September 31

(The following is an excerpt from Jane Asher’s book, The Next Room, which is scheduled for publication in 2021. Jane has enjoyed a successful career in media, most notably at major radio stations in Santa Barbara and San Diego (that is, when she wasn’t on a mission trip building houses or a school or doing other humanitarian work). The book, based on Jane’s personal experiences, is an exploration of death and especially the connection with souls that have transitioned. The Next Room is also the name of Jane’s podcast, in which she interviews professionals and practitioners from diverse backgrounds about death, dying, grief, beliefs and cultural traditions surrounding the journey we all must ultimately take. I first connected with Jane at the online Beautiful Dying Expo in November 2020. Since then, several FEN people have been guests on her podcast. You can learn more about Jane on her website. – Kevin Bradley, Editor)

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My mother slipped from the arms of her best friend (my dad) and into The Next Room on a Friday. It was September 31, 2010.

Wait, what? To my knowledge and I’m sure yours, 30 days hath September, right?

Not in 2010, at least according to the calendar that hung on the back of my kitchen door. My mother had given me that calendar, as she had done each and every year since I was a young woman, when I moved from Michigan to California. It was packed full of her handwritten notes on the littles boxes of each date to remind me of family birthdays, anniversaries and other important events with an occasional smiley face for good measure.

I chuckle to myself, thinking back to the Christmas when she sent just the calendar, sans notes. I packed it in my suitcase and, when I flew home that following summer, insisted she sit in her glider rocking chair and fill out that calendar as she did every other year. She called me a little shit and we laughed as she filled out my calendar, flipping through hers as reference.

This small but thoughtful gift was her way of sharing the things she held most meaningful about our big, boisterous family. And of course, it was a not-so-subtle reminder that I should send a card or make a phone call to these family members on their special day. Since I was the first and only one to move out of Michigan all those years ago, she did not want me to lose my close connection to the family.

In 2010, neither my husband, my children, nor I initially noticed that our calendar that year included an additional day in September.

In my grief-stricken autopilot, I went to work immediately, planning our trip home. Even though my husband begged me to stop and feel my grief, I could not. I had to get home. I had to be by my father’s side. I grabbed the calendar from the back of the kitchen door and started calling the airlines. As I was flipping between September and October, I noticed the extra day – Friday, September 31.

That day is wedged in my memory along with the traumatic sensation of how that long-distance call from Michigan made me feel. I will never forget the words spoken in measured anguish that day by my big sister, Lynn. “Janey, she’s gone. Mom died.” Those five small words shot a searing white-hot dagger of visceral pain through my entire body and made me cave forward as a guttural sound of torment tore through me. It was a sound I had surely never made before, nor have I repeated since.

After the call, all that was left in the place where my beating heart would normally dwell was a pitted space filled with abject misery. The loss was so monumental that, even now, it has the ability to randomly overwhelm my senses. It is a dull throbbing that visits, unannounced, like an uninvited guest at a dinner party. Its influence is so commanding that it often brings me to tears in the middle of my morning walk, driving my car or simply observing hummingbirds in my backyard. It is a tidal wave of misery that rolls over me without asking permission, leaving in its wake a dismal residue like random litter on a pristine beach. These bitter pangs of pain are recurring reminders that my mother–my mentor, my rock, and my guiding light– is gone.

She carried me for nine months and uplifted me for 49 years. So, it makes perfect sense to me now why time was suspended and that imaginary date of her death was created. As my husband pointed out, she didn’t really die. She merely slipped into The Next Room on a day that doesn’t really exist. It’s curious to me, but somehow it makes everything just a little bit softer, knowing that a new day was created in this time-space continuum for her to transition.

As the day approaches each year, a day that normally does not appear on a calendar has become a wordless reminder that my spirited, influential, strong mother has never really left. She may have vanished from sight on September 31, 2010, but I know with every fiber of my being that she is still here with me now.

It’s been almost ten years since she transitioned. I feel the undeniable urge to start piecing together the jigsaw puzzle of potent memories, old journal entries, social media posts and her seasoned hand-written letters, and finally gather it under one roof—our book.

From her transcendent vantage point, Mom is sharing her perspective on forgiveness, grace, gratitude, kindness, compassion, love and the almighty energy of all — God. These fascinating morsels of her truth are tumbling forth. She is reaching out and I am listening.

My mother is my co-author. This is her story, my story, our story from here and beyond, in a day out of time from The Next Room.