Mom died last Friday, Black Friday.
My sister called that morning; Mom was in the hospital and it didn’t look good. We rushed, drove nervously down highway 26 to St. Vincent’s, race-walked the length of the hospital toward Emergency when we’d discovered we’d parked at the wrong end. At Emergency, I was shuffled to one nurse and then another, who left then returned to tell me a third person would be out to speak with me. I think I knew then. A moment later my sister appeared, face red from crying.
I’d missed Mom by just over half an hour.
Pulmonary embolism, the doctor said. She went quickly. And peacefully.
I saw her body after that. I needed to see her even though I knew it would be by far the most difficult moment of the day. You see, I was there for Dad, hand on his forehead as I watched his death rattle, standing beside the mortuary crew as they zipped up the bag for transport. I was Dad’s primary caregiver while the pancreatic cancer ravaged his body and for Mom, since I wasn’t there for her, the least I could do was have that final moment, a long goodbye even though she was already cold.
Before the senile dementia and memory loss hit, Mom was a writer. She wrote short stories, essays, radio and stage plays. She wanted, sometimes desperately, for me to follow in her footsteps.
Sometimes I did. Sometimes, I couldn’t bring myself to be Mom part two. I lashed out and followed other paths with varying success. Mom nagged me, as moms always do, and her nag was always – always – about the writing. How’s the novel? Have you finished that short story?
In the past few years, since Mom’s illness, I’ve been afraid to write. Afraid that it – the writer’s gene – was dying with her. I’d sit down to pound out an article or a short story and freeze up, certain my words would just dump out onto the page like the contents of a random fucked up junk drawer. Nuts, bolts, empty match books, rubber bands, twist ties.
This past week, cocooned with comfort food and television, I let the frustrations slough off and I began the difficult task of cataloging, of forgiving, and embracing all that I remembered of Mom, good, bad, indifferent.
And I reminded myself (yet again) that Mom meant well when she nagged me. And she was most likely right.
