The Last Time I Saw Her

As hard as I may try, it’s hard to forget what I was doing a year ago today.  I said good-bye to my mom, along-side my Dad, my sister, my boyfriend, my brother-in-law, my friends, cousins.  We said good-bye to her, we went to mass where the Pastor said a wonderful homily/eulogy and said some wonderful and funny things that made us all smile at a time that was so full of tears.  We stood around her casket as the Pastor blessed her and wished her a blessed entrance into heaven; standing there, in the middle of the church, with my hand on her casket is a memory (both visual and emotional) that I really do hope fades with time because it was heart-wrenching then, and remains to be pretty painful today.  We placed flowers on her casket, and we watched them place it into the ‘drawer’ as she used to call it, at the mausoleum. Even now I struggle to not imagine her in that box, it’s just not a picture I want to have of my mother.   I surely don’t wish to relive that day, but there is one thing that made me thankful for that day that stays with me now.

There will never be enough words in my vocabulary to adequately describe what was done for me by the people I am lucky enough to call friends.  My friend Brian, who used to sit in my living room with my mother smoking cigarettes and talking smack about football (and my brother), offered to carry her casket – I never asked, when I told him when the wake and funeral were being held he said “I’ll carry your mom” and that was it.  Another friend got on a plane and flew from Seattle that day to be here.  Others drove hours – 3 and 5 or 6, in the early morning, to be by my side.  One of them said “we circle the wagons” when its one of our own, and they certainly did.  When I walked out of the church, and saw them all standing there, I was in total disbelief.  I have no idea what I did right in my life to deserve these people, but it must have been something pretty spectacular.  We may not see each other often, we may not speak often, but these people are my people, they are my ‘tribe’ – if you use that word at all – and I don’t know what I would have done that day without them. After it was all said and done, and we sat around a big table in a restaurant laughing and drinking, someone said that they felt bad having so much fun.  And I remember saying no, don’t feel bad.  She would have been here laughing and drinking with us if it was someone else in that box, so drink your wine and laugh.  It’s how she would have wanted it.

The days between that day and this one have blurred in many ways.  Some stand out – my friend’s wedding in England, for example.  But many are just the same, hazy, tear-smudged days.  It’s hard to believe that I put my mother to rest a year ago today.  If she hadn’t died, this day would have no significance at all because a year ago I would have been doing what I’m doing now…working, writing, eating at my desk, enduring the cold air that wafts in anytime someone opens a backdoor.  But that’s not how it is.  This day will always stand out as different.  Not many will remember it, I know that.  As time goes on, this day will become a distant memory for a lot of people, and that’s okay.  I don’t think it’s supposed to be important to everyone.  But it will always be important to me.  And although it wasn’t really ‘her’ that I saw that day, it was the last time that I looked at her, it was the last time that I saw that crazy wild old lady hair, it was the last time I saw her nails painted that horrible pale pink color she always wore.  I will always remember today as the last day that I saw my mom, and for that, I will always be just a tiny bit sad on this day.

Sorry, I Can't Eat the Meatloaf

One of the meals that my mom made when I was growing up that I absolutely hated was meatloaf.  I would walk in the door after school and smell it – augh, it was horrible.  I think she could feel me rolling my eyes and almost gagging even if she wasn’t at the front door. Once I got my driver’s license, I would drive myself to the McDonald’s and get a two cheeseburger meal instead.  I hated, just totally hated her meatloaf.  Sometimes it was like a giant, kind of greasy, meatball (and I loved her meatballs, they were fantastic and I regret not learning how to make them).  Other times, when she tried to dress it up in an attempt to win me over, it would me like a burger – she’d put cheese and pickles in the middle. Nothing worked.  As far as I was concerned it was disgusting. And here’s the best part – she didn’t eat it.  She always hated meatloaf since she was a kid and even though we had to eat it (until that whole driving thing kicked in and they couldn’t force me to eat anything anymore), she didn’t.  Man did that piss me off.  Man that still pisses me off.

