‘I love you’ and then, hands on heart, a daughter’s goodbye to mom amid COVID-19
Sometime this fall, perhaps, when it’s safe to do so, Catherine Darkenwald will drive her mom’s ashes from Bellingham to rural Douglas County in Kansas.
There, at her brother Bob’s farm outside of Lawrence, Catherine Darkenwald and her siblings will celebrate the life of their mother, who died April 2 of COVID-19. She was 92.
Hilson Emily Darkenwald was known for her zest, wit and athleticism, for her love of Canadian whiskey and Canada Dry during happy hour — a favorite up until the week before she died — and for saying, “I’m going to live while I’m alive!”
When she died in April, Hilson Darkenwald was among nine Whatcom County residents to die after testing positive for the respiratory illness.
Forty Whatcom County residents have now died after they were confirmed to have the new coronavirus.
And while her mom died in a Bellingham nursing home during the pandemic, Catherine Darkenwald wants people to know more than that, she wants people to know how Hilson Darkenwald lived.
“Everyone loved my mom. She was well-rounded. Educated. Witty. She was compassionate and kind. She always put others first,” Catherine Darkenwald, 55, said in an interview with The Bellingham Herald.
Her mother was known for her progressive politics. She loved music, singing and had a sense of adventure.
When Hilson Darkenwald was in her 60s, she was heading home from work late one night — she worked the night shift at that time in the health care industry — when her car ran out of gas. A man on a motorcycle stopped to help. He might have been riding a chopper.
“She ended up getting on the back of his bike to go get some gas,” Catherine Darkenwald said. “The image of her lab coat flapping in the wind and the guy’s ponytail flapping in her face always makes me smile. There are tons more stories like this to tell.”
A life
Hilson Darkenwald was born May 22, 1927, in St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada, to Edward and Elizabeth (Lay) Carberry, and was the youngest of seven siblings.
“She was very proud of her unique heritage and culture,” Catherine Darkenwald said. Her mother lived in Newfoundland until her early 20s. “Newfoundland is the most easterly province in Canada with a strong British influence. It was a British colony back when she was born. It was a huge fishing station, and growing up with icebergs all around was common.”
She played competitive tennis as a young adult and started playing golf at 40 — and was proud of her athleticism. Two years later, her golf handicap was 13 and her best round was an 82, according to her obituary.
“Personally, I will always remember her on the golf course,” Bob Darkenwald, 58, said of his mother in an interview with The Herald.
The two played golf together. The whole family did at one point. Golf was her passion, he said.
Hilson Darkenwald spent most of her career helping others in the health care industry, as a radiation technician and as a unit secretary on the telemetry floor at Overland Park Regional Hospital in Overland Park, Kansas, where she worked until she retired at age 66.
While working at Swedish Hospital in Minneapolis in 1958, she met, and later married, Robert James Darkenwald. They moved to Overland Park, where two of their three children were born, according to her obituary.
Her husband died in 1981 at the age of 52, requiring her to return to the workplace after being a stay-at-home mom for a while.
Hilson Darkenwald moved to Bellingham in 2014, at age 87, to live near her daughter as well as family in British Columbia.
Together, they enjoyed dining at waterfront restaurants and breweries, Catherine Darkenwald said, describing those years as good times.
Saying goodbye
In 2016, Hilson Darkenwald tripped on a rug and broke her hip while cat-sitting for her daughter. She was taken to the hospital and then Shuksan Healthcare Center for rehabilitation. There, she had a stroke and its severity required her to continue living at the Bellingham skilled nursing facility instead of returning home to her duplex.
On March 22 this year, Catherine Darkenwald was told that her mom had tested positive for the virus that causes COVID-19. She was tested after someone else at Shuksan was confirmed to have it a few days earlier. A chest X-ray showed her lungs were initially clear, Catherine Darkenwald said, but she could hear the congestion in her mom’s lungs when they talked on the phone in the following days.
“The 10 days following we talked several times a day on the phone — she had a cell phone — and I kept in touch with her nurses on her status. It was around March 31 that things quickly got worse,” Catherine Darkenwald said.
The nurse said her mom wasn’t taking her medicine and that her oxygen level was low. They put an oxygen mask on her. Hilson Darkenwald said her tongue was sore. Talking on the phone, the two said “I love you” to each other. Her mom sounded awful.
On April 1, after talking to the staff about her mom’s condition, she went to Shuksan to spend several hours with her. She returned the next morning. Her mom was in a coma.
“She was still breathing and had a loving nurse with her the whole time,” Catherine Darkenwald said.
She stayed by her mom’s side, hands on her chest and heart until the last breath.
Months later, as she considers driving more than 1,700 miles to take her mom’s ashes to Kansas, Catherine Darkenwald grapples with new limits caused by the pandemic — and how it affects whether she will head out in the fall.
“It really depends on if I feel safe traveling and where spikes/hot spots are,” she said.
In Kansas, Hilson Darkenwald will be honored in a small private event, and her ashes will be taken to where her husband is buried in Overland Park.
For his part, Bob Darkenwald will remember his mom for being the family’s solid foundation and for her progressive beliefs that led her to think of others.
His mom was “always there to help, always (there) to lend an ear,” he said. “I never felt like I could not say anything to her, talk to her.”
