things will never be the same
It's been a long month.
On March 2nd, I got a call from the coroner's office. They were at my mom's house.
Her neighbors put in a Wellness call when they hadn't seen or heard anything out of her for a couple of days. It had been almost a week since I heard anything (but that wasn’t unusual with the way she worked) and had just sent her a text that morning to check in. The neighbors asked some of her coworkers and she even missed work. That's not something that happens. Ever. So the police were called. And then the firemen. And they broke the door down and had to force it open against the trash (reminder: she’s a hoarder). And they didn’t even see her at first, despite her being within 10 feet of the door, because when she fell she knocked stacks of trash over. She was covered in garbage. The coroner warned me that she might have asphyxiated.
Thankfully that turned out to NOT be the case. The first thing out of his mouth when he called me with the autopsy results was telling me that she didn’t suffocate. Nor were there signs of crushing in any way. (Seeing the house, I now feel that the stuff that landed on her was all lightweight. Empty bags and food containers.) She had evidence of coronary artery disease and a blood clot in her lung. The official cause of death is a pulmonary embolism. Which is a relief, in a weird way, because that means it was quick. Almost instant. She was showing warning signs - weakness, pale, difficulty breathing, and palpitations - but these were all similar signs of the flu, which she was dealing with. I honestly think that, even if she had gone to a doctor like her friends suggested, they would have thought the same thing and sent her home with some antibiotics. I think her flu would have hidden the real problem and they wouldn’t have caught it.
She was found on a Monday and that’s listed as her official time of death. Because of the cold, and she didn’t have heat, they couldn’t clearly determine how long she had been gone. Going by read versus unread texts on her phone as well as notes that she was keeping, we’ve personally concluded that she actually died on the prior Thursday or early Friday. Around the time the internet was arguing about the colors of a particular dress.
That first week, I was doing good to eat just two bites of food at each meal. It’s all so surreal. Your parents are gods and gods don’t die. Even now, a month later, I still don’t feel like I’ve quite wrapped my brain around it. It doesn’t seem real. I expect her to call, especially on Mondays, and say she’s got the day off so let’s go get some lunch and grab some groceries. Or I’m starting to get frustrated dealing with something of hers, sorting or paperwork, and suddenly get the thought to call her and ask how she wants things done. In my mind, she’s still just so busy working that I haven’t seen or heard anything out of her in awhile. But she’ll pop up when things aren’t as hectic. She always does.
Only, she won’t this time.
The funeral didn’t offer any closure. I had a little panic attack before we walked in to see her... I have issues with corpses. They’re empty and wrong and not the person anymore. But of all the physical items that a person leaves behind, the body is the most significant. So I expected a breakdown. Yet, once I saw her, I felt almost indifferent. It didn’t look like her. It wasn’t her, it couldn’t be. My mom has permanent smile lines. This woman doesn’t have smile lines. She has my mom’s nose and she’s wearing the outfit I picked out for her and she has the same wedding ring even though she’s been divorced for almost 30 years. But the mouth was wrong. It was slack and the cheeks were too smooth. The pinky, though... the pinky on her right hand often made this little crook. It was a detail that was so very her. The pinky was right. The pinky was hers. Not all of her was in that coffin, though, and it felt wrong. Incomplete.
A couple of Native American women sang at my mom's funeral. They started in English with Amazing Grace then they each did a chorus in their own tongue, Cherokee followed by Lakota Sioux. Then they did a traditional Native American Honor Song. It was really beautiful. She would have loved it. And the Cherokee woman put a seashell with salt in her coffin, which is a tradition with her (our?) people. And another of our closer Native friends brought a sprig of sage for her. I added a birthday card from my nephews, a magnet that I made when I was around 9 that said “Thank you for Mothers” (that she mentioned many times over the years), a foam imprint of Romeo’s paw, a Saint Christopher’s medal pin (which she brought up MANY times over the years, how she had one but George threw it out, so Chris and I made sure to go buy her a new one), and... then I made a scene just before the final services, when I realized one more thing that I had planned to put in there with her.
