My mom died.
My mom died. The gravity of that statement is heavy. It’s a weight that I’ve been coping with, adjusting to. An everlasting lump sitting in the back of my throat, a conversation I always want to have when nobody asks for it. She died unexpectedly during a 13-day hospital stay. A blur of moments, specialists, emergencies, unasked for insight into end of life care — which isn’t really care at all.
I want to write about it as much as I want to call her. I could write 13 chapters detailing every conversation, fill 13 chalkboards with my half-assed medical theories, draft 13 lawsuits for malpractice just to issue blame; but all I have is this blog. Cara-isms and 12 medium followers because I don’t know how this works to get 13.
She’d always answer my unsolicited phone calls, often multiple times a day offering insight and advice to a more rampant, unbridled version of myself. Her guidance sat somewhere between a logical wave of motherly aggression and dangerously limitless encouragement, but her love was untangled and unmistakable; the only constant that kept me alive in my twenties.
Though she was chronically ill, she emanated capability, basking in independence up until the day we forced her into the emergency room. Before admission, she powered through her final Thanksgiving lunch, stopping to take long breaks, commenting on my bad attitude and panic that I hadn’t peeled the potatoes in time.
Maybe she hid her illnesses from us out of denial, or perhaps a deeply seeded fear of the inevitable. My siblings and I would default to guessing and Googling after every family interaction or if one of us spent extended time with her. We’d weave our findings together, rummage through her medications above the fridge, and attempt to keep track of her seemingly endless, and unsubstantiated, doctor appointments.
In light of the recent passing of icon Elizabeth Wurtzel who would go the extra mile to write with shameless and unapologetic authenticity, I read that she dared aspiring writers to “be willing to kill your mother”; it feels macabre given the circumstance, but her prompt was a call to action. To create purely, pollute your work with scathing reality — say the bits that nobody talks about, but everybody feels in some way. Especially the writer — we write for salvation, to claw back our own integrity, and to please ourselves first. Here that goes.
Death feels exactly how you’d imagine it to, but it unlocks something foreign in the human experience: a triad of grief, loss, and guilt (in no particular order). An indescribable concoction that hits in fluxes of unpredictable waves. I have spent a lot of time replaying her last moments. Her face strained, her eyes closed, her mouth dropped open slightly, her chest heaving inwards as her body’s motor memory forced an impossible inhale. Each attempt was inconsistent and laboured. There was no sound — something I both feared and anticipated when I imagined respiratory failure and asphyxiation.
I didn’t realize that she had died. Her final breath didn’t register. The nurse came into the room, checked for a pulse, and stated time of death: rounding down to 10:45 pm. But that was it. During her stay (when she was no longer coherent), I had taken to affectionately placing my hand between her neck and chest, gently resting it along her left collarbone; always the warmest place on her body. My hand found its way back there, her corpse felt warm. In the aftermath, to quell anxiety, I find security in placing my hand in the same spot on the body she gave me. God willing, she’d hate that contact, though. We’re not really a touching-type of family.
Do you know what happens after that in the ICU? You cry, you hug your siblings that couldn’t bear to witness it in the waiting room, you sob into your partner’s chest for what seems like one thousand impossible years. You sign a few papers you didn’t read, you give a final goodbye. And then, you drive home, different — cue the triad.
Nobody tells you any of this, the gory bits at least — what sutures holding a jaw closed do to already frail skin of a lifeless person, the way certain body parts (nose, ears, mouth) decay so rapidly, turning a grey colour you’ve never seen before, how autopsy tape looks across a chest you’ve hugged infinite times behind a sweater you picked (why the fuck did I pick a white sweater), that a keepsake urn equals approximately four tablespoons, the way that a dying body smells in a sterile hospital environment, how cold hands and feet become in the final days as blood retreats in an effort to protect main organs, and, for me, how it feels to truly acknowledge, without a shred of doubt or hesitation, that I would have given my life to spare hers a million times over. And I wish every single day it was me, instead — in part, to give her more time, but also so I don’t have to do this.
We had seen each other through twenty-eight years — good ones, rough ones. Through seasons and decades. Through our pregnancies, a divorce, breakups, toxic friendships, scraped knees; I’ve made her cry and laugh, yell and listen. When did our conversations escalate from work, life, love, the groceries I was buying to sitting in silence and one-sided chats because she couldn’t speak anymore? How did things devolve to speechlessness — to me reading a final goodbye from a note in my cellphone because I couldn’t process words at her bedside? Her and I, my face buried in the blanket draped over a body that hadn’t moved in days; what words could possibly express eternal gratitude and unequivocal sorrow. We brought her there to die; we ignored when she said, “they’re not going to find it in time”. How does ‘I’m sorry’ cover those bases?
Everything since has become a question that will remain unanswered. Did she know she was going to die, did she really recognize me when she nodded yes to me asking, did her hoarse voice actually utter “make it stop” and did that mean to help her or to end her suffering the way I advocated? Was instructing removal of the breathing apparatus the right thing to do? Would intubation have gifted us time that would regulate anything? Could she hear us? Was she cold? Did she ever feel lonely? Did she need lip chap — genuinely, I question everything. I always will.
I don’t know how to end this; I wasn’t sure how to start it. I’ve been cultivating a perception; a dual role of the trendy, strong millennial each week contrasted with a desperately grieving child in secret corners of every day. I think I’ve cried in more bathrooms and on more subway cars in the past two months than in my entire life.
My siblings have kept me stable; we’re all busy rebuilding. My partner has kept me alive, literally feeding and bathing me on days I’m incapacitated by grief. I guess it just is and all we can do is be kind to ourselves as we continue to live. The jury is still out if this shit is a gift. But I have some advice to extend — unasked for, raging advice, just as she’d hope for. Be present. Ask the hard questions with the people you have, ask the silly ones, too (I wish I knew what movie was her favourite). Be gentle with your own body, feel things fully, see a doctor just because. Always ask questions if you are on medications for an extended period of time. Never hesitate to get a second opinion on anything. You may be unravelling with all that life throws at you (death not included), but you’re alive. And honestly take it from me, that’s a fucking start.
