435 days of prayer and one month later…

Today marks one month since my mom’s death. One month. Not sure if it sped by in a blur or crept along at a snail’s pace. Depends on the moment I was asked, I guess. Even as I sit here now I can’t make up my mind. Always in a state of indecision. When did that happen? I was never this indecisive before. Now I am. I am sure it is all part of this horrendous experience. Someday I hope to find myself again. For now, I am lost and I have no idea where to even start looking.

Today I went to her grave and thought about the day she died. I thought about the moments leading up to her death, the death itself, and the aftermath. It was not easy. But, I suppose part of the whole journey is facing the demons and the moments of darkness. I just kept looking at her grave asking myself “how did it ever come to this?” I had not thought this would have happened so soon. I believed with all my heart she would be cured. That we would find something, somewhere, somehow that would cure her. I figured we would beat this together and she would be with us well into her old age. I realized today at her grave that she will never grow old. Her hair will never gray. Her skin will never wrinkle. She will never age. She will always be 51 years old. There will be a day when I am old and gray, but that day will never come for her.

I prayed for 435 days straight for a cure, a second chance, a miracle. I started praying for her to be healthy again and for a cure the day the doctors discovered her cancer on February 6, 2004 and I prayed right up until the day of her death April 17, 2005…435 days straight. 435 days of prayers…thousands of prayers said by myself alone and it wasn’t enough.

I still pray every night, they are just different prayers. I pray that she is in heaven and that she is at peace and that God gives my family and me strength.

I remember the moments before her death…I remember her restlessness and her agitation. She could not find peace or comfort no matter how hard she tried. Her breathing was hard and labored, due to the fact that she was probably getting some sort of infection in her only remaining lung. Finally she had a moment where she was able to sleep. I did the same. It was the only moment of sleep in so many hours because she had been up the whole night before. I was sleeping on the floor next to her bed…not a deep sleep by any means since I had only been lying down for about 15 minutes or so when I realized she was not breathing hard or coughing. The silence was deafening. My eyes immediately flew open and I leaped up to her side. She was still alive, but not able to talk. I grabbed her hand and held tightly to it, her rosary was in her other hand and my other hand was over her heart. I kept trying to get her wake up and talk to me. I kept calling out “mom” over and over and over. I said “I love you” and called out “mom” again and she took two deep breaths and was gone. My world went black. I kept trying to find a heartbeat, there was none. My sister came down from upstairs and checked for a pulse, there was none. All I could say was “oh my God” over and over and over and over. oh my God, oh my God, oh my God in a terrified and hysterical voice. My brother woke up and was devastated. My sister was crying hard and my step-dad was checking for a pulse saying there was none and she was gone. It was the most horrific moment of my life. I never thought she would go in the morning. For some reason I was convinced she would go at night, she was always so much sicker at night…it just seemed to make sense. This was the moment that we had been warned about, we knew it was coming eventually and yet it took us all by surprise and left us in a state of shock. She died at 10:20 AM.

My sister had to call Hospice to notify them that she was gone. I could not do it, I was crying to hard…unable to speak. We were told it would take an hour and a half for the nurse to get there. While we were waiting for the nurse to get there I sat next to mom’s bed and just kept looking at her. It did not seem real. She looked like she was still sleeping. I held her hand, even though she was dead. I kept waiting for her to squeeze my hand, letting us know we were all mistaken. She never did. I stayed in the living room, I did not want her to be alone. Crazy, I know. While we waited for the nurse to get there I played three songs. One was “Step by Step / I Will Follow” by Michael W. Smith, it’s a song my mom loved and listened to non-stop the 14 months she was sick with cancer. The second was her favorite song of all time, “Hooked on a Feeling” and the last song was “Into the West” by Annie Lennox.

Once the nurse got there she notified the funeral home to come and get her body. Then there was more paperwork and forms to fill out. So many decisions to be made. Finally the funeral director arrives at 1:30 PM or so and it is time to say the final goodbye. We each say our goodbyes to her. I hold her hand one last time and kissed her forehead. They have to put her on a stretcher that goes into the hearse so I helped to lift her off the bed and onto the stretcher. They handed me the pillow that she had been laying on. It was still warm. I thought, in a moment of desperation, that somehow we were all mistaken again…how could her pillow possibly be warm if she was dead? Nothing seemed to make sense. As they zipped up the body bag I thought was going to lose my mind. But, I knew that if I did not see it for myself, I would never be able to fully accept it someday. So I watched, I prayed and I cried. I will never forget it. Then I walked with the stretcher though the house, helped them out the door and help place her in the hearse and watch it drive off down the road. When we went back in the house there was a red rose lying on her bed. The funeral director left it and none of us noticed. I will never forget walking into the living room and seeing her favorite flower, a red rose, lying where she had just died. It stopped me dead in my tracks. I just stood there crying for the longest time.

The weather the day my mom died was beautiful. It was warm, sunny and blue skies for as far as the eye could see. It did not make sense. She had just died. It should have been miserable outside…it should have been cold, raining, storming…anything but beautiful. Nothing seemed to make sense.

Then it came time to make the phone calls. I tried to call a lot of people, but just could not do it. I hung up on a lot of people after just a ring or two. It took all my strength to just stay conscious. I did not have the strength or the desire to talk to many people at all. I called a few people and asked them to pass along the news of her death.

I left that house that day and never stayed there again. I have gone back to collect her things but it is so hard being there without her. I stand in the kitchen and wait her to yell from the living room for me to come and sit with her and talk. I sit in the living room and wait for her to come from the kitchen with her orange ice cream float. I walk through the house and expect to hear her typing away at the keyboard, sending emails to loved ones. I am at the house and I wait for her to be there. But she isn’t there. She will never be there again. I don’t ever want to be there without her.

A part of me died along with my mom. 10:20 AM. April 17, 2005. One month ago today.