But I was Prepared
“What are you doing here?” were my Mom’s last words to me. In true my Mom fashion she didn’t want to be a bother. How do you answer that question? “Gee Mom, I’m here at your bedside because you’re dying?” That didn’t feel right. I honestly can’t recall how I answered her, or if I answered her. It was the true beginning of the end. It would bring some of us closer than ever before while finally ending things with others. When her heart had stopped beating, the oxygen had been turned off, her declared dead, and her body taken away our collective war against the inevitable march of time and battle against death had both ended. We had lost a war we could have never won. The train had reached the last stop. End of the line. We got off.
There was never going to be an ideal time for her to pass. Crushed, defeated, lost, and fatigued, we wearily continued forward. Another war loomed. One I thought I had been prepared for. The timeline wasn’t clear but the outcome was. With all the preparation I had done I figured this part would be known. It wouldn’t be a lazy afternoon hike, but by no means would it be a life or death hike out after being lost in the rugged wilderness. At each turn lie booby traps, land mines, and trip wires. With any wrong step came torn flesh. New wounds with no warning. Old wounds reopened as the scars hadn’t been strong enough to hold. Lifelines thrown in hopes to cope and stop the drowning. There are never enough buckets when there are multiple holes in the boat.
What should have been cause to celebrate became more camouflaged ways to bloodlet. Dark clouds of grief rained down salty tears on a face that had seen much in its life. Now a child becomes a reminder that a mother is no more. The anchor that held me to the earth had snapped forcing me to learn to tread water. With three and a half years of time to prepare and then 8 months of overlap how could I have never thought of the impact of not having my mom around to help me raise my daughter. Had I just been too scared to think of it? Had it just been being in preparation mode for welcoming a new baby? I had missed the signs or had had the wrong map. Countless times I longed to hear her voice to calm me down. The advice I so desperately wanted to hear would never make it to my ears. The soft gentleness that had so often soothed me now gone. It left me as an angry, lost, overwhelmed new father who couldn’t tell up or down and without an artificial horizon to guide me. Jealousy and envy reared their ugly heads only serving to drive wedges into the spaces occupied by those who only longed to help.
I had failed to ever take into account what it would be like to raise a child without the loving guidance of my mom. It had never crossed my mind. Even as she was too weak to hold her grandchild my mind disconnected the circuits to those thoughts. There are oceans of unasked questions and a lifetime of advice left untold. In place of the advice and love are tears hidden between meetings, angry pain driven reactions, and a father who feels his child has lost a love that kept him alive in the darkest of nights.