I want to say that it was the worst month of my life.
I want to say that I was smacked in the face by reality, that I didn’t expect what happened.
The truth is, I can’t.
You see, I can’t say that I didn’t see it coming. I can’t say that it was a surprise. That particular day? I wasn’t expecting to get the call. I had just seen her a few days before. She stopped by my house asking for help with one of the Christmas presents she had bought for my niece, and was in a great mood.
It was a quick visit…she had more shopping to do, she said.
She’d see me on Christmas Eve for dinner, she said.
She loves me, she said.
I love her too, I said.
The next I heard, she was gone.
I was at work when that very same niece discovered my mother, unresponsive. My sister called me, frantic, saying “something’s wrong with mom!”. I worked in Hamilton, Ohio at the time, about an hour and 20 minutes from my mom’s house. I told my assistant that I had to go. I was in a near-panic, which, to those who know me personally, is not my normal state of being, even in emergencies.
I am the guy who busies himself by assuring everyone else that everything is going to be alright, even as my own world comes crumbling down around me. I think it’s part bravado, part defense mechanism. In this case, it was all bullshit, and all non-existent. My mommy was in trouble. Intellectually, I knew it was the end. I had expected this call one day, but not the week of Christmas. This was her favorite time of year.
When I was growing up, before I moved in with my dad at 12 years old, my mom had always, for as long as I could remember, made Christmas a special time of year for my sister and me, and, later, our kids. We never had a lot of money, but she always found a way to make it work out so that we kept our love of Christmas for as long as possible. We made construction paper chains of red and green for the tree, baked Christmas cookies in every conceivable holiday-related shape, sang our own stupid versions of Christmas songs (“Deadeye the One-Eyed Cowboy”–to the tune of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”–comes to mind), etc. Up until adulthood, I cherished Christmas and the fun and closeness that it brought with it…and I had my mother to thank for it.
As I crossed into adulthood, I watched my mother deteriorate. Due to a couple of auto accidents, a fucktard ex-husband who liked to beat women, and a few other factors, she was in a lot of pain. Add a doctor with loose morals when it came to his prescription pad, and you have the recipe for an addict.
“Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children.” -William Makepeace Thackeray
My mother, the woman who had, for all intents and purposes, been “God” to me as a child, was exactly that–an addict.
Once I was an adult, and saw what was truly going on, I, in typical Rusty fashion, did not shy away from telling her what I thought of her addiction and subsequent behavior. We fought like proverbial cats and dogs, and to this day, I don’t regret a single time of standing up and telling her that her addiction was destroying our relationship…
…that her addiction was killing her…
What I do regret, however, is that I wasn’t persistent enough. My mother, my mom…was in trouble.
On my way from Hamilton, Ohio to Crittenden, Kentucky, I got another call…my mom was gone. I could barely see through my tears well enough to drive.
Once I got to my mom’s house, I found my then-wife standing outside by her car, smoking a cigarette. We had both quit smoking years before, but this seemed like an adequate excuse to backslide for a day…and I lit up a smoke myself. My sister was, in typical Bobbi fashion, bouncing around with no real idea how to react, but no shortage of words spewed in nonsensical directions.
My stepdad, (not the previously-mentioned beater of women) was inside, talking to the coroner when I walked in. I hugged him, told him I loved him, and we sat together until the coroner came out and informed us that they were bringing “the body” out, and advised us to turn our backs, because we “shouldn’t have to see her” that way.
I lapsed back into my customary “rock” mode, trying to make sure everyone else was okay…trying to deny that I wasn’t okay. It was undeniable, and a half pack of cigarettes served as witnesses to my lack of “okayness” that day.
After a few forms were signed by my stepdad, the coroner was on his way back to his office. We were informed that an autopsy would be performed and that we would be able to hold the funeral the following week…
My mom died without life insurance or savings, but my family really pulled through for her, and for us. My cousin, Tony, gave me a burial plot for her. My stepdad happened to have grown up with a local funeral home owner, and so a discount was arranged. A collection was taken up amongst the family, and a good chunk of the funeral expenses were covered, with my Aunt Judy (my mom’s identical twin) and her husband, my Uncle Marvin, making up the difference. My Aunt’s church put together a meal for the funeral attendees for afterward. Flowers and the other niceties were given by various family and friends…and I was and I remain grateful to each and every person who helped out when I couldn’t.
I miss my mother, dearly, but I cannot truthfully say that I didn’t see it coming. I had watched her deteriorate because of her pain and her addiction for far too long to deny that the inevitable was going to happen. Even so, I pretended that we were in some sort of fucked-up stasis, that she could continue to maintain…I was wrong to do so.
A couple weeks after the funeral, the toxicology report came back–17 different medications in her system. That’s what got her.
A part of me wants to go on a rant about how much of a piece of shit the doctor who prescribed the drugs that got her hooked is, but that is a story for another time.
This is about my mother’s passing, and how I coped with it.
I could have emblazoned the memory of her lying in her coffin into my mind, but I refused. I choose to concentrate on remembering the sparkle in her eye, the smile on her face from the last visit I had with her. She wasn’t quite the same as she had been when I was a kid, but, for the first time in a long time, my mom was back, at least a little bit. That is how I choose to remember her. That is the vibrant woman who I carry with me in my heart wherever I go. That is how she would want me to remember her.
That way, she gets to stay forever young…
By the way, Mama, Zoe loved her new bike that Christmas.
