October 24, 2024

Last year it was a Thursday.

I remember.

I was working the previous Wednesday, an 8-hour shift I’d taken from a coworker who had another event up her sleeve for that day. I wanted to be with my mother, so we swapped — an unfair exchange, four hours for eight — but she didn’t seem to mind, and my mother seemed ecstatic that

I chose to stay, at least as ecstatic as she could be.

I went to school earlier that Thursday. Our high school declared the even days of the week “Day 2’s,” and I therefore had band class early in the morning. I had hope that day for whatever ridiculous reason and was more content than average for me those days. I’d declared it my mother’s birthday. I called her. We sang. She was uncomfortable, as per usual, but I was sure she liked the gesture. It was never brought up again.

I fought for my life with phone calls dedicated to purchasing her the specific cupcakes she wanted from the specific cupcake shop. My P.E. teacher was perhaps proven correct in stating I could hold the role of “lawyer” had I wanted to. My father and I drove to pick them up — happy, laughing, talking as humans did. My God, were we so stupid. She couldn’t even consume the cupcakes. Was I upset over such a fact? Or was I merely shocked by the presence of death itself?

She didn’t move.

She didn’t laugh.

She couldn’t.

And it breaks me. I plotted her entire evening. I’d planned originally to miss school altogether — to prep, to decorate, to collect my thoughts alongside the cupcakes. But she couldn’t move. So what makes for a party if the guest of honor cannot collectively do anything?

A video was soon created by my father. It was his disillusionment that he could convince her before death that she was cared for. I never saw it, and I contemplate whether or not I can watch fifteen consecutive minutes of people telling her who she was and why that was important. Why did people believe that was necessary to do? I wanted to cry in that moment, over hearing the women’s tears and misaligned dance moves. But I didn’t, for she would scold me, and I would have been questioned.

There is always a thought of if I was good enough for her. There was always a difficulty in reading the room surrounding her. I believe there are parts of me broken by her, and only until the end were those bits and pieces being forced into clarity and healing — because she had finally, subconsciously if nothing else, caved and understood she was going to die.

That video wasn’t finished publicly. She needed to lie down again. I needed to clean up. I needed to question my life again, for the millionth time that week alone.

I’d eaten two of the massive red velvet cupcakes, over the sink in the kitchen, away from everybody as though it were secretive — to celebrate her birthday was a thing now done in solitude. Even when she was still alive.

I do that now, with a donut on my floor, in a place I am convincing myself I do not belong. But if not here, and if not home, where?

That day I’d been invited by my friend to a Halloween pumpkin patch. It was strange, I will admit this a year later, but it was an escape, and I took it without hesitation. I remember vividly the offer as well. That morning she’d reached out on our group chat saying they had an extra ticket and whomever wanted to go should tell her. I said nothing. I remember I sat on the chair in our living room to the right of the window and was sent a message specifically asking for me to attend with them. I felt vivid thinking she wanted to go with me — something I’d hardly felt in the past few years among each person in my life. It healed me in a sense, and I decided to go in case it never happened again.

The next day was a Friday. Nothing abnormal happened. I’d visited her that morning as I did every morning and related my future. Nothing too extreme — my classes, my work schedule, the thing with the friend later that night. She told me it sounded like fun. I told her we’ll see.

I’d gone to school.

I’d gone to work.

I was picked up and transported by my friend’s family to this Halloween extravaganza. A Looney Tunes DVD played on the car television. My friend took one of the nicest photos anyone had ever taken of me — and it was because my nose was missing from the frame, the same nose my mother consistently awed over at dinner with my brothers and me, stating, “I am so happy you all got your father’s nose and not mine.”

I never understood.

On the drive up, I was texted: Whose Halloween party are you going to? she’d asked. I responded a couple of hours later, No one’s. If you mean tonight, I’m going to some pumpkin thing with M— and her family.

The last thing I ever fucking texted her.

And it was fun. My insecurities took hold throughout the night. I felt I had no reason being there. I felt I was going to receive a message to come home because she’d died. It was cold, but that was not why I was shaking.

The same thing had happened to me the first diagnosis. I’d gone to a party for the first time since my trauma commenced, and we walked the Nose Creek Light Festival — everyone paired off, me on my own walking in front of everybody, scrolling the lock screen, checking for any notification that she’d left us. I was asked what was wrong with me. Why wasn’t I enjoying myself? My demeanor was being ridiculed.

That same person was at her funeral.

I remember getting home later than anticipated, but the cold and the sugar and the friendliness of the family had boosted my serotonin, so I chose not to care. I went into her room. She was laying in bed with her iPad being her only source of light, some late-nineties, early-2000s cop show playing from it. She was staying awake waiting for me and, per ritual, turned her iPad volume down to a whisper and asked me about it. So I narrated my experience, and I laughed back at the things I’d previously laughed at.

“Did they feed you?” she’d asked.

“Yes.”

“Did you have fun?”

“Yes.”

“How was work?”

“Work was good. Long but good.”

And I was tired, so I went to bed. I told her good night. I told her I loved her. She reciprocated the feeling.

It was then Saturday. I woke earlier than eleven, my normal time. I was to work at two or three or so. I cannot remember. I don’t know. My grandparents were there; they were to leave the next day, I thought, here only to celebrate her past birthday. They’d asked me if I’d known how many anniversaries this was for them, or something along those lines. It was their fiftieth, they’d announced, and they were debating how to spend it. My father finally left my mother’s room and steered me into the family room to sit the boys down. I was stubborn. I didn’t sit. I didn’t pace. I just stood behind him as though I’d known all along the situation. He told us she had weeks.

