“I just thought, ‘What is the truth for me? There isn’t going to be an answer in a book. What is it that I need to say?’ I was praying for a way in.”
Of course she found one.
In an exclusive interview, Winfrey tells PEOPLE about the emotional final days with her mother.
“This is the beauty of my life,” she says. “There’s not a thing that happens to me, that I don’t look at it as a teaching, learning, experience. I knew my mother was dying. I got a call from my sister (Patricia, who Lee gave up for adoption in 1963) that she thought it was the end. I was planning to go to launchMichelle Obama‘s book,Becoming, in Chicago. I hopped on a plane and I went early—I surprised my mother.”
Oprah Winfrey with her mom Vernita Lee and sister Patricia.OWN Communications
“I went and I spoke in Boston, in Lowell. We got snowed in, in Lowell. I knew that the next day, I had a bunch of meetings in California. I canceled all of those meetings. I went back to Milwaukee, because I felt like I had not closed it. I felt like I knew it was the end, but I wanted to make sure she knew it was the end, and that I said everything I wanted to say.”
“I went back. I sat in that hot room,” Winfrey says chuckling at the memory. “I watchedThe Bold and the Beautiful. I watchedThe Young and the Restless. I watchedThe Price is Right. I watched Steve Harvey on the Game Channel. I watched it in a loop. I sat in the room, and I sat in the room. I was about to lose my fricking mind in that room, but I sat.”
“I waited for a way to say what I wanted to say,” she says. “I couldn’t find it that day. The next morning I woke up, and I was actually praying for, ‘What is a way I can have this conversation about the end? How do I close it?’ I just thought, ‘What is the truth for me? What is it that I need to say?'”
Winfrey recalls, “I just walked in with my iPhone, and a voice said, ‘Play some music.’ Mahalia Jackson popped up on my Apple iTunes. I thought, ‘Oh, that’s good. Mahalia Jackson,Precious Lord.'”
“Wintley Phipps (Gospel singer) is a really great friend of mine. I thought, ‘What if I call Wintley and got him to sing ‘Precious Lord’ to her?’ I called Wintley, and asked him to FaceTime. He sang ‘Precious Lord’ live to her from his kitchen table.”
She recalls, “I played another one of her favorite artists, Joshua Nelson, singing ‘How I Got Over.’ I could see that it opened her a little bit, because my mother’s been a very closed down person. I could see that the music gave me an opening to say what I needed to say.”
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Winfrey continues, “Then I told her, ‘You should be able to … you should go in peace.’ I told her because my mother has had diabetes. Three years ago she knew she should’ve had dialysis and she didn’t want to do it. It was her choice not to do it. I said (at the time), ‘You should do whatever your body tells you to do. Nobody’s going to force you to do what you don’t want to do.’ I said, ‘You made the best decision for you, but now your body’s shutting down. This is what’s happening. Your kidneys have shut down. Your organs are going to shut down. What you want it to be, what I want it to be, is as peaceful as possible.'”
“In that moment, my sister was in the room. My mother’s had real problems since my sister came back from the adoption. My sister said, ‘Please forgive yourself, because I’ve forgiven you for giving me away.’ It was just really sacred and beautiful. I would say to anybody—and if you live long enough, everybody goes through it—say the things that you need to say while the people are still alive, so that you are not one of those people living with regret about what you would’ve, should’ve, could’ve said.”
source: people.com
