The hospital I am doing my internship at is where I used to work nearly two years ago, so I am friends with alot of people there. So, walking into the hospital without seeing someone I know isn't exactly realistic thinking. Everywhere I turned, there was someone else. And they all had the same look on their face, used the same "Oh, hi honey..." sad undertone with their arms reached out to me. I hope this doesn't sound angry. I was not angry. But this is what I was afraid of, having to force a trooper-like smile and greet them and say thank you as they hugged me. Don't get me wrong. I am definitely appreciative of the support. But it's hard to put things behind you and move on when you are reminded all over again of the life you are currently living, and it just so happens to be one person less. And that person is your mom.
About half-way through the day, I thought to myself, "This isn't so bad. I can do this." I walked out of there with a sigh of relief and on my way to the park to run. I stretched as I let the warm October sun cascade a shadow across the parking lot, and I set off. Immediately everything was wrong. My muscles ached, I couldn't catch my breath, my right knee was sore. I wanted to stop, hardly even five minutes in. I thought about my mom, how much she wanted to stop. How many times she told me she wanted to go home, how many time she cried out of fear and exhaustion but kept on with treatment, how she never stopped being brave and never stopped giving up, all the way into the ICU. I ran my mile. I finished. But it wasn't a run I was proud of. I was so glad it was over.
On my way to dinner with my boyfriend, I had an image, one I'd stuffed far away in the corners of my memory. Because it was absolutely heart-breaking. Actually, there are several different images. They are all of my mom, after my grandma died. I remember her crying, sitting on her bed with me and saying, "I don't have a mommy anymore." Her dad had passed away many years ago. She said, "I don't have my parents anymore. I'm an orphan." You know how, no matter how old you are, when your mom cries, it rips at your heart and breaks it just enough to almost mimic what they are feeling? That is how these images made me feel tonight, sitting in the car. The next image is of me and my parents sitting in my dad's parents' living room. My grandma is hugging my mom, as if she were her own child, her own baby, and my mom cried into her sweater, and my grandma patted her head and said, "I know. I know. It's hard." And my mom sobbed, her heart broken from the fresh sting of losing her mother. The last is of my mom walking into the funeral home and her first glance at seeing her mother laying in the casket. She stopped in the hallway, with the room and the casket to the right, and she stood there and sobbed. Loud, heavy, heart-breaking, gut-wrenching sobs. The kind that make you feel like you have to leave the room. All for her mother. And I remember how I felt for her, how sad I was for her although I could not fully understand. She was almost 50.
I got a card that said no matter how old you are, when your mom passes away you feel like you are a scared, lost child all over again.
I am 23. I no longer have a mother. This realization is so difficult to grasp, to truly understand, although it is doing a fine job at attempting to settle in. I am definitely scared, and I am definitely lost. I missed her so much today, I called her voicemail twice at my internship, once at my boyfriend's house, and once on the way home tonight. I sleep with her tinkerbell blanket my aunt Janny made for her last Christmas, the one she had with her at the hospital. I also sleep with one of her favorite tinkerbell sweatshirts, the one I slept with when she was first diagnosed. They don't smell like her though. I wish they did. My mom wore Shalimar perfume, baby powder-scented deodorant, and Vanilla Lace body lotion, and she smelled so light and pleasant, and you could detect every note of what she had on. I miss her so much sometimes that I do not understand how I will even wake up tomorrow. You feel as if a part of you dies with them. You look at them, looking so peaceful, no heartbeat, no slow rhythmic ups and downs of their chest. Nothing, but still somehow peaceful. But then this pit, this ache starts to build so deep in your body, and you realize that you are no longer whole anymore. I have been told by many that that hole will never actually be repaired, that after your mom dies, a part of you always remains lost, although you "recover." I am slowly starting to understand what they meant more and more each day.
Tonight on my way home, I caught a glimpse of myself in the rear-view mirror. My eyes, in particular. They were bloodshot from exhaustion, glazed over, and puffy from crying. And it hit me: Hope in whose eyes? When I first came up with that name, I wanted it to be a little misunderstood, a little thought-provoking. In my mom's eyes? In mine? Maybe both? Truly, I didn't even know for sure, but I liked the way it sounded.
She had such hope in her eyes, though. She really did. She was frightened, but she had a completely positive outlook and was convinced of her recovery. After our first meeting with the doctors in Cleveland Clinic, I felt as if they had given her a death sentence, and she knew by the look on my face that I had heard too much. I was upset, and she looked at me and asked, "Did we even talk to the same people in there?"Maybe I'm negative. Maybe I'm realistic. Maybe I have seen too many things at work and have learned too many things in class. I forced myself to have hope, although I didn't always believe it. Maybe that title was a way of trying to convince myself. All I know is that tonight, the look of my eyes was so eerie to me and so shocking, that I wondered if I would ever have hope in my eyes again. With the roller coaster I am riding day-to-day, who knows. Tonight I do not feel as though I will. Tomorrow may be a different story. And I'll be there to try and figure it out.
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