Visiting Old Haunts

 I sat in the parking lot of the hospital where my mom died close to one of the parking spots that I sat in one day and made phone calls. The phone calls everybody in that position has probably made. I called my boyfriend and told him what was going on; my best friend and told him what was going on. I don't even remember the extent of the phone calls or when in the process that happened. I just remember sitting in the car and making those calls because my phone was dying and it was during the day so maybe it was the day she went into respiratory failure or maybe it was the next day when she was responsive or the next when she wasn't. I don't really remember. The days all meld into one big day without definition.

I'm not sure why I came to that spot to sit in the parking lot and stare at the building where my mom died. I don't know if I thought it would be cathartic. I don't know if I came here to cry.  I know that I just wanted to sit alone, as close as I could to where I parked last and remember what it was like to sit here and to be one of the people who park their car every day and make the trek up to a waiting room. A waiting room where there are babies being born nearby or a waiting room where there are people losing their lives nearby. Theres a lot of waiting in a hospital & I did a lot of it. I feel like I still am, in some regard. Sometimes I'm waiting for it to get better, and when it does, I wait for it to get worse because it always does.

This place will always, to me, be not just a hospital - it's where I lost my mom....it's the last place I had a conversation with her. It's the last place I heard her voice, I saw her smile. It's the last place I heard her complain. It's the last place I got to show her pictures of my daughter. It's the last place she told me she loved me.

It's more than just a building to me and it's more than just a place where other people go. It's a place that I used to go, for a week that felt like an eternity at the time, until she was gone. It's the place where I left her after she was gone, the place that I left that first night thinking that I would see her the next day, talk to her and talk to doctors and figure out what we're going to solve the problem or to at least curb it's advancement.

But there was no solution by the time we got here. It was beyond too late by the time we walked through those doors. She was there for less than 24 hours when she was put on a ventilator and then 48 hours after that she stopped responding. I know it sounds trite but if I knew then what I know now I would have done things differently.

It will always be the last place that I got to talk to her it will always be the place where I sat in a window and watch the snow fall as my mom said attached to a respirator it'll always be the place for my sister and I try to make light of a situation that was unbearably heavy for either one of us to bear