who is Mum?”

“Everyone. All of them. They’re waiting for me. It looks so nice…” Her words were slow but clear, and I understood then why she was smiling.

There was a long pause, and the look on her face changed; it was so subtle but noticeable. And then she said the last words she’d ever speak, and they were for me, but they wouldn’t make sense until five months later.

“Be so strong, love, you’re going to need it. Don’t be scared. You’ll get through it. I’ll be with you.”

She didn’t say anything else. She drifted back into her coma. I assumed she was talking about the aftermath, her funeral, Dad, and every tedious detail of the business of dying. I settled back into my chair and fell asleep.

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Mum died the next day on the bright sunny morning of the 26th of October. The three of us were there, around her bed, and watched the last sigh of breath leave her body. I swear I could feel her soul rise, free at last from her torture. She looked like a statue then, not real. Mum was gone. And a small piece of me went with her…

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Five months later, my marriage would end in the most horrific circumstances. Mum’s last words came rushing back then, and I finally understood their real meaning. She saw what I couldn’t. She knew what I’d need: every ounce of strength I possessed.

How could she possibly know that on her deathbed five months earlier?

Her death would become one of my greatest lessons and a gift that kept on giving.

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Thanks for reading. I write for you, dear reader, and to remember. If my mind ever fails me, I hope someone can read me the stories.

A version of this story was first published on Medium. It went viral. It’s the most popular story I’ve ever written to date.

© Marcia Abboud 2025 | All rights reserved

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