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.
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