The Day My Mother Died

When your nerves and senses are raw and when your mind is frazzled, you often (well at least I do) fall back to traumatic moments in your life. I did that tonight. As I was driving home a memory struck me, struck me upside the head like a baseball bat. I cried then and I'm crying now.

I don't remember all the details of that day, except that it was summer, which for me meant I wasn't at work. I was in the habit of visiting my parents daily although I received flak for my frequent excursions out of my own house to do so. My mother was sitting in her chair, feeling cold and miserable as she had for some time. My father was puttering around the house as usual. I hung out a short while, said my goodbyes, and headed out.

that evening, I believe our plan had been to go to a Jack n Jill party. But early in the evening I got a call from my cousin telling me that my mother had had a heart attack and was at the hospital. Arriving there I found her in the ER hooked up to all sorts of machines--but the staff was very reassuring, or at least I thought they were, and I prayed that all would be well. My mom had survived. We could get through this.

After a long vigil, the nurses convinced us to take a break and come back in the morning. I remember going out to my parent's house, my house, and finding some hot dogs still simmering on the stove. There were the detritus of the emergency crew--wrappers and such to whatever they were using to help my mom survive. I cleaned up and went home for some sleep.

In the morning I went back to the hospital. Any questions were met with  the optimistic, "we're hoping for the best," type responses. But I know now that the nurses and everyone else knew that there was no hope, there had never been any hope. I don't blame the nurses for the false hope they offered and I know their tears were as real as ours.

A couple of times, while we were there, we heard calls of code...I don't even know the fucking code at this point--was it code red? or code blue? or whatever the heart failure code is and one of the nurses said at that point that the call was for Jean. Finally, after this happened a couple of times, I remember the doctor coming and saying that they could keep on trying but that it was probably for the best that they not. We understood then what he was saying and agreed. And then the final call came in and we all sat there, mute, in tears.

And a couple days later, my brothers and I were having a drink after our mother's wake. We were in a local bar and the son of my mother's doctor, a classmate of mine, happened to be there. He came up to me and sympathetically said all that could be said:

"Life sucks."

And then he moved on. What more could be be said?