And now, as an adult who lives with another adult who likes to cook, I am occasionally in a position where I pretty much have to eat meatloaf or I will piss him off quite a bit.  And normally I eat it with no complaints; it’s not too bad.  It’s not great – don’t get me wrong this is still meatloaf we’re talking about. But it’s still much more palatable than my mom’s.  So he decided to make it this week; he had planned on making it on Sunday, the anniversary of her passing, but that was just way too ironic for me so he waited. And still, I can’t bring myself to eat it.  Every time I think about it, I get close to tears.  Even as I sit here, writing about it, I can feel myself wanting to cry.  I have no idea why – it’s stupid, if you ask me.  It’s just a meatloaf, but for some reason, I’m having what I like to call ‘dead mom issues’ about eating it.  I don’t know if it’s guilt over not eating hers for so long and now willingly eating his, I don’t know if it’s remembering not eating hers for so long and missing that fight we had each time, I don’t know what the hell it is but right now, I can’t eat meatloaf because my mom is dead.  Seems like a pretty good excuse, huh?  I’d eat it if I could, but sorry, I can’t because my mom is dead.

It's Been a Year

Sunday was the day.  It was the day that it all changed, a year ago.  I didn’t know how to feel yesterday, and right now I still don’t know how I felt yesterday.  I sat, looking at the clock, recognizing the time that they started the morphine, when they took the tubes out, and when she passed.  I just sat there, looking, as if I was in some type of state of shock.  And today, as I sit at my desk on what appears to be a typical Monday, I wish that I was anywhere but here.  I want to sit somewhere, alone, and cry.  I didn’t want to do that yesterday; I didn’t know what to do with myself yesterday. But today, that’s what I want and need.  I want to leave work early and go somewhere and just cry.  I think yesterday was not as painful as I anticipated because the 11^th, in some ways, wasn’t the day that she died.  I had been preparing for it for weeks and then it happened.  In my mind, at that time, it was what had to happen – there were no other options; even after the morphine had been ordered my sister asked “maybe we should wait until tomorrow, give Dad one more day with her”, as if that would change anything.  I knew that it wouldn’t.  My mom wasn’t there anymore, or at least it didn’t feel like it was her anymore.  It was her body, which looked like her – at least it did while all of the tubes were still there;  once they took out the ventilator, without her teeth in she just looked like a sick old woman.  It didn’t look like my mom at all.

Today, as I sit here looking at the ring that I now wear that was once hers, I am sad.  I am so very sad.  For so many reasons.  All of the things that she has missed this past year with my daughter, all of the things that my dad has had to endure alone, all of it just makes me sad.  As I sat yesterday, looking at the clock, I was also watching my daughter and thinking “if only my mom was still here to see this”.  I know that somehow, some way she is watching – that whole blanket incident proved it in my mind – but she isn’t here.  She isn’t here to hug her, to tell her she is loved so very much.  She isn’t here to see the exuberance that child exhibits when the doorbell rings and she knows it’s my Dad; maybe she would do it for my mom too, I don’t know and I never will.  And neither will she.

I will never know what those last moments were like for her. I hope they were peaceful and easy, easier than they appeared to me.  And I hope that she is happy and that she understands that it was her time to go – even if we hadn’t turned off the machines she would have gone on her own sooner or later.  If she could have spoken, I know she didn’t want to stay on the machines and ‘live’ like that.  I hope that she isn’t angry with me; if she was going to be mad at anyone, it would be me.  And I understand why but still.  It’s something I continue to struggle with, a year after her passing, and I hope that is a struggle that gets easier as time moves on. I will never know if she’s mad or if she hates me still – she really didn’t like me for a while there before she passed away – all I can do is hope that she is at least happy and is at least watching over my daughter.  She and I were never really close, so I wouldn’t expect her to be with me.  I just hope she knows how much  I miss her and that I wish her peace and happiness where ever she may be.

