Sunday Sept 25
My only child, my son, Mandolin Hooper, died a week ago today, on September 18th, 2022. He had been ill for a few weeks, though no one knew except his boss. He’d been at home alone, dying in bed from liver failure, still, as always, not wanting to be a burden to anyone. We’d been in regular contact, as always, but he’d cancelled our Sept 8th gig together the night prior, saying he was under the weather. “You ok?” I’d texted. “Yup!”
I got a call from a hospital on Thursday the 15th that he was there and beginning detox from alcohol. At that time, they’d said he had an abdominal mass that was causing an obstruction, and an esophageal bleed that could rupture at any moment, but that the biggest problem was advanced alcoholic liver disease - he needed a liver transplant and had a 30-60% chance of death within three months.
I arrived Friday morning.
By dawn on Sunday he was dead.
So I had 39 hours beside my son as he lay heavily medicated and dying. Like me, he was a songwriter and musician, so of course I brought my guitar and sang to him. Saturday afternoon, I played him the same John Lennon album we’d played for him at birth. I played every favorite song of his I could think of. Willie's Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain, Sinatra singing One For My Baby, Tom Waits' Picture in a Frame. For three hours I was a desperate jukebox, needing to make sure he heard everything he wanted to hear, wanting, as all mothers of dying children do, to give him as much comfort as possible.
I kept trying to remind myself that, as sickening as it was to see my son slowly being poisoned to death, yellowing by the hour, at least I was there to touch him, to play music, to ask at nurses for more medication. As horrific as it was, I had to keep reminding myself that it was a blessing to be there and to be grateful for it.
Mandolin struggled with depression since age 18, and every year his self-medicating ramped up a little bit more. He finally went to rehab at the end of 2019. Two stays in ICU to get him through detox, then 60 days inpatient. He was overjoyed on release and ready to begin his new life. And a week later, Covid shut down the world. Mando's pandemic was a windowless rented room in a shithole above a bar in downtown Austin, two thousand miles away from his mama. He spent a year and a half in that room where, I understand now, he was drinking himself to death. After a short period of homelessness, he caved to my pleading to come visit me a while. I rejoiced when his Portland-bound plane took off, knowing he was aboard.
At the airport, I did not recognize him.
After a month with us, and another stint in rehab, Mando landed back in Seattle among old friends and ways, where he was soon bartending again. He and I were scheduled to play a duo show at his bar on Sept 8th, but he cancelled because he wasn't feeling well.
And then I got the call on 15th from the hospital.
And so it was, far too few hours later, at 2am on Sunday, when I stood beside him and pressed play and started singing My Darling Child over him, just as I had when he was a baby.
My darling child
My darling baby
My darling child
You gave life to me
I sang over him for an hour like that, watching his breathing slow and slow and slow.
Until it stopped.
In what should have been the single most devastating moment of my life, I was instead overcome with nothing but love and gratitude and awe. And the deepest peace I’ve ever known. Utterly magical, that in death, my son gave me the most merciful gift I’ve ever been given. There was no struggle. There was no blood or choking or trauma. Just the same pure tender love of a mother and child, her singing to him sleep, an unbreakable bond, a togetherness known only to them, a room unto itself, a room that – as it turn out – is eternal. The single most magical, mystical, transcendent moment of my life. Absolute serenity.
Of course, later, after some sleep, I awoke, and so too did my inner mama bear, howling and screaming – a feeling all mothers of dead children know well.
The heart racked with pain. The grip on the throat. The blackness in the mind and stomach. The tungsten lungs.
But I know that that pure peace is there somewhere. Is here somewhere. And I know Mandolin will help me find it again.
Rachel