Then there was the question of where exactly to dig the grave. My property is near Hanging Rock and Moore’s Wall, beautiful exposed granite rising up out of the green foothills of North Carolina near the Virginia line. That same granite sits not far beneath the surface of my land, except for this one particular spot where I also have a vegetable garden. Mom was an avid gardener, and this spot also overlooks a mountainside of mature oak and beech with an understory of mountain laurel and rhododendron. We decided this would be a fitting resting place, and we would be unlikely to hit solid granite.

Casket and gravesite solved, there remained the question of how to dig the grave. My brothers had some experience with this since they had helped dig the graves of our rural Alabama grandparents many years before. Depth of the grave was also unspecified by the county, and we were aware of the common “6 feet under” reference, so 6 feet it would be. John said we needed shovels with longer handles. My neighbor and handyman, Clifford, agreed. He was also on standby with his backhoe if we ran into a renegade boulder. He gave us more sage advice. “Dig it deep enough but not deeper than it needs to be. And don’t dig before it’s time.” So, we waited.

There was one last logistical problem to consider. We didn’t know how long the digging would take. And it was August in North Carolina. I spent a restless night obsessing over how we would keep her body cool between the time she died and the moment we laid her in the ground. My worry was for naught. We had a big rain on Sunday; the ground softened. 

Death comes so slowly, and then it comes so fast. 

The Tuesday morning of her death, Jim was with Mom. I rose with Joni Mitchell’s “Sweet Bird” looping in my brain. We made grits and eggs and later went down to the creek to see if Sunday’s rain had left us any chanterelles. It had. While we walked and talked and foraged with our Aunt Ellen, two hospice aides — or were they angels? — bathed Mom, brushed her hair, and sang to her, with Jim’s tender help. 

I am a singer. I sing for strangers for a living. I also sing for friends and family, and I have often sung at the bedside of the dying. It’s not an easy job, but I have witnessed the peace it brings, the easing of the dying one’s breath, the connection-without-speaking. I have watched a dying woman swim back from across the River Jordan to say goodbye to her family. I was prepared to sing my mother over to the other side, but it would not be so. Every time I started to sing, she got agitated. My mother had been my biggest fan, but now my voice only made things worse. Her mind was addled with the Parkinson’s and the pain. Hers was an unquiet death, marked by periodic writhing, stiff contortions, and crying out. Not even morphine completely comforted her. But that Tuesday morning with my brother Jim, after the bathing, the singing, the anointing, she was finally calm.

When I arrived after lunch to relieve Jim, he headed to Tuttle Hardware to buy the shovels John had ordered up. A few minutes later Mom’s head pulled forward, she gasped, and I, afraid her pain had returned, rang for an aide. I sat on her bed telling her everything would be all right. A few more gasps and she was gone. Her color left. Her breath left. Her pain left. 

I called my brothers and they arrived within the hour, as did the hospice nurse to declare her death. Then we did as we had planned with the staff — we rolled her bed down the hall to the front door, lifted her, wrapped in sheets, onto a soft pile of blankets in the back of my car, and drove her home. We didn’t plan for this to happen during the weekly gospel sing in the assisted living lounge. Mama got a karaoke angel band to sing her out the door. It was hilarious and perfect.