YG2D

is a 501(c)3 nonprofit bringing diverse communities into the conversation of grief, loss, & our shared mortality, inspiring a more connected & meaningful experience of being alive, w/a weekly podcast, open mics, concerts, workshops, & prison, hospice, & cancer patient programs.

I Thought I Made My Mom Die...

Note the Same Hair... It's in the Genes.

For a long time I thought I made my mom die. 

Thanksgiving week, she slept so deeply, dying rapidly next to a small plate of mashed potatoes and stuffing, in her room on a tiny twin mattress that moved far too easily. If you sat on it or leaned against, it would slide like a doll’s bed across the room. I thought I stayed away too much, but she was doing the work of departure; I couldn't be near her, for I'd have had to hold on to her and that bed too hard for her to go... So she went that week and quickly.

When we got her to the hospital, the day after Thanksgiving, somehow finally realizing, like we’d seen it on that morning’s news, the great undeniable surprise that she was dying, the last stretch of her life happened in only a handful of hours. I know I was young and did it the only way I knew how... dramatically, emotionally, out of my mind. I moved when I was told, out of the way of suddenly frantic, scrambling nurses [“Why are you all moving so quickly? Are you as surprised as I am?”]. I called everyone I could think of, not to just tell them what was happening, but to escape, alive, hysterical, sobbing, notifying diligently, but existing, one raving call at a time. And when it was time, I bowed my head for prayer because someone older brought a priest in and said we should. For years I thought I’d been more swept away by her death than present to it.

But ultimately, in retrospect – no – not retrospect – what an inadequate word to use when your mother rips out of your life, dragging your being halfway through the death portal, changing you completely and forever. Not retrospect. It’s revelation. Specifically revelation defined as: the divine or supernatural disclosure to humans of something relating to human existence or the world. That kind of revelation. I realize in revelation, unearthed from great reality-destroying loss, that we were there, my sister and I, leaning over that mother exit that lay between us, crying, helpless, but massaging her legs and loving her. I learned then, if I was ever to have the honor of being at the edge of someone’s deathbed, that’s just what I’m supposed to do: Be there.

And then I made my mom die. Or so I thought for years. When she looked at my sister and I from her hospital bed, across the greatest of chasms, spanning from the edge of me to her little face, in the smallest, whitest of rooms, in the one moment of clarity I recall her having, the one single thing I remember her saying to us that entire last week of her life, she asked us what we thought about life support. And all I could do was wordlessly stand and cry. And not long after that she died. My mother died. Behold my tears. But that was my answer. And that was my job, too. Only now I understand that I did it well. I helplessly wept and let go well. She needed permission and my tears told her it was okay. And I got to whisper, "I love you. It's okay," into her ear over and over. That's what I was supposed to do. And that’s all. 

I didn’t make my mom die. I let her die. 
I loved her and told her so. I told her it’s okay. And it is.
And for that, I know now, I am her good son.