At A Bit of a Loss

So here it is.  It’s the Friday before the anniversary, and all day I haven’t felt much of anything to be honest.  I don’t remember what I did with myself a year ago today, so this day has very little significance to me in the grand scheme of things.  But as the day has progressed, and the weekend has gotten closer, my mood has certainly started to shift.  I don’t want Sunday to come.  Not that Sunday changes anything at all because it doesn’t.  There’s not much that can change at this point.  But Sunday isn’t just the anniversary of my mom passing away; it’s the anniversary of my entire life changing, and not necessarily for the better.  Let’s be honest – the past year has been horrible, overall.  Yes, there has been good.  I saw one of my best friends marry a man, in England no less, who makes her ridiculously happy.  I went on a fantastic vacation with another one of my best friends.  I went on a fantastic vacation with my family.  The rest of my family is alive and well, okay relatively well.  The entire year wasn’t horrific.  But – there was a cloud over all of it,   one that I couldn’t run from, one that didn’t leave when the sun came out (even when the sun came out over my head as I sat in a pool with a drink in my hand, watching my daughter play).  In every happy event, there was some sadness for me.  Whether I shed tears as a song played that also played at my mother’s funeral, whether it was being thankful for a day that must have been laid out by her or some other divine entity for it to have been just that good.  A lot of tears were shed in the last 365 days, in good times and in bad.  And they continue to come.

As I sit here typing away, in my office, with tears in my eyes once more, I am at a loss for words other than what I’ve already said.  Time has moved forward, without her, and a part of me will never be the same again.  I miss her and I wish that, a year ago, things had been different than they were.  But no amount of wishing will change the past, so I will sit with my choked back tears a little bit longer, and then I’ll get up and go home.  Move on with my day, move forward for another day in my life without a mom.

One Big Heavy Blob

A year ago today, I kept myself busy running errands after I dropped my daughter off at school. I didn’t go to the hospital right away, even though it was down the street.  I didn’t see the urgency to get there at 9am.  She didn’t know I was there as far as I was concerned, and I didn’t want to sit vigil.  I needed to do things like make sure I had something to wear to the wake and funeral, make sure we had food in the house – I went to the food store and bought up a bunch of pre-made items so we wouldn’t have to worry about cooking.  I kept thinking that she would go at any moment (my mom) so we had to be prepared for when the call came. 

Looking back on this time last year, it’s blurry.  It all just kind of oozes together in my mind without any definite point of reference.  I don’t know what I did with myself all of those days leading up to the day she passed.  I know that I took my daughter to school, I don’t remember if I picked her up every night or not….I know I was at the hospital, I know that morning I avoided going, I know my sister and I texted a lot about making sure our dad could get there, when he would be there, who saw a doctor or a nurse and what they said.  There was a lot of texting, as there always is when something is wrong with one of them.  Well, when something WAS wrong with one of them.  I know that one of the days, as I paced the hall outside of her room, talking on the phone with my cousin who was at the ready to notify the rest of the family, my other line buzzed in – it was my daughter’s daycare.  A pipe burst in the ceiling and all of the children had to be picked up ASAP.  The teacher apologized, she knew what we were going through at the time, but still…I had one hour at the most.  The frantic call to her dad to get him to come and get the car seat so I could stay with my unresponsive mom, seems silly now.  I could have gone to get her, taken her home and waiting for Rob to get home.  I could have left the hospital.  But I didn’t want to.  Once I was there, I was there for the duration.  It felt strange to leave her room to get something to eat in the cafeteria, let alone leave the building and head out to another place; I think I was afraid something would happen or someone would come and I would miss them.  The first few days, we were on doctor and nurse patrol – we’d wait hours to see a doctor who finally showed up during his rounds, just to hear that they didn’t know much, or there wasn’t any change from the last time we saw them.  After we found out there wasn’t anything more they could do, I still stalked the doctors and nurses.  I just wanted to know that she was comfortable, and in hindsight it sounds stupid – the woman was unresponsive so how could we know if she was or wasn’t comfortable.   I guess heart rate monitoring may be able to tell you that, but at times that was erratic so it’s hard to tell what was actually going on after a while.  Between the irregular heartbeat, the blood pressure going up and down and the infection she ended up with,  on top of her being unresponsive, I don’t know if there was any part of her that was still there at the end aside from the physical form.