Some backstory first. My brother has this story of one Christmas, maybe around 1987, where all he wanted was this radio. Boombox. Something like that. It was on sale somewhere so he cut out the ad and gave it to her, saying that was the ONLY thing he wanted for Christmas. So Christmas morning rolls around and there’s a large box under the tree with his name on it. He’s excited. He opens this box and finds some phone books and, at the bottom of the box, the ad taped to a piece of paper with IOU written on it. The fake out was so much worse than just not getting the thing! And, to make matters worse, she never followed through and paid the debt created! So, that’s something he likes to regularly bring up. Always jokes about the IOU.
Fast forward to her funeral, or shortly before, and I’m telling Chris how I want to put a note in with her. (She writes notes on EVERYTHING. Seriously. All the things. So there’s a familiarity to notes in our family.) And in this note I want to say something about sending her love, because it’s not something I always said. (I have issues with the words and would rather show through actions.) Chris, pulling from this Christmas story, jokes that I should make it an IOU. Through my tears, I start laughing so hard. That seals it. I’m writing my mom an IOU. Only, I nearly forgot and panicked when the final good-byes are starting and I haven’t written my note. I start crying and gibbering and hyperventilating and just in the periphery of my awareness I can hear friends and family gasp and sob at seeing me break down at my mom’s coffin and I am SO embarrassed but this is something that I feel like I NEED to do. So Chris tracks down the most perfectly-sized ruled paper and a pen and I sit down to write my note while people are rubbing my back and making sure I’m okay.
IOU
A lifetime supply of
HUGS,
KISSES,
and I-LOVE-YOUs.
Nikki
I tuck it under the edge of her cardigan, we sit down through the services, then we say our final goodbye. I finally see a reaction out of my brother as he stands over her, then puts his arm around me and says that she’s finally getting some rest and that this was the only way she would stop. And he’s so right. My very first memory was of her getting ready for work. And, in looking up pulmonary embolisms, I’m finding that they can occur after you break a long bone. She broke her ulna - a long bone - in February of last year... at work. One year and a couple of weeks later that break might have caused her death so, in a weird way, it might have actually been work that killed her. And that sums up so much of who my mom was; a hard-worker. Always giving so much of herself, but not leaving anything for herself. It was mostly coworkers and people she took care of at work that came out to pay their condolences. I just hope she realizes how much she will be missed.
On March 2nd, I got a call from the coroner's office. They were at my mom's house.
Her neighbors put in a Wellness call when they hadn't seen or heard anything out of her for a couple of days. It had been almost a week since I heard anything (but that wasn’t unusual with the way she worked) and had just sent her a text that morning to check in. The neighbors asked some of her coworkers and she even missed work. That's not something that happens. Ever. So the police were called. And then the firemen. And they broke the door down and had to force it open against the trash (reminder: she’s a hoarder). And they didn’t even see her at first, despite her being within 10 feet of the door, because when she fell she knocked stacks of trash over. She was covered in garbage. The coroner warned me that she might have asphyxiated.
Thankfully that turned out to NOT be the case. The first thing out of his mouth when he called me with the autopsy results was telling me that she didn’t suffocate. Nor were there signs of crushing in any way. (Seeing the house, I now feel that the stuff that landed on her was all lightweight. Empty bags and food containers.) She had evidence of coronary artery disease and a blood clot in her lung. The official cause of death is a pulmonary embolism. Which is a relief, in a weird way, because that means it was quick. Almost instant. She was showing warning signs - weakness, pale, difficulty breathing, and palpitations - but these were all similar signs of the flu, which she was dealing with. I honestly think that, even if she had gone to a doctor like her friends suggested, they would have thought the same thing and sent her home with some antibiotics. I think her flu would have hidden the real problem and they wouldn’t have caught it.
She was found on a Monday and that’s listed as her official time of death. Because of the cold, and she didn’t have heat, they couldn’t clearly determine how long she had been gone. Going by read versus unread texts on her phone as well as notes that she was keeping, we’ve personally concluded that she actually died on the prior Thursday or early Friday. Around the time the internet was arguing about the colors of a particular dress.
That first week, I was doing good to eat just two bites of food at each meal. It’s all so surreal. Your parents are gods and gods don’t die. Even now, a month later, I still don’t feel like I’ve quite wrapped my brain around it. It doesn’t seem real. I expect her to call, especially on Mondays, and say she’s got the day off so let’s go get some lunch and grab some groceries. Or I’m starting to get frustrated dealing with something of hers, sorting or paperwork, and suddenly get the thought to call her and ask how she wants things done. In my mind, she’s still just so busy working that I haven’t seen or heard anything out of her in awhile. But she’ll pop up when things aren’t as hectic. She always does.
