Death’s-head Hawkmoth

I awake, heart pounding. It’s 2am. There’s a sinking feeling swirling inside my belly that I can’t quite name and I can’t relieve. A heavy dread sits cross-legged on my chest. The faint memory of a nightmare lingers; a mouthful of moths flapping free from an o-shaped scream. I pop in my airpods, put on a podcast and hope for the best. I lay awake for hours. Sleep doesn’t find me again until 5am, but only for a single hour. At 6am a vibrating phone call shakes me from my shallow slumber.

The Death’s-head Hawkmoth, often called the “Death Moth” carries spiritual meanings related to transformation, death and the unknown. 

It is the nurse on duty calling to tell me Mum has contracted a severe respiratory infection and to reconfirm her end of life care plan. Minutes later, the Head Nurse of the Dementia Wing calls to tell me that they’ve increased Mum’s morphine as well as giving her continual oxygen, but that she’s not responding well to either and she doesn’t think Mum is going to recover from this and to expect ‘the call’ any time now.

The call. I am on tenterhooks expecting ‘the call.’ Every text message, every notification from my black brick, is met with a held breath as a sickening anxiety swallows me. This is where I live now – the in-between. It is torturous and exhausting.

The Death Moth symbolises both literal death and the end of a phase of life, but also the potential for rebirth and new beginnings.

Liminal space. Between two worlds. Not present in my own reality whilst stepping through the portal of the other-world, trying to let Mum know that she has my blessing to let go. I take my daughter Thelma to see her and we share a sacred moment. I pat mum’s head gently, as we listen to Fleetwood Mac while Thelma sits on my lap holding me tight, as I quietly cry.

A daughter holding a mother, holding a mother.

This feels backwards, yet exactly how it should be. The natural cycle of beginnings and endings.

The Death Moth is associated with messages from the spirit realm, intuition and the subconscious. 

I could shield my four-year-old Thelma from Mum’s letting go, but she is such a steadfast presence whenever we see her beloved Nanny.

Mum smiles every time she hears Thelma’s little voice.

A soul connection cut painfully short.

The Death Moth represents the natural cycle of life, death and rebirth, or the passing of a loved one and their journey to the afterlife. 

I choose to honour Mum in this stage of her life, not the picture-perfect photos of days gone by, but the darkness of the here and now in this final stage of her Alzheimer’s. It’s important to do so. I don’t know how much longer we have with Mum, but my heart is impossibly heavy floating between my world and hers; deep in the shadowlands of time and memory, love and loss. Where everything begins and ends.

It’s been 10 years of anticipatory grief with this insidious disease.

My heart is wired; bone tired.

Let us walk you home, Mama.

A daughter holding a mother, holding a mother.

You suddenly gasp and I think this is it – the time has come. But you’re just clearing your congested throat as best you can.

It has been a brutal winter, but there is hope of warmth on the other side of this season.

Let us walk you home, Mama.

Gently, gently, softly, softly.

Together we sit in your sterile room, a daughter holding a mother, holding a mother.

Three generations of love.

A love like no other.

The Death Moth symbolises an acceptance of life’s impermanence and a willingness to embrace change.

Grief is my companion.

For the last decade, we have walked hand in hand, side by side.

It’s time to let go,

May the Death’s-head Hawkmoth be our guide.