Wandering Along the Path: Right Speech

Thursday afternoon, after trying to adjust to not flying up to see my daughter, I walked over to have tea with my dear friend, and while I was there, part of the time, she was on the phone attempting to get a morphine prescription for her mother, who was feeling poorly and struggling a bit to sleep.  My friend thought she had gotten the same flu I had, but the symptoms were wrong.  I said goodbye when her partner came home and they left to pick up the prescription.  I offered to stay with her mother, but she said she would be okay for the brief time.  My friend is a doctor.  But when we said goodbye, she was crying and then I was, because her mother is 96 and has congestive heart failure.  I came home and told my husband I was so sad about my daughter and my friend's mother, whom I adore.  The next morning around 7 am I got a text that the mother had died, and it was just a slow ceasing to breathe.  Her mother did not want to go into a hospital, and the morphine was not necessary.  She died before her daughter could administer any.  The mother wanted to be buried on the east coast, where her husband, son and sister are buried, and my friend had planned the transport of the body when her mother did die, and to fly back there for the funeral.  But her kids begged her not to go, because of the coronavirus, and her sister on the east coast will take care of the burial and funeral on that end.  Tomorrow we will gather in my friend's house to watch the live stream, and later there will be a memorial.  It's a blessing her mother went so peacefully, but this pandemic is tearing family from each other and the important rituals that shore us up.  It's such a sad time.