Five Years Ago Today

 I never thought that “the call” would come. I had said many goodbyes before this, although I had not prepared myself  to say a final farewell to my mother.  But that call and that unanticipated car ride did come. As the wheels spun at what seemed to be the most sluggish rate; Tears, laughter, anger, denial, fear, frustration & joy all spun around me just as if a tornado of accumulated objects was gyrating around me endlessly. My world as I had once known it, and had become to know it was now extinct. All else in the world seemed  inanimate and  meaningless.  I kept thinking to myself, “How did we get here?”

I remember walking in through the double doors to the pungent smell of decay, thinking to myself, “Okay, this is just another hospital, we’ll get the pain under control and be on our way.” That was not to be the case this time. As I walked down the hallway, I couldn’t help but wonder why such a well known facility could only have fifteen available rooms for patients. As we came to find out, no one went home after visiting the Hospice facility. I realized that this was the end: the end of the war that we had been fighting for two drawn-out years. A flash of frigid, brassy voices flooded into my head. Trying to shed light on all of these Dr’s predictions brought clarity to me, that time is out of their element. They had given me false hope. So I put all my feelings on a shelf, to be addressed at a later time. I had felt like I always had to keep it together for the sake of my mother. I couldn’t  bare letting her see me struggle, for she herself was  struggling. My Father, her Husband was not capable of holding it together, making medical decisions or being supportive. So I took a deep breath and went in through the threshold. This room would then be the setting to my life for the next twelve grueling weeks. I began to acclimate myself to this routine of no sleep, constantly care giving, consistently hiding behind a mask, scavenging to provide the needed comfort and security that my mother so desired.  It was now my turn to provide what mother had always provided for me. My role was no longer the daughter; I was to fight for what she could no longer fight for, to be her advocate for survival, to pour out the love that she so deserved. I had to compel myself to keep going when she couldn’t.

I had never been through the dying process. I didn’t know what was to come or what to expect. I can assure you that no one is precise on the effects of cancer. Authorities & officials tell you, ”If you smoke cigarettes you’ll get cancer.” To my knowledge, no D.A.R.E. program, no doctor, no facilitator informs you of the true effects of cancer. They do not tell you that you will become one hundred percent immobile, that your thought processes will become non-existent, that psychosis and paranoia will take over. They do not begin to touch the surface of the process of cancer. There was always something new knocking on the door waiting to knock the wind out of me. I was not aware that I would lose my mother before she was actually gone. 

So when that phone call came at nine thirty p.m. on January 3, 2010, I found myself in dire shock that the moment we all technically knew was coming had. Completely uninvited, all the emotions that I had set on that shelf came spiraling down on me like a bookshelf in an earthquake. The only thing that I had to take home from this experience were the few aware, & conscious moments that I had with my mother & the concept of time. I was robbed of being able to have the talks that you'd imagine having with a loved one when finding out of ones passing. Answers to questions that I am still trying to fill the blanks with today.  She was so young, 55, and half of her life time was officially unaccountable for. A wifeless husband and myself, a motherless daughter, would have to start a new life without our loved one. And until this day I hum the tune from Hold My Heart, “One tear in the dropping rain, One voice in the sea of pain could the maker of the stars Hear the sound of my breakin' heart?” After the years I've learned that my heart will never be put back together the same but put back together in a new way. The loss didn't end or stop with my mother's passing, it continued and the grieving began, the change began, and God tested me beyond my limits. 

I plan on TRYING my best to dedicate this next week to my story, my mothers story and share with you the ins and outs of my experience of losing a loved one and what life has looked like for me these past five years.