Linda Daly - The Last Pilgrimage: My Mothers Life and Our Journey to Saying Goodbye
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- Book:The Last Pilgrimage: My Mothers Life and Our Journey to Saying Goodbye
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The Last Pilgrimage: My Mothers Life and Our Journey to Saying Goodbye: summary, description and annotation
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Linda Daly had a seemingly charmed life: her mother Nancy was married to the head of Warner Bros, and her parents were one of the most influential and prominent couples in Los Angeles. Even their divorce couldnt test the bond between mother and daughter, and their family grew: her mother married Dick Riordan, mayor of L.A.; her father married songwriter Carole Bayer Sager. The extended family used their combined resources to help a number of cultural and philanthropic concerns across the country until they encountered the one thing they could not overcome: Nancys diagnosis of stage four pancreatic cancer.
So mother and daughter teamed up to begin a search for a miracle curea rollercoaster ride through the rigors of western medicine, the surgeries and chemotherapies, and the untested boundaries of alternative medicine. What Linda learned on their final pilgrimage together would change her forever and speaks to the issues faced by many adult sons and daughters today: how to help those who gave you life face the end of their own.
Ultimately, The Last Pilgrimage is Lindas love letter to her mother, proof that the end of life can offer a peaceful and comforting farewell.
So mother and daughter teamed up to begin a search for a miracle curea rollercoaster ride through the rigors of western medicine, the surgeries and chemotherapies, and the untested boundaries of alternative medicine. What Linda learned on their final pilgrimage together would change her forever and speaks to the issues faced by many adult sons and daughters today: how to help those who gave you life face the end of their own.
Ultimately, The Last Pilgrimage is Lindas love letter to her mother, proof that the end of life can offer a peaceful and comforting farewell.
Linda Daly: author's other books
Who wrote The Last Pilgrimage: My Mothers Life and Our Journey to Saying Goodbye? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.
A. AHomes
Linda K. Burton
Linda Hale Bucklin
Linda Collins
Linda Gray Sexton
Betty DeGeneres
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Table of Contents
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Table of Contents
LEO AND JULIANNA
you are my two greatest blessings.
you are my two greatest blessings.
PROLOGUE
Brians desperation shattered the calm as he clawed his way back up to the drivers seat of the RV.
Go Go GO!
Bobby looked to his right, miraculously knowing exactly how to react. Our thirty-foot Sundowner finally performed as we needed it to, just as the maroon Cutlass Supreme began circling us. Its windows were blacked out, but the passenger side window, rolled halfway down, revealed a male figure grinning at us maniacally, as if we were his dinner. I had seen the vehicle approaching us from the drivers side, hoping they were only late-night shoppers looking for a spot in the lot. I checked the time; it was well past 10:00 PM on that Friday night. We were lost.
After only two days on the road, attempting to get my mother back home to her bed in Los Angeles, we had simply exited the highway outside of St. Louis looking for a place to stop for the night. The logistics of this trip, until this point, had been fairly smooth. But this time, even the full moon couldnt light our way. I remembered someone imploring us to keep the Arch to one side of us, but I couldnt remember which side, or why that was even important.
We knew we were in a bad neighborhood, having seen the burned-out buildings and abandoned cars as we drove through. But we had to stop. She was dying. Something inside told the three of usmy two brothers and methat this was it. Conflicting emotions began to get the better of us: Sadness, exhaustion, and a twinge of relief combined to keep all of us on edge. Idling in a well-lit Home Depot parking lot seemed as safe a place as any to contemplate our situation.
Oh, how wrong I was.
Our eyes were wide, bodies almost frozen in fear. Now another car arrived and sped in behind us. We were blocked in. The two cars circled, slowly at first, sizing up their bounty, so obvious we must have seemed in our bulky RV and lack of direction. I had never felt physically threatened before, but maybe my brothers had, since their reactions were lightning fast. I sat there, frozen and numb, incapable of doing anything.
Panic set in as Bobby put the pedal to the metal and we burned rubber out of there. Plates, food, mugs of freshly made coffee, and the last bit of cream skidded off the counter and all over the floor.
