Losing My Mother
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They say a relationship between a mother and daughter is unique. Nobody has ever known me better than my mom. She always knew when to pry, when to give space, when to offer advice, when to call, which step to take next, and how to help me realize that which I was not able to grasp on my own. The cool thing is, my dad would usually be sitting close by, listening and offering his own advice and support when needed. My parents were intuitive, mindful, and thorough with their parenting strategies. Always thoughtful and intentional when meeting the specific needs of my sister, my brother, and myself.
I remember going into the summer of 2022 and feeling unsettled. It was the beginning of summer break, a monumentally exciting time for a teacher, yet I had this eerie feeling that something was off. Something big was going to happen. We had just gotten back on our feet after the pandemic, but I felt like the hell wasn’t over yet. I felt as though there was one more massive tidal wave way off in the distance, making it’s way straight towards me and my family.
Mom started having breathing issues back in 2010, and was diagnosed with severe asthma. She had never been treated for asthma before, but soon started her long journey with Prednisone and other corticosteroids to keep her asthma under control. She would often describe it as feeling like she was breathing out of a straw. The long-term side effects of asthma steroids include osteoporosis, cataracts, immune suppression, adrenal suppression, weight gain, swelling of the face called “moon face”, mood changes, and an increased risk of diverticulitis and colon perforation. During August and September of 2022, my mom had several procedures to repair compression fractures in her spine. The amount of medication she had to take to keep her asthma under control for the past 12 years was starting to take a toll on her body. As I tried to continue our daily talks after school, there were several times where she didn’t have the energy to carry on a conversation. Her speech was slurred from the pain medication, and she could barely put together a sentence. It was during those moments when I first started to feel like my mom was slipping away.
While I always knew the inevitable would happen sooner than later with my mom, I didn’t realize I was going to have to face it at age 37. Sure, I am an adult now with children of my own…but I still needed my mom and I think she knew that. Leading up to her death, I was struggling with my own mental health following the pandemic. My parents always had my back, and my mom would push me to take care of myself at times when I was notorious for putting the needs of others before my own. If I wasn’t taking very good care of myself, she would call me out on it. She would check-in on me daily, both because she wanted to and she felt she needed to. I could talk to her about anything. But as these conversations became more and more difficult for her to have, who was I supposed to talk to?
On September 20 I had the biggest panic attack I had ever had. I felt like the world was literally coming to an end. My limbs went numb, I couldn’t breathe, everything felt fuzzy and dizzy, and I had a migraine afterwards. I felt like the world was coming to an end. The tidal wave was coming. I didn’t know what exactly it was or when it would arrive, but it was coming.
On October 23rd my mom went to the hospital with a severe diverticulitis flare up.
On October 29th there was another, final, but failed attempt at finding the source of the bleed in my mom’s colon. She continued to receive multiple blood transfusions. Her lung disease made her a very poor candidate for surgery to remove her colon, but she had no other choice. She was constantly losing blood and undergoing blood transfusions.
On November 4th my mom had surgery to remove her colon. My last text message from her was “I love you…I want you to focus on conferences and school…I will be fine. I love you.” It was a busy time. Parent-teacher conferences were November 3rd and 4th. The kids didn’t have school due to conferences, so my girls were spending the night with my sister-in-law. Jeff was traveling for work. I was at home by myself. I remember sitting on my couch the night before her surgery, and all I could focus on was fear and worry. I worried about whether or not her body was strong enough to make it through surgery. I thought about what would happen if she didn’t make it. What would my life look like if I didn’t have my mom? Who would I talk to?
On November 11th my mom was admitted to the ICU with sepsis. She was put on a ventilator. My sister sent me a text message early in the morning with all of the details. I was by myself with the girls, the dog, and a busy dance schedule that included the first performance of the season. I frantically pulled together some plans, and made it to the hospital that evening. My hear sank when I saw my mom in her ICU room. My sister, the eldest, had already been at the hospital for quite a while after my dad contacted her late the night before when things really started to go downhill. I remember asking my sister, “Is Mom going to be ok? Is she going to pull through this?” My sister calmly responded with, “I don’t know.” Looking back, I can’t imagine what must have been going through my sister’s mind and how she must have been feeling. Being the eldest sibling, she always stepped up to the leadership role with grace and perfection. She was a natural. However, this was different. This was our mom.
