What Dying Mothers Know About Living: A bedtime story for the almost-dead (and those who love them)

By Cindy Finch, LCSW

There’s never a good day to die. Especially not when you’re a mother of three with a full to-do list and a raw nose from the oxygen tube that keeps you alive. How could I possibly fit “Die Young” into an already busy schedule? Would I put it between “drive to team practice” and “wash the dog”? Or maybe just after “impart wisdom to my daughter about middle school boys” and before “sit up in the night with a frightened first grader.”

Sure, I could shuffle things like house cleaning and grocery shopping to make room for it. But who’d want to miss kissing tears and reading stories? Not me. I mean, this is the stuff of life. My life. And I wasn’t ready to give it up.

Mad at Death

I was mad at Death. It had been stalking me for six years. This time was the worst, and my family knew it. I’d had enough. During a brutal 45-day hospital stay, I stayed up one night and told God I wouldn’t sleep until He let me die. I hit a wall. I couldn’t do any more. Patients less sick than I was had died in the ICU and general hospital rooms around me. But not me. I was still here. Furious.

Until I thought of my kids. My family. And I remembered that I didn’t really want to die—I just didn’t know how to keep living like this.

So I listed all the reasons why dying wasn’t on my to-do list. The afterlife in my thirties held about as much appeal as sitting behind a crying baby on a flight to Australia.

Honestly, I would rather peel all my fingernails off backward while watching the fishing channel than have to Die Young.

Then I saw it—my oxygen tube, tangled up in my once-heavily-used running shoes. The irony snapped into view. I was tethered to life, fighting to stay in it, while being haunted by a past version of myself who ran marathons. The tubing, meant to keep me alive, had rubbed my nose raw. No amount of Vaseline could fix it. I hated it. It hurt all the time. And it made me feel ancient.

At one point, I’d spent time in a wheelchair—something I wouldn’t wish on anyone. It stripped me of my pride, my pace, and a bit of my sanity. But my boys? They turned it into a mission. “Who gets to help Mom up the stairs?” they’d shout, turning it into a sibling showdown. Eventually, they stopped fighting and started teaming up—each grabbing an arm as we climbed, side by side. Step by wobbly step, we rose together. Clumsy. Beautiful. Enough.

In a sarcastic rage, I yanked the oxygen cord free and fantasized about tossing the tank out the window. Headline: Angry Soccer Mom Commits Medical Supply Murder: Will Her Insurance Cover the Damages?

Of course, it would’ve taken energy I didn’t have. Congestive heart failure at 38—brought on by earlier cancer treatments—has a way of robbing you of the dramatic exits. My life was full of ironies. So many of them.

Surrendering to Something Bigger

I gave up on the tantrum and turned to prayer. Not the fancy kind. The ragged, real kind. “Please, God…send help.” That’s all I could muster. Then I cried. Hard. I became exactly what I was: a scared kid in the dark, whispering to the stars.

These conversations with God had become a pattern. Not always answered in words, but often interrupted by something better.

Like Margie, the nurse who called me from 2,000 miles away on a Saturday, just to check on me. Or the afternoon nurse who gently gave me a bed bath after a hellish night rooming with a woman in opioid psychosis, restrained in four points and screaming through her detox. Or the nurse who handed Darin my panties after surgery, like it was the most casual handoff in the world. Or the one who gave us his personal number and said, "Let me know how you’re doing, okay? I mean it."

Those moments built me. Held me. Made me laugh and weep. They were tiny altars of mercy.

Pajama Soup

And then, like a slow dawn, I wasn’t alone. My three kids were standing silently in the doorway, watching. Jordan in her pink footie pajamas with flowers. Zach in his rocket ship jammies. Brandon in his navy blue ones covered in stars and galaxies.

I looked up, face blotchy and eyes swollen, and opened my arms.

“Hey, come here, you guys. I was thinking about you and about us. Come close.”

They climbed in like puppies. We looked like a bowl of Pajama Soup—blankets, giggles, legs and love. That’s when the questions began.

“Why were you crying?” “Are you okay?” “How long will your heart last?” “Will you get a new one?” “Are you going to die?” “What is heaven like?”

I had no polished answers. But I had presence.

My youngest touched the tubing on my face. Then he gently touched my raw nose. “Does it hurt to die?”

I paused. The rawness of my prayer was still wet on my cheeks.

