'Absolutely beautiful': West Penn Hospital staff gave Harrison man 2nd goodbye with dying mother

It was time.

The soulful tones of Diana Ross’ version of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” playing from a nurse’s cellphone cut through the surreal moment. Motown music, her favorite, was the soundtrack to 74-year-old Josephine Ferguson’s final breaths, after covid-19 devastated her previously healthy body.

Gregory Del Duca, her only child, watched feet away from her hospital bed, recording short audio clips as he narrated the process on his cellphone. Ross’ powerful vocals played over the panicked beeps as nurses and doctors at West Penn Hospital removed the medical equipment keeping Ferguson alive.

I know, I know you must follow the sun

Wherever it leads

But remember

If you should fall short of your desires

Remember life holds for you one guarantee

You’ll always have me.

* * *

Del Duca thought he had said his final goodbye to his mother on Dec. 14 during a painful video call on an iPad, with him inside his Harrison home and hospital staff with Ferguson in Bloomfield. Afterward, he sat stunned on the floor.

But then a phone call summoned him to the hospital. There, he got an unexpected in-­person farewell.

Ferguson of West Deer became sick in mid-November, missing Thanksgiving with her son. Del Duca said he got updates on her condition from his stepfather. By early December, he realized that his mother was worse than he thought.

“It all kind of went south after it was very clear to me that my mom was sleeping almost 24 hours,” he said.

She was on a ventilator within a week of being hospitalized, first at Allegheny Valley Hospital and later West Penn. The prognosis was grim, and Del Duca said he thought rationally about what his mother would want. He decided to take her off the ventilator.

He, his wife and his stepfather said goodbye to her together by video. Ferguson’s beloved niece had a separate farewell call. A nurse held the device up to Ferguson’s ear, and Del Duca told her it was OK to go.

Ferguson lived in Lawrenceville for the first half of her life, not far from West Penn Hospital.

She held office jobs in the area for record companies and later Wholey’s, her son said. She had a “very big personality” and was a loving relative who was truly happy to see her family and friends.

“She loved playing bingo with the Catholic ladies. Socializing was her hobby,” Del Duca said. “My mom was very much a singular character.”

* * *

Del Duca was whisked through the hallways at West Penn after a 25-minute drive to the hospital on a darkened Route 28.

Everything became surreal and intense. Doctors and nurses explained each piece of medical equipment keeping Ferguson alive and how they would remove it. A respiratory technician stroked his mother’s hair as the music played. Del Duca hit record on his cellphone, describing short moments of what was happening around her while watching from a chair outside her space.

“I couldn’t feel anything,” he recalled. “I was just numbly narrating to myself.”

As the powerful ending to “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” faded away, the nurse skipped over the next song and settled on “Dancing in the Streets.” Martha & the Vandellas delivered a fitting end to the gregarious woman’s life, her son said.

“My mom’s whole sort of spiritual ethos was that she would get her angel wings and she would be dancing in the streets,” he said.

All we need is music, sweet music

There’ll be music everywhere

There’ll be swingin’, swayin’ and records playing

And dancing in the street

It wasn’t what he had hoped for his mother’s golden years. He had thought he eventually would find her a place in Lawrenceville where she could live out the remainder of her life happily. Instead, she was looking at a potentially poor quality of life if she did recover from the virus, Del Duca said. It wasn’t what she would have wanted.

Del Duca stood outside her room for a few moments after covid claimed her last breath.

“I thought it was absolutely beautiful,” he said. “It was gentle and kind, and they played the music.”

He thanked the nursing staff and navigated his way out of the hospital while Christmas Muzak played, returning into the cold night to grieve.