On Thanksgiving, my sister (Emily) and I visited Mom in the ICU for a majority of the evening. We laughed as we patiently attempted to communicate with my mom through what felt like a tedious game of Wheel of Fortune. She would try to trace letters on our hands or with a pen and paper to spell words. When that didn’t work, we turned to flash cards that had individual letters, diagraphs, and common words that we thought she might use to communicate her questions, answers, and needs. Our combined years of teaching were being put to the test in a very unique way! The best sentence we could come up with was, “I am parade.” We translated this as Mom wanting to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade, which was no longer airing that late into the evening.
Fast-forward to November 30th, we were starting to make plans to move my mom into a rehabilitation center to help her gain back strength and get off the ventilator. She had a procedure later in the week to put a trach in place for the ventilator so that they could remove the tube from her mouth. I was so full of hope and determination, already making plans to visit her at rehab right after school so that I could cheer her on while she slowly gained back her strength and mobility. I told her we were going to try really hard to get her home for Christmas.
On December 1st, I went to visit my mom late in the evening. We were coming up to the end of visiting hours, and the nurse was starting a routine check-in. Having been heavily medicated since arriving in the ICU, I knew my mom had no idea what day it was. All she knew was how badly she wanted to be home for the holidays, and I didn’t have the heart to tell her that this window was quickly coming to a close. As the nurse made her way into the room, checking everything over, she said in a cheerful voice, “Hi Christy! It’s December 1st!” Tears started to well up in my mom’s eyes.
On December 2nd, Mom spiked a fever.
On December 3rd I had my last attempt at a conversation with my mom. I didn’t know it would be our last, and I’ve learned that it is sometimes better that way. Then you can really live in the moment. It was fun. My brother and I were both with her, cracking jokes and making each other laugh.
On December 4th mom started to experience respiratory distress on the ventilator.
On December 7th we sat around a big conference table and listened as the doctor told us that Mom was never going to recover, and we had a difficult decision to make.
On December 8th, 2022 my mom passed away. She was surrounded by my dad, my sister, my brother, and our close friend. It was quick. Once they took her off the ventilator, it was less than 10 minutes before she took her last breath. They had her heavily sedated and comfortable. It was a peaceful passing, but one that I will never forget. You don’t forget things like watching your mother take her last breaths of air as the color slowly fades from her face and body.
To say we were heartbroken would be an extreme understatement. I was sick with grief for the next several weeks. We all were.
I spent the next several months in a daze, experiencing waves of grief in a variety of ways. There was a lot of random crying. There were also a lot of migraines and panic attacks. Some days I felt sick to my stomach. I couldn’t go back to teaching for a while, and ended up taking a leave of absence. The grief wasn’t just emotional, it took physical control over my body.
I felt lost. I didn’t know how to live without my mom. I still needed her. I needed our daily talks and that persistent, instinctive, and unconditional love that only a mother can provide. I felt like a child lost in a huge space filled with strangers, not knowing where to go or what to do. I felt abandoned. The question that kept repeating over and over in my head was, “Who am I supposed to talk to?” I didn’t know how to live without her, and I certainly didn’t have the confidence or the trust in myself to figure it out on my own. So I sat down in the middle of that huge space where I felt lost, and just stayed there for a while as I thought about what to do. Tracing back through all of my mental notes from past conversations, I remembered what my mom would always say when things got tough. “Keep doing the next right thing.” So that’s what I did. Sometimes, the next right thing was to brush my teeth or take my girls to school. Other times, the next right thing was something bigger, like going back to work or facing or getting through my first Mother’s Day without my mom. I started trying to show up for myself because I no longer had a mom to show up for me during those moments of darkness. Sometimes I failed miserably, but I kept getting back up and trying again because that is what she taught me to do. No matter what age you are when you lose your parents, there is a big part of you that is forced to grow up quickly as you face the world without the security blanket that you had come to rely on since birth. Grief is the kind of thing that will never resolve or go away. You don’t “get over it” within a specific frame of time. Grief is something you learn to life with on a daily basis. How you choose to live with it is up to you. I will always have times where I feel ambushed by grief. Sometimes it just shows up, unannounced and inconveniently taking over the moment. But these experiences are becoming less frequent and more accepted as I continue to navigate life without the one person who was my guide through it all for so long. I’ve learned to take what she has taught me and become my own guide. I may not have realized it at the time, but those daily conversations and “check-ins” were more like life lessons that I would refer back to once my mom was gone. This is how a mother’s legacy lives on, and is what makes me so lucky to have had her as my mother.
Below are links to some books that helped me during the first year after my mom passed away…
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