I know that we did the right thing.  My mom didn’t want to be on machines at all – for any reason.  She hated them and I hated that we kept her on for as long as we did.  But I know it was the right thing to let her go.  Having said that, I will forever feel empty (for lack of a better word) for having been the one to set it in motion.  I did it with my family by saying we can’t keep her on the machines, she wouldn’t want this, we have to let her go…over and over.  And I did it when I walked over to the nurse’s station and told them we were ready to do it.  Those words will stay with me forever; I will always hear them, I think.  And I will always remember what it felt like to know that right then and there, with those words, she would be gone.  She may have held on for a number of days, or maybe even weeks, but with those words it would be over in hours. Right thing or not, that was a hard pill to swallow without crying.  I know that it’s not necessarily my fault that she’s no longer here; I think there are a number of people who can claim responsibility for that, her included.  But my words were the ones that made it real, made it official.  I think that’s the moment that changed me – not necessarily her actual death, although that sure does suck beyond compare.  But that moment made me have a little more on my shoulders than anyone else did that day, and to this day still.  And that, in some ways, is the legacy she left me.  To bear the burden that no one else must bear.

What Remains

Today was the day that I told my friends, my boss, that it was over and there was nothing they could do for my  mom.  The night of the 6^th, the doctor said she “wasn’t wean able”, meaning they couldn’t take her off of the ventilator.  And I saw the CT – the most recent one – and it was just so bad.  The cancer had taken her lungs over, most of what appeared on the scan was white, and she had a large tumor on the front of her left lung.  I didn’t see, or maybe I don’t remember, her kidneys but I’m certain they were bad as well.  From what the doctor told my sister, the cancer had gotten into the renal artery or vein, and once it has access to that it can spread anywhere and it spreads very quickly; that is why the CT from December 19^th and the one from January 5^thor 6^th were so drastically different. It was in her kidneys, her lungs, her lymph nodes, her bones; it didn’t look like it was in her brain but it might have been – she had said some strange things before going into the hospital that can either be attributed to malnutrition/dehydration or cancer in the brain.  It was everywhere.  That next day at work, I got the call that her feet were turning blue – a sign that the body is shutting down and pulling blood from the extremities to try and keep the organs going.  It was just a matter of time.

Today was the day that I left work early, and didn’t look back until after my bereavement was over.  I went to the hospital and sat with her; I had told my boss what was going on, and I said “I think I need to just call it a day, wrap up my work and leave and I’ll come back once it’s all over”.  And she agreed, telling me to do whatever I had to do and to take care of myself.  I spent the next few days in a fog, thinking about if we had everything in place for the funeral (things like dry cleaning and scheduling for pick-up/drop-off at school had to be worked out).  I sat in her room, I paced the hall outside of her room, sat in the cafeteria and stared out the windows in a fog.  Not believing that what was happening was actually real – how could it have been real?  How did she go from sitting up in bed and talking and laughing and eating to here, on a machine, with a feeding tube, unresponsive.  It all happened just so very fast and I was now in crisis mode.  I’m the one that walks in, takes charge, makes the decisions that no one wants to make.  That’s me.

I know that there are people out there who lose family members and loved ones in much worse ways than how I lost my mom.  Car accidents, plane accidents, sudden massive heart attacks, aneurisms, strokes.  I think finding someone like that is horrible, much worse than what I endured.  If I had gotten the call that she passed in her sleep at home, I think that may have been worse although it’s hard to tell – the other side of the fence doesn’t seem all that green in comparison to my side. I didn’t get to say good-bye either, I didn’t get to tell her I loved her.  I got to sit by and watch her die, which was agonizing.  Every day I sat and wondered if today would be the day that she would go on her own; and every day I was angry that we weren’t doing what she would have wanted, which was to let her go.  I understand why my dad was so reluctant – how do you pull the plug on the one person you have spent your entire life with.  They were together from the time they were 15 and 16; my mom was 79 when she died.  That’s a really long time and suddenly, to be without her, it must have been heart breaking for my dad and I know that it still is.  A year after all of this happened, the pain is still real and is still on the surface.  If anything, it’s worse than it was then – a year ago, she was still here and my dad still had hope (for some unknown reason) and we were just waiting; I was in an emotional fog at the time so I don’t think I felt much of anything.  But she was still here, at least her body was.  Now, she’s gone.  The only thing that’s left is just that – things.  Her clothes, her movies and books, her bag of stuff from the hospital.  That’s all that’s left.  And the memories, which are still kind of hazy to some extent, which I hate to the full extent.  I want to remember her, who she was and who she wasn’t.  I hope the memories become clearer as the anniversary of her passing becomes a memory itself.

