My daughter nicknamed my mom "O.G." for "original gangster." She also said my mother was a warrior, but she was the sweetest. People who made it into my mother's inner circles adored her, and she was kind to those who did not, but one would never cross a line with her and not know it. When I brought someone new to her house, she would offer the niceties (drink, food), but she would also say she would show them where the kitchen was "one time." In other words, I've accepted you. Act accordingly, and get your own drink. She was assertive and she had a way of putting people in their place with few words and class. My daughter and I will never forget the day Mama shut a woman down with one simple but unambiguous "Okay."
Maybe two days after my stepfather of 30 years passed away, my daughter, my mom, and I had just loaded cases of water into a cart my mom used to take groceries from her car to her apartment. A woman came across the lot, figurative pearls clutched, and my daughter and I recognized this one immediately in that dime a dozen kind of way. She and I had already seen our share of this kind of melodramatic grief groupie. These people are so fake, but they rather enjoy their own acting. "Ohhh, honey, I was just so sorry to hear... I just couldn't believe it, and I am just so..."
"Okay." The look on the woman's face was photo-worthy, and I heard a little snicker escape my daughter, both amused and impressed. That one word carried not only a just shut up, but also a clear order. This ghoulish grief groupie had crossed a line, and she was not going to gain another inch. It just wasn't going to happen, and it did not.
Yet, as grown women, both my daughter and I still snuggled against her every chance we got.
Mama. I want to scream. I want to rage. I want to break the earth in two and find her, bring her back where she belongs, with us. And yet, I sit here weaving unworthy words because nothing else will come out and I don't really know why-- except the words. I know why the words are unworthy. Even I cannot do this woman justice. She really was someone special, and not just in the way most people are in an RIP note. She was a woman; a warrior, fierce and gentle, and nothing brought it out of her like the need of her children and grandchildren.
She gave some of this to us. She made us strong and determined, and yet, there came that last time when there was nothing I could do to wake her up. I couldn't wake her up.
I had been called by her caretaker. Things sounded really bad, and my mom was already in hospice care because her heart and lungs had had enough of it. When I arrived, they hadn't been able to get her to respond to them all day. She would stir a little, but that was about it. I looked at her for maybe a few seconds before my own defiance took over, and I understood this maternal mixture of fierce and gentle not for the first or thousandth time. I put my fingers under her chin just as she did to me when I was a child and sick or scared. "Mama..." and then a little louder, "Mama..."
Her eyes opened wide. She looked right into mine and she was there. She was there. She cried a little, so happy so see me, as she reached out with both arms and embraced me. She responded to me. I woke her up.
Later that evening, my husband, my youngest son, and I walked with her as she rode her scooter around in the cool evening air. She was okay. She was good. That night, I slept next to her... well, really, I lied next to her, watching her and watching my five year old hog all her snuggles. I don't even remember how long it was or the exact sequence of events that led to me propping her against my chest while my husband was firmly calling her name and trying first to smear chocolate icing inside her lip and then drops of orange juice on her tongue. After her caretaker made a terrible mistake, my diabetic mom was in real trouble, and since it was unrelated to her reason for being in hospice care, paramedics were called. Then I was parked in a chair next to her bed in ICU, just a few hours away from making the decision she had entrusted me to make. I was going to do it because that was what she had told me to do months ago, but I didn't want to do it. I did not want to make that call. I bent down to her ear and basically told her to let go or fight like hell, Mama. Time had wound down when I kissed her forehead and just like that, just like true love's kiss in a fairy tale, my mom opened her eyes and looked into mine. She smiled that loving mom smile, and my mom had pulled through, leaving even her doctors dumbfounded. I stayed until her release was imminent, and then I left to go home, to sleep in my own bed and take care of some things at home. I thought it would be okay, and I really did, because I just couldn't handle the idea of my mom passing without me at her side. I thought I would be back the coming weekend to spend more time with her, to make some video recordings of her for my youngest son, for me. I was home less than 24 hours when my mom was released from the hospital, and my husband came home from work early. I thought nothing of it because it was a slow day there and his days long stay in ICU had left him exhausted. I was sitting on our bed trying to find the energy and will to get dressed when he sat next to me, and I could see the wheels of his mind turning hard.
"What's going on?"
"(Your mom's caretaker) called me... Your mom passed away today."
"No, she didn't. No, she didn't!" My husband-- I love him so, and now I feel bad for him (empathy) that he just sat there in his own pain letting me yell at him as if he was a liar while I fought the battle in my own mind. Of course it was true if he was telling me so, and Why the hell would he say something like that, something so awful. She did not die! "NO SHE DIDN'T!" And, "I was right there! I was right there, and I left!"
My mom had been released from the hospital and, in the parking lot of her apartment complex, she collapsed, and she was gone. Just like that. It happened too fast for it to have been any expected cause. I heard she had likely thrown a clot.
There was to be no service because she wanted direct cremation. My mom did not want her children or grandchildren to see her that way, "I want you to remember me alive," she had explained. I was at the funeral home to sign her cremation papers and to pick up some memorial cards a sibling ordered and had gotten so ridiculously wrong (at least two of her grandchildren's' names were wrong, but whatever-- Mama knew those names). I was standing just a hair outside myself when I suddenly turned to the director, "I have to see her."
There was some attempt to "handle" me as her arrangements were clear and made far in advance, and my request was not expected. "Look, I understand she is not 'done up,' and I don't need a lot of time, but I have to see her. I have to see her."
I didn't see my daughter slip out to go get my husband, and I don't even remember seeing him come inside-- I remember knowing that everyone was bracing and preparing for whatever was about to happen because I could see the uncertainty in their eyes, and I could feel them "handling" me. In my memory it was far too long before they brought her into a room just beyond the one I was in and with closed doors. Eventually, they opened the doors and my husband led me in, but I paused at the door. I had been prepared for anything and everything except for what I saw. They had no make-up on her, and I was ready for that, but that meant I was ready for her to look... dead. She didn't. She didn't at all. She looked exactly like she was sleeping, and had somehow bruised her ear.
I tried. I tried. I really tried. This time I could not wake her up; this time no calling "Mama!"-- no true love's kiss would work. I couldn't wake her up.
And I want to scream. I want to rage. I want to break the earth in two and find her, bring her back where she belongs, with us. And yet, I sit here weaving unworthy words that are nothing more than a desperate attempt to pull something real out of myself.
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