The night mama died, I leaned over the kitchen table to clear it for dinner. A powerful feeling of dread came over me. I had experienced this feeling, a kind of cold gripping in the heart area, only once before, the night I learned that my father had suffered a heart attack and gone into a coma. That was 34 years ago. Both times I knew what the feeling meant, and both times I dismissed it, let it pass by me. As I had done with her the previous three months, I would listen to professional warnings and observations, but not really take them in.
This time was somewhat different because I am now 65 years old instead of 30. It’s different because she was 100 years old, daddy only 71. Because after spending hours with her that day as she slept, holding her hand as I said a rosary, stroking her forehead, I felt that she was ready. Of course, I would never be, and she knew that. One day when she mentioned her own death, I must have made a face because she said, you don’t like to hear me talk about that, do you?
So that night, although the strong wave of dread had passed, a less intense version of it lingered. I did not go back to see her that night. I regretted it later, but now I believe it was best. Death seems a private thing to me, especially one that is timely and considered a path to a new realm, and especially for someone as private as she. I had called my brothers that afternoon to tell them the warning of the nurse that it would likely be only days. We were all thinking of her, wondering what to do next. One woke early the next day, the other texted me late that night. We were all together in the ether when she chose to leave. As my son said, I had her for 65 years, but it would never be enough.