She wasn’t moving.

She wasn’t eating.

She wasn’t drinking.

She couldn’t.

He told us to be with her. Maybe lay down beside her. Read her some Bible verses. Yeah, she’d like that. I choked up, but decided I wasn’t going to cry. I left regardless and decided I needed to distract myself. I chose to find a recipe to make a pumpkin bread because it was still fall.

My brothers passed me, one at a time, to go see my mother. To go tell her things. To go read to her. I don’t know. And my memory blurs between the lines of if I stood outside the door or if I never left the kitchen.

Half an hour after the talk, the air thickened. It is an indescribable feeling. It was as though a depressive fog rolled in.

Nobody was talking normally.

Nobody was laughing.

It was as though they couldn’t.

As though they felt it too.

The bread was baking. I took it upon myself to fix things before I ultimately left for the plans I was making with my friend. We hadn’t yet chosen a time or a location, but it was inevitable I was going to leave. I did not want to breathe this invisible smoke that seemed to choke the life out of everyone. So I invited my grandfather to play Scrabble.

It was my turn when my father came out.

The air smelled of pumpkin bread.

I was hungry.

I was losing.

I hoped the bread turned out — it was a new recipe.

“She’s gone.”

Why say it like that? Why choose those specific words? Who do you think you are? How long were you just piecing words together as you sat with her corpse? How long until you actually started thinking again?

All I could say was “what?”

All I could do was survive in disbelief.

I felt cringey.

I felt stupid.

I felt like an overpaid actress who couldn’t act.

The air made sense. I’d somehow sensed her death. I’d somehow sensed everyone’s grief, and I fall asleep to the pained sobs of my grandfather that are burned into my mind.

Why does pain sound so similar to laughter? It’s haunting, and I hate it.

I was supposed to work. I was going to miss my shift because we were all here on the ground sobbing over our person, intoxicated by the death in the air.

And I didn’t even see her.

Why was I so stupid?

Why was I so stubborn?

I didn’t follow the lead of anyone. I stayed in my kitchen, and I stressed myself to death.

Every day I would wake up and I would see her.

Midday, I’d ask if she wanted anything. I’d lay with her.

Evening, I’d recite my day. We would gossip. We’d say good night.

I was so stupid.

I remember a time I would lay with her in bed in my afternoons off, and we would talk for hours. I would get up. She would ask where I was going. I would say to get food, to go to the bathroom, to blow my nose. She would ask for something, and I would get it. She would ask me to come back. She would tell me she liked laying with me. And I would reciprocate the statement.

I remember her laying on the basement couch with me as we would binge-watch the day away and eat disgustingly good food, just mocking what we saw.

There is a reason I failed social studies. There is a reason I fear I will not be enough to get into a university. But I understand that had I not taken the time to emotionally relate to my mother in her final weeks, who is to say I would still be here? Who is to say I would want to?

I remember I was on the floor dividing the living room and dining room, my back against the wall. My grandmother walked up to me — clearly upset, clearly trying not to be — and gave me her hand, telling me I should stand up. I swatted it away, and I snapped. I told her no. I hated her in that moment. I hated everything. I questioned my religion. I overthought everything. I regretted my life choices.

I sat outside with my father, a blanket around my shoulders so I wouldn’t fall into shock. I thought about that. Could you imagine having to hospitalize me during the day of my mother’s death?

People began coming and going. Flights were booked. Phone calls were made. Far too many tears unshed. But it happened.

The hearse finally came. Her body finally wheeled out. And I watched it happen.

I was so stupid, because it haunts me now. I watched her leave. People were skeptical as to why I didn’t exit the room, and I now have no idea. I then had no idea. Perhaps it was me trying to make up for never seeing her. Perhaps it was me avenging her in some way I couldn’t form words around. I don’t know. I don’t know anything.

A couple of months ago a comedian had come to our high school. He was branded as a comedian/motivational speaker — but how godawful was he. All he did was announce his trauma in a non-hysterical fashion and try to spin it into being a good thing — into him knowing who he was and what he needed to do. I didn’t believe him. He made no sense. His mother died of a brain tumor; his father abandoned them daily in the search of work. He and his siblings were in charge of making lunch and dinner for themselves — he was always on powdered potato duty. He then described the day she died, and his biggest question was What are we going to eat? How is that going to work?

And after such a show, that was all I could ponder up until this moment in time — when people figured that out. When we weren’t as fucked as I may as well have believed.

We ate Greek food, and I sat among strangers. Some family, some friends, but not a single ounce of comfort came from any of them, no matter how hard they tried, so I deemed them strangers in that moment. I didn’t know anyone.

It is unclear why I am writing this, and it is unclear why I chose to publish it. I’ve learned earlier in life that I shouldn’t tell my story to strangers — it is too much of a hassle to clean up the sympathy they spew onto the floor in good faith. And I did not want to cry today, but I am yet again sleep-deprived and hurting. There is nothing more to it. It will only get worse as the next few days pass along, and I am ill-prepared — about as ill-prepared as I may have ever been in my entire life. But do not have pity for me, for the loss of her spirit was painful, and I do desperately wish I could feel her or witness her trying to reach me as some spirits do in those twenty-second videos I am prone to watching, but her death was a closure.

She is survived by me, but I can do more than just survive now. Living is finally on the table once more. My body shifted from years of constant fight-or-flight — of consistently asking what’s next — into the stages of mourning and telling and retelling my story, for what a story it is. And this, what has been written before you, what you have chosen to read just now, is barely a glimpse of it.