By: Sara O’Lena
Finally, I have a few minutes with my mom, just me and her. Well… me, her, and the night-shift nurse constantly walking in and out of the hospital room, checking her oxygen level, her blood pressure, her temperature, changing her IV every half an hour as it runs out of pain meds.
My mom can’t open her eyes. She can’t respond to me. She can’t even nod her head to let me know that she knows I’m there. I stroke her hands as I lie next to her on the twin bed of room 513. Her hands are as cold as ice. They look like the hands of someone in a casket –they are wrinkly, pale, clammy, and hollowed out.
In two months I’m supposed to be starting my senior year of college, thirteen hours away in South Carolina. Just four months ago I had my first legal drink. Just five months ago I experienced my first heart break. Just seven months ago my mom told me she was dying. Just eighteen months ago I was home on fall break for my mom’s 50th birthday party.
My mom won’t seen any of her three children find the love of their lives, have children, buy homes, or even graduate from college.
I know this is my last chance to talk to her, to tell her all those things I have to say now.
“Now? I really have to do this now?” I think.
I am watching my mother die. I smell rubbing alcohol and disgusting hospital cafeteria food. I am crying, just like I did on December 26, 2007 when my mom told me she only had six months to live.
The tears fall harder and harder as I think about how I will feel when I graduate from college and look into the crowd and don’t see my mother, or how I will feel as I say “I do” without the mother of the bride sitting in the front row.
Stop thinking and get to talking! I’m running out of time.
I try to maintain my composure, but my voice cracks…
“…Mom, you are making this awfully difficult, you know…”
“How am I supposed to relay to your grandchildren how amazing you are? How am I going to show them that you are my best friend?”
“How can I help them realize that you are the greatest woman I have even known?”
“How am I going to keep Dad going?”
“How am I going to finish school?”
“Mom, don’t worry. I promise you I will finish school, just as you want me to. I will go back to South Carolina. I will graduate, and I will go to grad school.”
I squeeze her hands tighter and talk louder as her oxygen hisses and tears fall from my cheeks onto the bed sheet.
“Oh, and I’ll make sure that stubborn twin of a brother I have finishes, too! I promise to take care of Dad and the boys the best I can.”
“I will keep in touch with Amy because I know you guys have been best friends for over 25 years.”
“I will make sure dad doesn’t get rid of any of the cats. I will help him keep the house clean, pay the bills, and go grocery shopping- and not just for junk food!”
“Oh, and mom, if you are waiting for me to say goodbye so that you can leave this Earth, it’s not going to happen.”
I sit upright so I can see her face.
“I will say that I love you more than anything ever, I will say that I am extremely proud of you for the battle you have continually fought, I will say that I will try to stay strong, but I will not say goodbye.”
“Instead I’ll say I’ll see you later, because Mom, I will see you later.”
Twenty-seven hours later she is gone.
It seems instantaneous.
I am motherless.
The tears came when she was gone, but so did the obligations. Suddenly, I am a mother figure to my brothers and a partner figure to my dad.
My dad calls the funeral home, but I make the dreaded phone calls, the “the time has come” phone calls. I call my friends. I call my mom’s best friend Amy. I call my mom’s mom. I call my mom’s brothers and sister. I call everyone.
After the calls, I gather the photos for the boards to be displayed at the funeral home. I look for my mom’s funeral arrangements in her hidden diary back home. I plan the food and beverages the family need during the services, and contact the church, and help dad pick out the songs and church readings.
The ordering of the headstone, the wake, the funeral service, and the luncheon afterward pass by just as quickly as my mom’s last months.
Now, to the inherited to-do-list.
I inherited a “to-do” list.
I promised my mom I would go back to school. I planned to, just not six states away. Not right away at least.
I enroll at the community college in my hometown so I can be with my dad and closer to my brothers.
Whenever I start to feel overwhelmed, I feel her presence, not physically with me in the room, but within me. My mom is here. I can feel her. She always knew when something was wrong or when I was stressed. She’s still here to help. I am not alone.
My dad and I take over the bills and start an on-line banking system that we both can follow. We take death certificates to the bank, send them to life insurance companies, and bring them to the car insurance office.
It feels like we were erasing her. But I know, in the subtlest ways, she is still with me.
Photos of us together line my dresser. Cards she had given me hang on the turquoise wall of my bedroom. And sometimes, as crazy as it sounds, I even feel as if she is selecting the songs that play on my iPod.
“In My Daughter’s Eyes” by Martina McBride. “Again?! Mom, I know! I know that you are still here, but do you have to play it every time I put my iPod on shuffle?!” I laugh aloud.
I travel with my dad and my twin brother, Luke, to Luke’s college to check in with the financial aid office and residence life. Normally, I would be in South Carolina moving into my own dorm room, worrying about my own student loans, not taking care of my brother’s schooling! But this is what she would be doing, and if I can be anything like her, I’ll take it.
Classes begin at my temporary school. Every night that I have homework I also have dishes to do, dinner to cook, a floor to sweep, cats to feed, a brother to check in with, and a dad to comfort and care for.
Through it all I keep those lyrics in mind… “When I’m gone I hope you see how happy she made me. For I’ll be there in my daughter’s eyes.”
As much as I think about being away in sunny and warm South Carolina rather than cold and snowy Illinois, I know just by looking at pictures of my mom I am making her proud.
Six months pass rapidly. Homework, tests, and midterms come and go. Bills paid, groceries bought, the cats fed, Luke checked up on.
Promises are kept.
At midterm I decide to follow up on one of my most important promises to my mom — finishing school. Of course I have been taking general education classes at the community college, but I need to go back to South Carolina. I need to be a Columbia College woman again. I need to graduate sooner rather than later.
Again, I make some phone calls. But this time they aren’t so dreaded. This time I call my academic advisors, the dean of students, and the registrar. My schedule is put into place, my housing deposit is made, and my room slowly fills with boxes and baskets ready to be packed.
Although I constantly worry about leaving my dad or being far away from Luke, I know I have to go. For myself and for my mom. If she were still alive I would be at Columbia College, and since she is alive within me, I will be at Columbia College.
And here I sit in my dorm room of Asbury Hall on the campus of Columbia College in South Carolina. I’ve already talked to Luke today, he’s doing well. My dad will call me in exactly 26 minutes to discuss finances, how he is doing, and how tired he is of the five cats that are still with him at home.
Next to me is a coffee mug with my mom’s photo on it. In front of me are those pictures that lined my dresser back home. To my left are the cards that hung on my turquoise wall, but now they are on my rainbow colored cork board. And what do I hear in the distance… “for I’ll be there in my daughter’s eyes…”
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I was there when this essay was written, but it is still extremely powerful today. Sara you are a great writer and I know that you are making your mother proud!!!!