The menacing cars circled around again, trying to cut us off, but Bobby made a dash for the exit. He swerved to the right and made a deft escape to the empty and dark road. Brian magically appeared in the passenger seat to navigate our way to the nearest highway on-ramp. The two cars were still in pursuit, even with all of Bobbys Indy 500 moves. I only hoped Mom hadnt rolled off the bed.
Keep breathing, I reminded myself, even as chaos exploded inside the RV. One step at a time, we will get out of this. One breath at a time, we will find the highway. One step at a time, we will live to tell this story.
We all checked the rearview mirrors, watching the cars stop short of following us onto the highway. I guess we werent worth that sort of chase, after all.
Finally, the sound of my own breathing had calmed me down. I began to feel the inner peace I had so desperately wanted and needed. A thousand feathers brushed my skin. Laurie, my moms nurse, who surely regretted volunteering to drive home with us, crawled out from the back of the RV. Her two simple words: Shes gone.
My mother was dead. God was close. My heartbeat was all I heard.
I.
MIRACLES
CHAPTER ONE
In 2006, my mother, Nancy Daly, was at the top of her game. Los Angeless former First Lady from 1993 to 2001 was now the board chair at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. She was overhauling its board of directors by bringing in younger patrons who were invested in the future of Los Angeles. She had founded two important local childrens charities that continued to improve with age. She served on numerous advisory boards across the city and country. Her career as a child advocate had branched out by shaping legislation to help abused children and programs to help keep families together. In the process, she had become the go-to person for issues with L.A. Countys rugged bureaucratic landscape. She was a role model for those wanting to be in that world, and one for women who just wanted to be as strong and feminine as she was. She was a beautiful, happy, selfless, and extremely well dressed woman, busy doing exciting things, and had healthy, thriving children and grandchildren. She was on an incredible trajectory that was only getting more exciting as the days moved on.
So, of course, that was when things went wrong.
After returning from extensive overseas travel in May, my mother was feeling very ill. It was initially thought to be a bad stomach bug, attributed to something she had picked up while traveling through India on an art tour or maybe when she joined me in Rwanda for a humanitarian trip that eventually took us to the Kibera slum of Nairobi and hilltop visits to AIDS victims on Lake Victoria. While in the hotel in Kigali, Rwanda, she had complained her stomach was terrible. It groaned and gurgled and made her feel nauseous. She had a sour taste in her mouth and chronic diarrhea. No matter what she ate, it shot straight through her. She said it felt like her body had stopped digesting food, which, in turn, sent her to the bathroom as soon as she finished eating. Knowing she had been on malaria medicine, we thought it could have been just a nasty side effect. But since we had a week left in Africa, she decided to continue the malaria medicine and just doubled up on her Pepto and Imodium to make it through the rest of the trip.
A week after returning home, I called to see how she was feeling. My mom confessed to me that she still felt queasy, even though she had stopped her malaria medication upon return. Regardless, she didnt discuss any further action with my brothers and me, except to tell us that she had paid a visit to her internist of many years, but he was hesitant to label it anything more than an adverse reaction to her malaria medication, like we thought. His course of treatment was to wait and see if it resolved itself. In the end, however, it was her girlfriends who prevailed upon her, insisting that she have an ultrasound just to make sure it wasnt anything serious. She told me she was going, which I agreed was the smart thing to do. Silly me was still wondering which protozoa had invaded her intestines.
I was sitting at the desk at my dads ranch in Calabasas, where I worked overseeing the care of all the animals and the vegetable gardens, when I got the call that her ultrasound revealed two spots on either end of her pancreas. I was scheduled to go to Jazz Fest in New Orleans with my childhood friend Haydn that weekend, but this call changed everything. Cancelling the trip was my first thought, and then working on how not to have a full-blown panic attack was the next. In quintessential Nancy style, she told me I should still go and have fun. It will be a good distraction for you, she said, since there was nothing really concrete to do at that moment.
But that was the difference between my mother and me. She kept to her schedule regardless of how big the crater in the road. I, on the other hand, picked my cuticles, ate too much, and worried. For me, nothing was more satisfying than playing out every what-if circumstance with some red wine and potato chips. That way, I would have all my bases covered if any of them came to fruition.
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