Only, she won’t this time.
The funeral didn’t offer any closure. I had a little panic attack before we walked in to see her... I have issues with corpses. They’re empty and wrong and not the person anymore. But of all the physical items that a person leaves behind, the body is the most significant. So I expected a breakdown. Yet, once I saw her, I felt almost indifferent. It didn’t look like her. It wasn’t her, it couldn’t be. My mom has permanent smile lines. This woman doesn’t have smile lines. She has my mom’s nose and she’s wearing the outfit I picked out for her and she has the same wedding ring even though she’s been divorced for almost 30 years. But the mouth was wrong. It was slack and the cheeks were too smooth. The pinky, though... the pinky on her right hand often made this little crook. It was a detail that was so very her. The pinky was right. The pinky was hers. Not all of her was in that coffin, though, and it felt wrong. Incomplete.
A couple of Native American women sang at my mom's funeral. They started in English with Amazing Grace then they each did a chorus in their own tongue, Cherokee followed by Lakota Sioux. Then they did a traditional Native American Honor Song. It was really beautiful. She would have loved it. And the Cherokee woman put a seashell with salt in her coffin, which is a tradition with her (our?) people. And another of our closer Native friends brought a sprig of sage for her. I added a birthday card from my nephews, a magnet that I made when I was around 9 that said “Thank you for Mothers” (that she mentioned many times over the years), a foam imprint of Romeo’s paw, a Saint Christopher’s medal pin (which she brought up MANY times over the years, how she had one but George threw it out, so Chris and I made sure to go buy her a new one), and... then I made a scene just before the final services, when I realized one more thing that I had planned to put in there with her.
Some backstory first. My brother has this story of one Christmas, maybe around 1987, where all he wanted was this radio. Boombox. Something like that. It was on sale somewhere so he cut out the ad and gave it to her, saying that was the ONLY thing he wanted for Christmas. So Christmas morning rolls around and there’s a large box under the tree with his name on it. He’s excited. He opens this box and finds some phone books and, at the bottom of the box, the ad taped to a piece of paper with IOU written on it. The fake out was so much worse than just not getting the thing! And, to make matters worse, she never followed through and paid the debt created! So, that’s something he likes to regularly bring up. Always jokes about the IOU.
Fast forward to her funeral, or shortly before, and I’m telling Chris how I want to put a note in with her. (She writes notes on EVERYTHING. Seriously. All the things. So there’s a familiarity to notes in our family.) And in this note I want to say something about sending her love, because it’s not something I always said. (I have issues with the words and would rather show through actions.) Chris, pulling from this Christmas story, jokes that I should make it an IOU. Through my tears, I start laughing so hard. That seals it. I’m writing my mom an IOU. Only, I nearly forgot and panicked when the final good-byes are starting and I haven’t written my note. I start crying and gibbering and hyperventilating and just in the periphery of my awareness I can hear friends and family gasp and sob at seeing me break down at my mom’s coffin and I am SO embarrassed but this is something that I feel like I NEED to do. So Chris tracks down the most perfectly-sized ruled paper and a pen and I sit down to write my note while people are rubbing my back and making sure I’m okay.
IOU
A lifetime supply of
HUGS,
KISSES,
and I-LOVE-YOUs.
Nikki
I tuck it under the edge of her cardigan, we sit down through the services, then we say our final goodbye. I finally see a reaction out of my brother as he stands over her, then puts his arm around me and says that she’s finally getting some rest and that this was the only way she would stop. And he’s so right. My very first memory was of her getting ready for work. And, in looking up pulmonary embolisms, I’m finding that they can occur after you break a long bone. She broke her ulna - a long bone - in February of last year... at work. One year and a couple of weeks later that break might have caused her death so, in a weird way, it might have actually been work that killed her. And that sums up so much of who my mom was; a hard-worker. Always giving so much of herself, but not leaving anything for herself. It was mostly coworkers and people she took care of at work that came out to pay their condolences. I just hope she realizes how much she will be missed.