“No, sweetheart,” I said. “I think it’ll be like a butterfly coming out of her cocoon.”

It wasn’t just a metaphor. It was the only picture I had left that held both pain and beauty.

The Eternal Promise

We’d been reading a favorite book together for years—Love You Forever, Like You For Always. For a long time, I read it just as it was written. But when I became gravely ill, I began to change the words. The original line—“As long as I’m living, my baby you’ll be”—started to feel like a landmine.

My daughter Jordan once asked, “Whose baby will I be if you die?”

That question cracked me open.

They’d already been through so much—a painful divorce, a cross-country move. I could feel how close to the edge they were—how much they needed to know I would always be theirs. No expiration dates. No conditions.

So we made it our thing. At bedtime, after stories and snuggles, we chanted together:

“I love you forever, I like you for always, forever and always my baby you’ll be.”

It was a nightly incantation. A vow. A bridge I was building in case I had to go.

Even if I go, love stays.

The Poem That Helped Me Stay

And then I did what scared moms sometimes do when the moment calls for more than they can give. I pulled out a poem from my nightstand. I had written it in another moment like this. And I read:

On That Shore

Written in the quiet of a night when I wasn’t sure I’d see the morning, this poem became the picture I clung to—a vision of reunion, of home, of Heaven that I could offer my children when the unknown felt too big to carry alone.

Absolutely. Here's the reformatted poem from your piece, now clean, centered, and ready to shine as the emotional crescendo of your story.

On That Shore

Written in the quiet of a night when I wasn’t sure I’d see the morning, this poem became the picture I clung to—a vision of reunion, of home, of Heaven that I could offer my children when the unknown felt too big to carry alone.

 If I should go and skies turn gray
and life swings long and low,
If clouds should burst and hearts should break
and between us, time should grow.

Then know that I’ve but morphed a bit
and flown on up ahead,
To wait upon the shores of God
on this path that I’ve been led.

I’ll sing, I’ll dance, I’ll play all day
and the stories I will hear,
From those who’ve gone before me
and from those who now are near.

Rumors and longings from this secret place
have billowed through my mind,
Years I’ve longed to see my home,
and now, at last, it’s time.

Time for songs, time for joy,
time for walks and talks,
Time to know, as I’ve been known
as mysteries are unlocked.

My heart will bloom, His glory full,
my Lover now revealed!
My feet upon His grass
and my cartwheels in His fields.

My hero and I will laugh and sing,
His nobles I will greet,
They’ve butterflied away like I,
now His grass beneath their feet.

Long and sweet I’ll drink it in,
this new life from my old,
But know each day the shores I’ll walk
as I’ve grown now young from old.

Know that I am waiting
and longing for that time
When your steps will meet my shore again
and your hand joins back in mine.

I’ll leap, I’ll run, I’ll chase you down,
I’ll kiss you high and low!
I’ll tuck, I’ll hug, I’ll sweep you up
there upon that shore.

Your nose and ears I’ll bite and chew
as if they were a cake!
My Heaven will expand then,
when you, upon that shore I take.

When dance and laughs and sweet relief’s
give full sail to this “Us,”
We’ll talk, we’ll tell of our sweet paths
that Heaven’s brought us to discuss.

I’ll tell of times when from His lap,
your face, your life I poured,
The fragrant wine of our dear love
and my longings from that shore.

My Captain how He’d silk my hair
and gently touch my face—
His hands, His love will silk you too,
as we wait for our embrace.

So dawn with me, step high and light
when life pulls hard and mean—
I’ve butterflied, the days will fly,
til I greet you on that beach.

My kiss, my hugs will wait for you
and then still all the more,
When in that time, my God and I
will meet you on that shore.

I folded the pages, put them away, and looked at my babies—pressed up against me, cheeks warm, hearts open. I smiled.

You see, life isn’t about the to-do list. It’s not even about death. It’s about Pajama Soup. And love that never clocks out.

Author’s Note: I wrote this poem for the days I didn’t think I’d make it. Turns out, I did. And now, I pass it on to you. Because what dying mothers know about living is this: love outruns the finish line.

Have you ever had your own Pajama Soup moment? The kind of memory that sticks like honey in the soul? I’d love to hear it. Email me at hello@yourepiccomeback.org. Let’s keep the story going.

Further Reading:
Love You Forever by Robert Munsch – Find it here
Grief Support Resources for Families – Because sometimes love needs a little help holding on.