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Jan Bina
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JAN BINA multi-tasks as an actor-writer-fretful mother-teacher-sloppy homemaker-weed puller-tortoise feeder-treadmill walker-daydreamer and producer for In The Trenches Productions.
LAST  THOUGHTS
Jan Bina

A 50 year old nurse aboard the US Airways flight that landed in the Hudson River said that as she faced imminent death her thoughts turned to her messy garage.  She felt consumed with guilt, leaving a mess for someone else to clean up.  I could imagine having those last thoughts.  My idea of cleaning is to dust around the precariously balanced piles of papers that clutter my house.  As a child I wanted a lot of stuff in my room; perhaps as a rebellion from my very organized mother.  She had five children and our house was as neat as a museum – well, except for my room.  I was a creative person – I had a license for chaos.  I now see the error of my thinking.  The only anxiety attacks I’ve ever had occurred in my garage as I stood hopelessly scanning mountains of unlabeled storage boxes and 22 years of odds and ends in search of some desperately needed document.   I imagine my last words to my husband might be, “The life insurance is-in the top drawer of the filing cabinet - no wait - in the closet in the metal box - no wait in the pile of papers on the---on the---on the…” And out.
 
As you face your final journey, you have no idea what last thoughts will pop into your head.  Some people have left the world with a witty retort.  As Oscar Wilde lay dying in a hotel room in 1900, he reportedly said, “Either that wallpaper goes, or I do.”  I certainly wouldn’t like to leave the world with an angry outburst like Joan Crawford.  She turned on her housekeeper who’d begun to pray out loud and said, “Damn it…don’t you dare ask God to help me.”  I do hope she went to a happy resting place where there were no wire hangers.  For some people their life’s work influenced their last words.  The French grammarian Dominique Bouhours in 1702 said, “I am about to -- or I am going to -- die: either expression is correct.”  When the actor Donald O’Connor died in 2003, among his last words was the following quip, “I'd like to thank the Academy for my lifetime achievement award that I will eventually get."  

My 93 year old mother is in hospice care in a Catholic facility outside of Chicago. I hope her last thoughts aren’t filled with her fear of purgatory.  Because now, in her final days, she is convinced that’s where she is headed.  (I thought purgatory was discontinued along with Limbo, but apparently not.)  Despite the fact that she’s been anointed and received the sacrament of the sick, she still thinks punishment awaits her.  Despite reassurances from a nun and priest that she is going directly to heaven, my mother isn’t buying it.  Maybe we should remind her it’s a sin not to believe the word of a priest.  
 
I mean no disrespect to my mother’s religion or any other religion.  I just wish she could find some peace.  She’s spent a lifetime focused on prayer and good works: daily mass and rosary; head of the Medical Mission Association; President of Altar and Rosary Society; enforcer of prayer rituals – the family rosary said on our knees every night of Advent and Lent; all 5 children sent to Catholic schools through college.  She put in countless volunteer hours and lived a very humble, good life.  Now at the end, she is plagued with doubt that what she has worked so hard to achieve – eternal happiness – will not be immediately available to her.  It’s as though she can’t quite believe that what’s been promised will actually come true for her.  I hope these anxious, frightened thoughts will be overpowered by the strong faith that has sustained her throughout her life.  I wish she could have the attitude of the poet Heinrich Heine, whose cavalier final words in 1856 were: “God will pardon me, that’s his line of work.”  

This "Transitions" episode produced by In The Trenches Productions, Hope shares with us her journey from actress to successful photography as a woman over 40.
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