Nothing is meant to last forever

Tomorrow marks the one-year anniversary of my mother’s passing. So I’ll let it out and recant the day as I recall it.

I woke up, a day like any other. It was a sun-shining kind of morning even at 5:30. I woke up my mom when the coffee was done, like every other morning for the six months prior. Even though my mom wasn’t working, she wanted to spend that half-hour with me. We’d have our breakfast, our coffee and play a game or sometimes two of Yatzee before work. We’d talk, laugh and generally just be content for the companionship.

We were like that, my mom and I. I was on the heels of a break-up, not a bad one, but a necessary one; and Mom needed someone there with her. Someone to make sure she ate, and to help with the bills. Mostly, I think she was lonely and her dog couldn’t carry on a conversation. I resigned myself shortly after I moved in, that I would be there until she died. I knew that her situation would go from ok, to not so good, to bad, to worse in both a financial and physical sense. I remember thinking it to myself, and even telling a co-worker that just a couple of weeks before she actually did die. I still kick myself in the ass for it. What a thing to say, and think about your own mother!

So after our games, two that morning, I got ready to go. Got my lunch, made some comment to my Mom that made her laugh, and out the door I went. My last memory of her alive was telling her that I loved her, that I’d see her that night, and hearing her roar of a laugh as I exited our little apartment. I’m very grateful for that. How many people get to say the last words they ever spoke to a loved one was indeed that they loved them.

So I did the work thing, and yahoo, we were getting out early to vote. I went to the polling station, did my thing, and I remember thinking as I left that I would go home and give my Mom crap for forgetting to vote. We would play a game of Yatzee, and then I would go to the gym while Mom more than likely went to the polls herself. When I got home, I announced myself. "Hey Mom, did ya vote?" Nikki, my mom’s dog, came out of the bedroom tail wagging so after I kicked off my shoes, I went into her room to wake her up.

Only she wasn’t sleeping.

I knew it the second I saw her, but I didn’t want to believe it. She was kneeling beside her bed, head down. Her arms were crossed, laying one elbow on the bed, the other on the nightstand. I remember diving across the bed, screaming "Mom!" "Are you ok?" I shook her. She was rigid, but I kept shaking her. I felt like a ten-year-old, I was begging her "Please, just wake up!". It was only by fluke that when I looked up, as if for an answer to ‘what should I do" that I saw the phone, and called 911.

The woman of course was calm, and tried to tell me to lie my mom down. That’s when I noticed. She was purple, not just any purple… a sickly grey purple in her face and a scarlet purple on her belly where her shirt had rode up. I screamed. Literally screamed. It the agonizing scream of a child who has come face to face with true death. Before that second, I thought there might have been a chance, but my CSI loving brain knew that she only got to be that colour because the blood in her body ceased to flow, and because she’d been there for quite awhile. The operator told me to lie her down and perform CPR. I knew she was gone, but the expert was giving me something to do, and I had to do it. I near vomited when I heard her bones crack under my compressions, I almost did again when I covered her nose and tried forcing my air into her lungs to make her breathe again.

The paramedics came, and knew as I did that she had gone. That’s when the phone rang. I answered. It was her best friend, calling to see if she wanted to go to bingo. "She’s Dead" There, I said it! Keith said, "What?" "She’s dead!" We carried on like that, both of us stuck in our disbelief, and simultaneous grief, crying and trying to figure out when, and how. From there I had to call the rest of her friends, and our family. It was, for me, the worst rite of passage. I was stuck on a kind of autopilot, giving her loved ones the bad news and then consoling their grief while trying desperately to hide my own.

I never did find out when, the how ended up being a heart attack. It was probably very sudden, she would have had enough time to realize that she was having a heart attack, but not enough to do anything about it. I still wonder about the pose she was in. Was she trying to cough? Or had she gotten down on her knees in her final minutes to talk to the God of her understanding, and pray that her passage went smoothly.

However her end, it was that… her end. Nothing is meant to last forever, but as long as I live my love for her will endure. I will hold my vigil for her on her days… her birthday, mother’s day, and the anniversary of her passing, because these are days when I can reflect without impunity on the woman taught me everything I truly ever needed to know.

As a last little tidbit, I’ll share with you that which is printed on her stone. A poem that I’ve had memorized since I was child, because she wanted to make sure we would never forget.

I don’t believe in Heaven
So I can’t believe in Hell
And so when you think of me
Don’t Grieve
I’ll be in the land of Make-Believe

I hope you found your Never-Never land Mom, I miss you and love you always.