I’ve started and stopped this entry roughly 200 times. The first 50 times I had to stop because I kept crying when I started. The next 50 nothing I wrote made sense because my brain was just not working well. The last hundred times, I opened a file and suddenly found myself unable to find the words to say what I want to say.
My mother called me at 6:30 on a Sunday morning. When I answered all I heard was my mother saying “You have to come! She won’t wake up!” I asked all the usual questions (did you call 911? what hospital are they taking her too?) while Kevin threw on clothes because he had awoken to me saying “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god” while hunched over the bed. Just before I hung up, I heard her say “I don’t think we’re going to a hospital.”
We didn’t talk during the entire 30 minute drive. I clutched my phone, waiting for my mom to call me again, to tell me that Jackie was awake and they were on their way to the hospital so I could meet them there. But she didn’t call. The phone didn’t ring and as we drove into my mom’s neighborhood, I saw an ambulance turning out of an intersection. No lights. No siren. And that was the moment I knew.
Jackie was gone. And our family will never be the same.
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Sudden death of someone close to you is a shock to the system, like dipping your soul into a bathtub full of ice. This is something I have learned over and over and over again because every person I’ve lost has gone suddenly, sometimes violently, always too soon. But this time was different.
She’d had yet another surgery, the fourth in 3 years. This time it was her sinuses instead of her pacemaker or her hernia or the giant 9 lb mass that filled her abdomen. She’d had pain issues afterwards but seemed to be doing better.
And then she was gone.
When I got to the house, there was a sheriff standing guard, because they were waiting for the medical examiner to come and pick her up. I have never cried as hard as I cried while my mom and I huddled on the couch clinging to each other. And then we stopped, and started walking around in a fog that didn’t life for the entire month of July.
I made so many phone calls that day, the next day. Calls that started with me being calm and ended with me trying not to sob into the ear of the person I had just called. I could not handle calling my friends, because I knew that talking to them would break me. So instead I sent the worst text messages ever.
“Can you tell Char I won’t be there this week? Jackie died this morning.”
“I won’t be at Bunco, Jackie died.”
“Can you call me when you have a chance. Need to talk, v important.”
I told Laura while she was sitting in the car on her way to the Grand Canyon. I told my uncle while he was at his lake house enjoying the holiday weekend with his grandchildren. I woke up one of my mom’s best friends and said what my mom said: you have to come over.
Jackie’s dead. We lost Jackie. She passed away, she’s gone, she died. I said it over and over and over again but it didn’t seem real until I came home to get some clothes and took a minute to tell Twitter.
And then I cried so hard I almost threw up.
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Mom and I were talking the other day and we agreed that it was for the best that Jackie’s death was automatically a medical examiner’s case because of her recent surgery; if it hadn’t been, we wouldn’t have had any idea what to do as far as removing her body from the house (and we would not now know that they charge $20 for body bags). She hadn’t planned her funeral, other than putting down in writing that she wanted to be cremated. So we went to the funeral home and memorial park where so many of our friends had buried family members.
The funeral director looked 12, but she was sweet and efficient and completely respectful of my mother and her relationship with Jackie. We had everything planned before we picked anyone up from the airport. It was an odd way to spend the 4th of July, surrounded by sad people, quiet people, and a million boxes of Kleenex. I remember wondering what their monthly Kleenex bill must be; it has to be astronomical.
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The phrase I kept saying to my mother as I put away files and reminded her to lock up Jackie’s purse and put away things we didn’t want people snooping through was “Death makes people stupid.” Above all, I wanted my mother’s privacy protected. I fielded phone calls from family members asking what happened, how did she die, will your mom be okay? I searched through paperwork trying to reassure myself that she would be okay, that their lawyer had covered everything, that my mom wouldn’t have to sell the house and move to some horrible tiny apartment.
I ordered a case of wine and made Kevin pick it up to bring to my mom’s house. I taught my uncle how to make a good, strong Paloma. I bit my tongue when my family members acted like idiots and treated me like the flighty 12 year old I once was, and I poured myself another glass of wine. I took Jackie’s almost 4 years old granddaughter on “abentures” in the backyard that her grandmother designed and tended to so happily.
Family relationships have already started shifting. Jackie’s son and I are talking more now than we ever used to, but it’s good. Jackie’s sister is being too hovery and bossy for my mom’s liking but luckily, she’s in another state. My mom spends a lot more time on the phone and Skype with far flung friends who keep calling her.
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I feel guilty saying it but things are easier between my mom and I now. She and I worked out our shit years ago, through a lot of arguments and discussions and honest conversations. Jackie and I were getting there when she got sick in 2009, but then things got bad. She was in pain, she didn’t feel well, she worried about my mom, she worried about being out from work, and she missed her son and her grandkids.
And she took a lot of her frustrations out on me.
So it was hard, because Mom and I had to pick and choose how and what we talked about sometimes. There were things she would do for me without letting Jackie know because it was just easier that way. It was what it was, and I had every faith that things would get easier and more comfortable again once Jackie got healthy again, once they figured out how to get her heart beating calmly and her sinuses cleaned up so she wasn’t in constant pain.
But before that could happen, before we could get to that easier, more comfortable spot, Jackie died. Her heart wore out and stopped while she slept, and my mom and I are left behind to have the relationship we always had minus the tension. We text and email and call, I sit with her at meetings with the lawyer, she watches my dog when dogsitting arrangements fall through, she lets me do laundry at her house and I help her do her Costco shopping.
We are, above all else, friends. All those people who told me to take care of my mom don’t realize this, and they don’t realize that we take care of each other. We always have, and if all of this has proven anything, we always will.
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Losing a parent really fucking sucks. Knowing that I will someday go through this again and lose my OTHER parent is enough to make me want to crawl under the covers for good. But if there’s one thing I learned and that I know with all of my heart, it is that I am loved, by so many people. I had an Army of Girlfriends who called and brought lasagnas and wine and ice and babies to keep our spirits comforted, fed, entertained. They let me talk when I needed to talk and they let me cry when I needed to cry; they still do, to this day. I had friends who had never even met Jackie making CDs for the funeral, setting up for the reception after the funeral, sending flowers and Starbucks cards. They were my safety net.
They were my safety net, but Kevin was my rock. Someone once told me that the person you marry should be the person you can imagine standing next to your parent’s grave with. He picked up food for people, he made sure I had coffee and Jamaba Juice and Kleenex. He took care of me and my mother without any consideration for other people; we were his only concern, which was what we needed. He’s never once told me what I should or shouldn’t be doing or feeling or saying (except for the day he kept me from biting the head off of a very sweet employee at the funeral home); he’s let me just *be*.
Love seems inadequate to describe what he’s given me. I only hope I am half as good as him when it’s my turn to be his rock.
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Everything is settling now. The 40 days we had to wait before the house could be transferred is almost up. Mom’s looking for a CPA and a financial planner to figure out where to go from here, but she doesn’t have to leave the home she shared with Jackie for 32 years. She’s starting to clean things out of the house that Jackie refused to give up, and we’re getting into a new routine of emails and phone calls and text messages and biweekly visits.
The fragile days are getting farther apart, but we can all see the rough spots coming up. Her birthday in September. Thanksgiving. Christmas. Everyone else’s birthdays. The Fourth of July.
I miss her. I miss being able to ask her how to fix things in my house, I miss arguing with her about whether my memories were wrong, I miss her pie crust, I miss her making coffee in that damn percolator.
I guess that part probably won’t ever go away though.
