TEN YEARS LATER
TEN YEARS LATER
Ten years. Jesus, right now it feels like 10 minutes. I've lived an eventful quarter of my life since 1994: eight jobs, divorced, moved to New York and back, remarried, had a child. But, for the most part, the last decade is like chalk clinging to an eraser. All dust but for handfuls of poignant moments. But August 9, 10 years ago, seems just a breath way. It's a day forever etched into my heart with a razor blade.
My mother died on that day. Her body gave out at the young age of 48, but I sense her soul and spirit had already long since surrendered. She went suddenly, unfulfilled, and mostly alone. She may have realized as early as age 17, unmarried and pregnant, that happiness would be elusive. By '94, her third marriage was coming apart, and the prospect of continued struggle into middle age had beaten her down.
She was airlifted to Henry Mayo Hospital in Valencia from her home in Frazier Park on a Sunday afternoon. Her husband was incommunicado, having begun a motorcycle journey to Sturgis, South Dakota, for the annual Harley run. Fortunately, she was with neighbors when she stopped breathing and collapsed.
I had just put four lines of coke in my nose when I got the news. Only minutes earlier, I'd returned to my Silver Lake apartment from Berkeley, where my then-wife had temporarily moved to teach at the University of California. Fuck. My mother had been rushed to the hospital and I was too tweaked to drive. After an hour, I got in my car, my rapidly pumping heart still pounding through the flesh of my chest. I was sweating, and my head was being excavated with an ice pick.
When I arrived, Mom was asleep, attached to many tubes, including one that slid down her throat that parched her lips and rendered her speechless. The doctor told me he couldn't pinpoint the problem, though he guessed she had suffered a reaction related to medication she was taking to keep her body from rejecting her new kidney. She was in grave danger, he said, and they were still trying to make sense of it all.
I sat with her, unwilling to accept what could be the worst, listening only selectively to the red flags in the doctor's prognosis. I think that's the way you have to be; you simply cannot comprehend, let alone accept, that this is how it ends.
The next day Mom was intermittently conscious, and she was able to communicate by pointing and by taking pencil to paper. When her eyes opened, they showed fear and helplessness, a lucid mind enslaved by a wilting body. I too felt helpless. I wanted to wish her to health, to promise her a better life, but instead all I could do was caress a wet towel across her boiling head and offer empty assurance.
I stayed until just after midnight. Sitting quietly in the corner of the room, silent but for the eerie beeps of medical monitors, I looked around and found scraps of paper she'd scribbled on throughout the day. The writing was a shaky scrawl, looking not at all like her usual careful penmanship. One note stood out: I almost died, it read. I began weeping uncontrollably. Shaken, I went home for the night.
It seemed like a dream when the phone rang at 4:30 on the morning of August 9. By the third ring I was awake, but I was too paralyzed to answer. I knew what it meant. I tried to go back to sleep, but I could only roll into the fetal position and quietly whimper. She died alone. Why wasn't I there? I had failed her. I was no better than the three husbands who'd abandoned her. Now I too was alone.
Over the past decade I've become an adult, and have tried to understand my mother's life and have taken comfort in appreciating the ways in which she's influenced who I've become. I live now as if she's somehow nearby, and try to do the kinds of things that would have made her happy and proud. I've learned many lessons from her, and she will forever serve as the force that drives me to savor every moment as a parent and a person.
To honor my mother, I legally added her maiden name at the end of my last name shortly before my wedding in 2001. And now my son's last name is the same as his grandmother's. Not a day goes by when I don't think about my mother. She's been gone 10 years, but we're closer than ever.Published: 08/05/2004
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