My mother died too young. 63 is too young. That was 21 years ago, as of 1:00 this afternoon. That fateful day, I found out she had died from my father, who called me and said, "Honey, I have the saddest news in the world." He and my brother and sister and had left her hospital room to get lunch, after being persuaded by the nurse. Apparently, minutes after they left, she passed. Clearly, it was her last journey and she wanted to take it alone.
It was a humid day, oppressively hot and sticky. Not a typical May day in Connecticut. I remember floating through the halls of Yale-New Haven Hospital, dressed in crummy workout clothes, having taking the day off of work to stay home in the morning and go spend time with her in the afternoon to spell my siblings.
I did spend time with her that afternoon. The staff let us spend as much time as we needed to sit with her lifeless body, which was still terribly bruised from all the abuse that only cancer can ravage on a person. It was a tough seven months for my mother, the consummate trooper.
She could, in my brother's words, "eat pain." Not one to complain, my mother bare-knuckled it through the last days of her life, spaced out on morphine for most of it, barely lucid. The last day I saw her like her old self was Mother's Day, just two days before she died. She was sitting up and laughing, opening gifts and sharing her acid, hysterical sense of humor.
I loved my mother very much, and while time does indeed heal most wounds to a point where you are able to live with them, there will always be an Irene-sized hole in the universe and in my heart where she once resided. I miss you, Mom.
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