remember

Tonight was the finale of “Everybody Loves Raymond”. It was one of my mom’s favorite shows. She was sad when she found out that it was the last season. She did not live long enough to see it end.

My mom watched the reruns every night at 9 PM and at 9:30 PM. She would wait to take her medicine until after Raymond was on because it made her sleepy and she would be mad if she missed the show. Even in the hospital we would watch Raymond, twice a night, every night. My mom was never much of a TV fan until she got sick with cancer. She had liked a few shows here and there before she got sick…”I Love Lucy”, “Golden Girls”, “Cheers”, “Newhart”, “Green Acres” and a few others. But everything changed when cancer struck. There was not much else for her to do other than watch TV because the surgery and chemotherapy were so difficult. She never complained, she just watched her TV shows. It was an escape from the real world. She could just watch her shows and not think about being sick. She was like a living TV guide…she knew what was on TV at all times of the day and night. She used to tease me for being a TV junkie when I was younger. Now she could tell me everything that happened on ”The Apprentice”, “Survivor”, “Dharma and Greg”, “King of Queens” and of course, “Everybody Loves Raymond”. Her favorite character was Marie, the mother. She was my favorite character as well.

The show was difficult to watch. In the show, Ray had a close call with death of sorts. Watching the scene at the hospital where they thought he wasn’t going to make it through the operation brought me right back to my mom’s surgery to remove the cancerous part of her lung. For as long as I live I will never forget the surgeon coming into the waiting room, an hour and a half after the surgery was supposed to be done, and simply saying “I’m sorry, there were complications.” My heart sunk. Everything went black. I thought my mom had died in the operating room. I was convinced my mom was dead. “Complications.” Complications is a word you never want to hear when a loved one is in surgery. After what seemed to be eternity, in reality a few seconds, the surgeon went on to tell us that she lost the whole lung because of the unexpected bleeding and that there was nothing they could do. She was still alive. There had just been “complications”. She was alive but without her left lung instead of only losing part of it. Even now I wonder why the surgeon did not start by saying something like “she is ok, but there were some complications” or “she is resting now, but there were some complications”. Why, if only for a second, let us believe she was gone? That second is a second I will remember for the rest of my life. Tonight a lot of bad memories were triggered by that scene. It was tough to watch, to say the least.

It seems that just about every show I watch lately someone is dying, or almost died or is coming back from the dead. TV is not the escape from real life it once was.

My brother came over today. He talked about mom for quite a bit. I just listened to him, sharing in his grief. He told me how he will just be going along in the day and then it hits him out of the blue and he is overcome with such sadness and sense of loss. I told him I understand, because I really do. I have those moments often. He talked about how sad he is and how he feels robbed in life. Again, I agreed…I’m standing right beside him, I know how he feels. I feel terrible for him, because I know how difficult it is. How raw and overwhelming it is. How endless the grief and sorrow seems right now. But, I am also glad that he is feeling something. He has the eerie ability to not acknowledge difficult things and never deal with them. I am so relived that he feels something. He is taking steps towards healing and that gives me some peace and hope. I am not sure about my sister. She never was one to deal with things on an emotional level for most of her life. But, now she does when it comes to her daughter, but that is it. I don’t think it has hit her fully yet. I fear for her when it does.

Last night I read, for the millionth time, a letter my mom wrote to me when she was in the hospital. While she was writing the letter, she had started to have the pain in her foot from the blood clots for the first time. While she was writing the letter, the end was truly starting. A few minutes after she wrote the letter and gave it to me I had to explain to her that she was dying and there was nothing they could do to save her. When I look at the letter, it takes me right back to that moment in the hospital. The morning of April 1, 2005. April Fool’s Day. A day without laughter for us. I remember everything about that moment. I remember what we were wearing. I remember how we were sitting. I remember her saying how her foot felt weird, kind of like it was falling asleep. I remember taking off her booty and it was starting to turn blue and her saying that she wondering what was going on. I remember looking at her and asking her if she remembered the doctor talking to her about it two days before. She did not remember at all. She asked me what was happening. I remember that moment, frozen in time, realizing that she really did not remember anything about it. I remember my heart breaking and feeling nothing but sadness. I remember crying so hard and she could not figure out why. I remember trying to say the words “you are dying” and nothing coming out but silence until finally they came out and everything stopped. The world stopped spinning. I remember her putting her head down and crying, telling me that she did not remember the doctor telling her that. I told her that I don’t blame her for not remembering, who would want to remember something like that. I kept crying. She comforted me. How in the hell does that make sense? I should have been comforting her. Even in her darkest moments she was the mom and I was the child. Her strength is second to none. In all, she would be told three times that she was dying. Each time, not remembering the times before or not fully understanding. She refused to believe that she was dying. She wanted to be with her family…plain and simple. She wanted to live.

As I read the letter…it all came back to me…again and again and again. This is just one moment out of many. These moments haunt me. I can’t shake them no matter what I do. These moments bring me, a grown man of 30 years, to my knees and renders me speechless and crippled. These moments knock me breathless and leave me in a pile on the floor. These moments are burned into my soul, they are a part of me forever.

Tomorrow marks one month since her death. One month…one year…eternity…it is all the same when you are without the most important person in your life. Tomorrow will be spent at the cemetery.

It is like a horrific nightmare but only worse…I am not sleeping. There is no way to wake up, it is real.

I miss her so much.