From Yesterday

A year ago today, right now, I was either on my way to the hospital or was getting ready to go up.  My mom had stopped opening her eyes spontaneously; she only responded when spoken to or tapped on the shoulder or arm.  That was the start of her rather rapid decline; well, I guess the start really was when she went into respiratory failure. I knew when that happened that she would never come off of the respirator.  My sister, unfortunately, kept holding out hope – even when the doctor told us there was nothing they could do, she was still tugging at every straw she could to find a way to save my mom.  She had me call the Cancer Centers of America to see if they would do a case review, in hopes that they could treat her while still on a respirator.  She was too far gone at that point and I knew that.  My dad didn’t want to let her go, no matter what I or any doctor said.  Sometimes my realistic nature makes me seem like I’m a cold-hearted bitch but I look at things the way that they are.  My mom was sick and I knew she was terminal the day she walked into her doctor’s office; I had hoped for longer time with her but that didn’t happen.  And when she went onto the respirator, I knew that either she would go quickly on her own or we would have to do it.  I prayed she would go on her own; it may sound heartless but again, it was realistically the best case scenario.  But that didn’t happen.  It’s horrible to admit it but I would go to bed praying to get a phone call that she had gone into cardiac arrest and couldn’t be revived.  It would have been so much easier on my Dad if that’s how it had played out, and that was my main concern.  But instead, he sat next to her day after day praying for a miracle that never came.

I can remember being so mad on the 6^th, which was a Monday, after speaking to her nurse because she told me that my mom was unresponsive.  It didn’t take long to go from limited responses to none at all.  I thought her morphine was too high, or the sedative they had her on was too high so I was ready to go into that ICU and rip someone a new one over the obvious mistake of over-medicating her.  But later that day I found out that wasn’t the case.  They really couldn’t pin point what caused her to shut down like that, but a nurse told me that it happens often with people that are terminal.  Their bodies start to shut down anything that isn’t necessary in order to keep functioning, so she may not have been able to hear us, she may not have understood anything that she heard if she heard anything at all.  Her body was too busy trying to stay alive to support her opening her eyes, moving her hands, her arms, etc.

This is all very surreal to me. I can remember those days as if I am reliving them frame-by-frame in my head.  I sat here at this same desk, in this same chair, taking phone calls and making phone calls and sending and receiving texts; I remember the drive to the hospital, the calls and texts I would have to return once I got there.  The calls I made from the waiting room, or even from outside of her room – I knew she couldn’t hear me even when she was responding.  Yesterday, I thought to myself – why didn’t we ask to have her hearing aids put in.  If there was any chance of her hearing us, it would have been with those in.  I feel kind of stupid for thinking of it now, a year later.  I don’t know if it would have made any difference for her, probably not, but for me it would have. I would feel a little more confident that she heard us, she heard my Dad talk to her and say whatever it was that he said when he left the night we turned off the machines.  I feel badly that she may have been able to hear us, but couldn’t because we forgot.   I feel pretty stupid about it, actually.  I should have thought of it and I didn’t and for some unknown reason, I feel solely responsible for missing it.  Just adds to the long list of things that suck about this whole experience, this whole year, this week.  I hate that the holidays will always have a cloud over them; I am hopeful that the cloud will fade a bit as time goes on, but I know that I will never forget and I will never feel the same again now that she’s gone and because she went the way that she did.  I swear if I ever get that sick, just put a pillow over my head.

It's been a Year Since I Last Heard Her Voice

I didn't know it then, but a year ago was the last time I heard my mom's voice. It was the last time we talked, the last time we laughed, the last time I kissed her and she kissed me back. She was lucid, to some extent, a few days later, but she couldn't really communicate. Nor could she remember things from five minutes before so we had the same conversation with her over and over for hours. I don't know how many times we told her that the tube would come out when her lungs were clear, and no she couldn't take it out herself and yes, it was Saturday. Yes, still Saturday. Daddy was okay, he was eating and doing okay. No, she couldn't get up and walk out yet, no she couldn't go home yet. It was a horrible, horrible day. I knew I was lying to her all day, over and over.

