Death’s Encore: The Woman Who Accidentally Faked Her Death

This is the story of Charlotte, as told by Irena. Our “Opening Our Hearts” stories are based on people’s real-life experiences. By sharing these experiences publicly, we hope to help our readers feel less alone in their grief and, ultimately, to aid them in their healing process. In this post, Charlotte tells the story of her mother dying overseas, and Charlotte’s race across the ocean to say her last goodbyes.

My mother always had a theatrical bent to her character. She was hardworking and unflappable. Both she and my dad had an irreverent streak that ran through our entire family. Though born in Denmark, my mother emigrated to the United States in the 1950s during what my father refers to as the “great Dane brain drain,” wherein scientists from Denmark kept pouring into the United States looking for opportunities to conduct research. They met because my mother, who had been working for someone else, was dropping an electrode off to my dad. Apparently as she handed over the electrode, she announced that she’d just gotten fired, in that nonchalant way of hers. So my dad just said “Great. You work for me now.” And that’s how they were. They just clicked right away.

My mom Agnete and my aunt Inge goofing around in a photo booth

I was proud of their irreverence. It made growing up so much freer for me. My mom meant the world to me and my dad. She truly was the heart and soul of the family. The fist time we encountered any life-altering news was in 2006. We were living in New York City, and I had just graduated college only a few years before. During a routine checkup my mom was told that she had leukemia/lymphoma. But it didn’t alarm us too much since we were told it is the kind of cancer that you die with not from. So we knew that she would still live a long time with it, and maybe we wouldn’t have to worry about it so much. Taking that to be a sign that she should live exactly the life that she’d want to be living, my mom decided it was time to move back to Denmark.

My mom and dad were 70 and 80 years-old respectively  but that didn’t deter them. That’s just how they were.

I had just moved to Los Angeles to pursue my career in screenwriting and they called me up and said that they were bored with New York and had decided to move overseas to be closer to my mom’s family and to have more opportunity for travel. My mom and dad were 70 and 80 years-old respectively  but that didn’t deter them. That’s just how they were.

A decade passed before my mom had any health issues. I remember it was late October because there were pumpkins everywhere. I was freelancing at Warner Brothers, so I had a tiny window on my morning commute to call in to check up on them everyday. My dad never learned how to speak Danish because he had my mom, and so many people speak English there anyway. But suddenly my mom was a patient in the hospital, and it was up to my dad to gather information and share with me.

At first things seemed fine and were being carefully monitored. But then things took a turn. One weekend, no matter how much I tried, I could not get a hold of anybody at home or at the hospital. The weekend bled into the week without any information. I kept trying and trying, but no one was answering. I was busy, too, and I had such a tiny window during which I could reach them. I kept telling myself that I would reach them the next day and then the next.

Then the call came from New York City. It was my half brother, and I remember it clearly, being on Sunset and Pine driving to work when the phone rang. He said to me: “I don’t know how to say this but dad just told me that your mom passed away last night in the hospital.”

I was stunned. I was devastated. I launched into action enlisting the help of my best friend to call my work and let them know I wasn’t going in. I booked the first flight I could find. On the plane I just drank, cried and slept. It wasn’t until I was in London on a layover that I even noticed that I had all these missed calls from the hospital. My workplace at the time had famously terrible reception. That’s when all this guilt hit me. In my mind, my mom had reached out to to say goodbye and I had missed it. I just couldn’t handle it.

In my mind, my mom had reached out to me to tell me that she was saying goodbye and I had missed it.

I missed my mom so much, and believing that she had tried to reach out in me in her last moments felt too hard to bear. When I got to Denmark, my aunt Inga picked me up and drove me to my parents’ house. Even though I had many questions, Inga couldn’t really tell me anything. She didn’t even know what the time of death had been. It seemed odd to me at the time, but I was so tired from traveling that I just accepted it. Once I got to my dad, I hugged my one surviving parent and went to sleep.

Double selfie with mom

The next day, things got weird. While getting ready to head to the hospital, another call came in, this time from Inga’s son, cousin Michael.” Uh this is really odd to say –he tells me –but your mom is still alive.” I could not process the news. “What?- I asked him –What are you talking about?” He explained that when he had gone over to gather up my mom’s things, the nurse had intercepted him and asked him why he was taking her things. When he explained that he was taking her things to bring to the family since she had died,  the nurse just told him that she was still alive.

It turned out that with the language barrier he had, my dad had misunderstood what was happening. Since he was the primary source of information, he had misinterpreted what the hospital staff was telling him about my mom’s condition. They had been trying to explain that my mom had lost her speech, but my dad just thought she had died. I told my dad and we immediately called the hospital for their special hospital transport, and prepared to go visit my mother. By some crazy miracle, I was getting my chance to say goodbye.

The special hospital transport of Copenhagen picked us up and took us to the hospital to reunite and say goodbye to my mom. I felt like I could see the cancer had overtaken her — there were these lines like varicose veins all over her body, and I could tell it was just her lymph system. It was all over.

I received the gift of a lifetime that day, the unexpected opportunity to say goodbye to the woman who had brought me into the world. I just hugged her and told her “You’re the best mom; thank you so much for everything that you’ve done for me. I’m so sorry for all the tension that we’ve ever had. Because there is this tension between mothers and daughters and it rears its head in adolescence. And I always felt bad about that. But I got to tell her how sorry I was.

On the phone, I just asked “Are you sure this time?”

On the drive home, there was this incredible rain, like catharsis of cosmic proportions. I prayed so hard that mom would live through the night and gave myself a lot of grace. And she hung on. She made it through the night. However, the next morning, as we were being transported to the hospital once more, the call came. My mom had died. On the phone, I just asked “Are you sure this time?” This time they had a time of death for me, and I knew all that was left for me was to plan the funeral.

My mom in NYC with her dog

Of course between the time that my brother had first reached out to me and my arriving in Denmark, we had already gotten the ball rolling on the funeral. So we had had to postpone things, and when I talked to them again they said “In all of our years in business this is the first time we’ve had to postpone a funeral because someone wasn’t dead yet.” It seemed so like my mom to have died in such a way that made room for gaffes and irreverence through the process.

And then the local florist brought bouquets from everyone to be laid out all over the floors all aiming toward the casket.

We held the funeral in an old 14th or 15th century church. It was a very Scandinavian affair with a closed casket. And then the local florist brought bouquets from everyone to be laid out all over the floors all aiming toward the casket. It was beautiful. We had a small reception back at the house and the reverend never even showed. Of course we learned later that he had shown but we hadn’t heard the doorbell and had effectively turned him away by accident. Years later, he did the service for my dad and I was glad to see there were no hard feelings.

We never thought my mom would be the first to go of the two of them. They were married for 40 years and were so happy together, but she was 10 years younger than him. They had assumed that he would go first. So when she died, my dad was left alone in a foreign country where he didn’t even speak the language. Thankfully Denmark has socialized medicine and so many services for the elderly. I stayed in Denmark for six months to help him settle into a new routine. What I loved about my parents is that they were very much the “make your own fun” types. They lived incredible lives and did not fear breaking societal mores. They were warm, loving and compassionate. Showing me how to live life unafraid is one of the greatest legacies they could ever have given me.

My mom and dad looking at each other, as they often did, with wonder

My mother took responsibility for her own happiness and died really in the way that she wanted, in her home country surrounded by people who loved her. It was such a blessing to get to say goodbye to her. I feel as though in many respects she missed her calling as a theater actress. Her exit was funny and theatrical, just like her.