The Day You Dread All Your Life

When my mother died, I had no warning.

She wasn't old.  She wasn't sick.  Well, she had a cold, but she'd always survived those.

She herself had only about forty-five minutes of warning, and I don't think she took it very seriously for all of that time.  She was on the phone with my sisters but didn't say anything about her chest pains until it was too late.

She was getting ready to go to the hospital when she just--dropped.

My father died even faster.  He wasn't old, either, and he wasn't sick.  He'd worked a full day in the business he owned, and was just relaxing in front of the TV.  From what my mother told me, he had less than a minute to indicate something was wrong before he was gone.

There were no goodbyes.

For a long time, I felt really cheated by their sudden deaths.  I was still in my thirties, still having babies who would never know them.  I was haunted by the fact that the people we love could be there and seem fine one minute, and be gone without any warning the next.

It didn't help me relax about the possibility of crib death, for one thing. It didn't lessen my worry when my teenagers were out, driving at night.

But, amazingly, I've gotten used to my parents being gone.  I feel they still exist, on a plane I cannot access.  They were too vibrant, too real, to just. . .stop being.  I miss them, but this is ameliorated somewhat by feeling like I still have them with me.  I know them so well, I pretty much know what they would do, what they would think, what they would say.  To some extent, I can still learn from what I know of them.

And it helps to know that I am not alone in my loss.  Lots of people my age or younger have lost parents.  My mother was only five when she lost her mother.  Nine when she lost her dad.  When my mother died, I could hardly conceive of how she, then a small child, could have born the pain I was feeling.  I still can't.  I cry hardest at movies where mothers of children die.  I always have.

It sometimes hurts to see people much older than I still enjoying those familiar relationships, but, as my dad was fond of saying, life isn't fair.

When I talk to people who have lost their mothers, the story is always different, yet the same.  Some of them kept their mothers until they were nearly a hundred years old.  How I have envied them!  Some of these, though, have watched their mothers lose their grip on life one inch at a time.  Sometimes, they've lost their mothers long before their mothers actually died.  They lost them twice, which I think would be twice as hard.

My mother was starting to get feeble, but she still took care of herself in her own home.  She still drove and had full access to her wonderful mind.

Her bones broke easily, so I used to fear that she would fall in the snow and lie there for hours with no way to get help.  As it turned out, that never happened.  We lost her quickly, but we were spared, I'm sure, many horrible possibilities.

After my dad's sudden death, my mother had the presence of mind to exclaim how blessed they were that he had gone suddenly like that.  "He would have hated to be sick," she said.

I think I know what she meant.

I have come to think that, no matter if your mother is young or very old, whether you get to say goodbye or not, whether death comes for her too quickly or makes her suffer a long time, there is nothing to envy anyone about.  It doesn't matter.  The stories are different, but they end the same.  The day your mother dies is the day you dread all your life.