I miss her accent, the way she laughed at her really bad sarcastic comments about other people, the way she talked to my daughter. I miss her. Every day. And although I sit here, without tears in my eyes, my heart is still just as heavy as it's been before. Just as heavy as it was when I got the call that  day, telling me she went into respiratory failure and had been moved to ICU. I had hoped for some time with her, some more time for her to have with my daughter, but that wasn't in the cards. I miss her. I just miss her.

The Time I've Been Dreading is Here

I am an asshole.  I really am – no, I am.  I was supposed to call my Dad yesterday, see how he was, offer to bring Emily down to his house – he wasn’t allowed to drive due to a small procedure he had on his shoulder the prior day.  And I didn’t.  not once did I pick up the phone.  I thought about it, and I thought about driving to his house instead of going to the bookstore with Emily (we never made it anyway since she fell asleep) but I didn’t actually do it.  I did nothing but focus on myself and my kid yesterday.  And I feel pretty shitty for doing that.  But I did it so that I wouldn’t be a blubbering mess all day, or all weekend, or all month – I wanted to start off the month and the year the right way; meaning, not sad because of my mom.

Today, its been one year since my mom was admitted into the hospital.  I’m work, just like I was that day.  My dad has dialysis, which he’s thankful for because it’ll get him out of the house and it means that he’ll spend most of his day probably sleeping once he gets home.  I can’t believe it’s been a year since that day of meeting them at the ER, seeing how out of breath she was trying to go from the car to the ER waiting room – they got her a wheelchair as soon as they saw she had such difficulty.  It snowed today a year ago, it had been snowing already – I remember the slush and ice in the parking lot, and the way it snowed that night.  The snow started around7pm, and I left her room around 7:30 or so…my sister stayed until around 8 or 8:30.  The roads were horrible and I just wanted to get home.   I kissed my mom, told her I would see her in the morning, said I love you, said something snarky to my sister, and left.  I really thought we would talk the next day, but we didn’t.  She was sedated the next day, to keep her calm after having to be intubated.

Time is a cruel mistress indeed.  I feel like it happened yesterday, but it also happened so very long ago – so long ago that it doesn’t feel real (it still doesn’t, which I can’t explain).  A year went so fast – and so much has happened in a year.  Many losses, some gains, amazing surprises, happy times, sad times, all of it came and went so fast.  Just like she did, really.  I wish I knew then what I know  now, there are so many things I would have done differently or at least had tried to do differently.  But I can’t change the past, no matter how much I want to.  Today, on the 2^nd day of this new year, I am hopeful that the coming weeks and months will be easier, even if its just slightly.  And I am hopeful that I can get some semblance of myself back – this past year has sucked up a lot of who I used to be and, although I know I will never be the same again, I want to try to be the person I was before all of this happened.  I want to have more happy than sad days, I want to have less fights with my daughter and boyfriend, I want to be positive about life – some aspect of life – instead of just being sad.   Sad sucks, and I’m so very tired of it. 

I am also hopeful that, although I don’t want to forget, the memories will fade just a bit.  Right now, I glanced at my clock and remembered what I was doing right now a year ago – I was sitting in a chair, next to her ER bed, listening to her complain about how long she had been there and how much longer would it be before she had a room and she even threatened to leave at one point.  Yeah, that wouldn’t have happened but still, threatened she did.  I remember how lively she was that day, almost demanding something to eat, complaining non-stop at one point.  And I remember her voice when she was talking to the oncologist who came to see her, who would have treated her had her body not shut down so quickly.  He was lovely; a wonderfully kind man who treated her with such compassion, it was beautiful to watch, honestly.  And I can remember him asking what she was afraid of. Her response was “that I’m sick, that its cancer.  I can’t be sick, I have a granddaughter.”  Those words will stay with me forever, as will the look in her eyes when she said them.