the special of today's sadness

it's been 21 years

Today it’s raining. I wish I could remember what the weather was like on that day. Some things slip away from the memory. Or they were never there, never an important part of the experience. I think perhaps it wasn’t raining.

Those 21 years ago.

I remember small things. Like having to ask my cousin to drive me down the coast. That Sam couldn’t drive me, that his parents couldn’t. That I didn’t have my licence then. So, calling my cousin to take me to that then unknown moment in my life.

A moment that probably will always be in my memory. Even though I have no idea what the conversation was about with him, in the car. No idea what I was wearing. No idea if it was raining. I think it was a Thursday. I can’t remember. (I just checked, and it was a Thursday). Why did my brain remember that piece of information…

What I do remember, more distinctly than most anything else in my life, is the way that my father fell into my body when I first stepped into the emergency room of the hospital. The way his whole weight collapsed onto me. Me being the first to arrive, before my siblings. Me being the one there. After he’d held it together for however long. How his arms went around me and that was it.

Somehow I just knew. My whole essence knew what that meant. Of course, I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to be so sure about it. Of course, my essence and that instinct must have been wrong. Because there’s no way that could have happened.

That sort of thing only happens to other people. In movies, and books. And in the overheard stories of other peoples’ lives. That sort of thing doesn’t happen to me, to us, to our family.

I don’t get called to the hospital, on a random Thursday, to find out that my mother has died. When I’m only a child myself. I was only 24. I didn’t have children of my own yet. I didn’t barely know life yet. I hadn’t taken the opportunity to know my mother in a true relationship as two grown women.

My mother died of a brain aneurysm. We describe it to our children as a little bit of blood in the wrong part of the brain. I don’t know if she felt any symptoms. The drs told us perhaps a slight headache.

When I walked into that emergency room I knew she wasn’t there. That she was gone. Even though she was on a breathing machine. The official day was today, 27th March. On a Thursday. But as they didn’t turn off the machine until midnight, then the dates in records must say 28th March. A Friday. I haven’t looked at official records. It doesn’t matter to me. I know that when my father lead me into that curtained off bed. I know that my mother was no longer there. Her body was there. Her body. But not her.

Of course, I didn’t believe it. I sat down beside her. Reading to her. Trying to read to her. Wanting to read to her. Of course being distracted and not reading to her. I have The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolle in my bag. I’m not sure why. I think I must have grabbed a few things thinking I’d be having a little holiday at my parent’s house. It was a book that my mother had given me some years previously. I kept telling her she would wake up soon, that it wasn’t real. My father told me gently that she wouldn’t wake up.

After some time he and I sat in a funny little room. The nurses offered us cups of tea. Perhaps there’s nothing they can keep saying to people in these situations. They have endless, all day, all month, all year. The little dramas of other people’s lives. The dramas that were around us, that I have no recollection of even noticing. They kept offering us tea. We kept saying no. I sat on the floor. My father sat on a chair. I think I cried. But not really. Not any of that screaming moaning crying. Just a quietness. Him neither. I think the falling upon me in that first moment, that was it.

I have never spoken to my father about that. Not once in the past 21 years. I wonder if I ever will. I know we all remember different things from moments like this. And maybe he won’t remember that.

They took my mother to another bed. Another room. Out of the emergency room. A place her family could gather, to hold her hand. To see her. To try and understand what this meant.

While my father and I sat in that tiny room, the rest of the family gathered - my 3 siblings and my 1 small nephew (still a baby), my grandmother, my cousin, my aunt. Were there 2 aunts, or 1 aunt? I don’t remember. I remember when my father and I walked into the room they were all in, I said ‘she’s gone’. I think I whispered it. My father told them. I don’t know what she said. I don’t recall the reactions of those people. Of my family.

I recall much that night. And yes some things are not in my memory. Maybe they never made it into my consciousness at all. Maybe I can’t recall their reactions as I was holding my father’s reaction in my body. And my own reaction.

I do remember, and I hope I always will, the way that my young nephew - held in his mother’s arms - called out when they turned that machine off. He had been quiet all evening (late and sleeping time for him). And yet, he called out for her. A plaintive cry. Just one loud distinct call. He didn’t continue to cry. Perhaps he felt the rest of the emotions in the room. But he knew.

My sister and nephew who had been living with my parents at the time. My nephew who knew my mother as his own mother. That small 10-month old boy.

His call. My father’s weight upon my body.

My grandmother and aunts washing my mother’s body. I did not know that was a thing to do. I am glad that I know that. There was much, much, much I did not know about death, or the process of death. I did not know about grieving.

I did not know that even 21 years later there is an ache in my heart still. That I can cry, tears can come randomly to my eyes. I did not know that I would spend months wanting to ring her up to tell her something, to talk about my day, or (a few years later) about my children. I did now know that I would sometimes hold the phone in my hand before I’d remember. I did not know this was something that people do.

I did not know that the time she visited me in Brisbane, when she walked me to the bus for my commute to work. When I carried my cup of tea, still drinking it. When the bus was late, and I somehow wasn’t annoyed at the bus being late. I wasn’t anxious I would be late for work. I sat there, talking with my mother. Drinking tea, from the cup that she had made with her own hands. I did not know that would be the last time I would see her as her whole self, or hear her, or have her hold my body in her arms.

In a few weeks it will be the one-month anniversary of my best school friend’s mother’s death. I now know the things she might be going through. I know that she has no one to talk to the way she could talk to her mother. I know that no one will fill that gap, ever, in her whole life. No aunt, no grandmother, no other older woman. I know that to be true, as it is true for me.

What I also know is that humanness goes on. Somehow after the days of meandering around uncertain, lying and not quite fathoming the truth of it. The days of having to plan a funeral - when none of us knew what to do, what that entailed, when my father had no idea how that was supposed to happen. When the people in our community brought us food, when those are things that do happen. The things you see in movies; that people bring lasagne. That however thankful you are, you don’t want to eat or think about eating. But you do any way.

What I do know is that who I am today is partly because of what she left me. Who I am today holds her in me. But not just her. Her death as well. The way her face was calm, peaceful, released. That she had no fear at her own death. I know that I hold that as well.

Like the birth of my 3 children, the death of my mother has defined a part of me, a part of my life. That I will want to call her, to tell her things, to have her meet my children. But that still , despite those things, I know also that her death gave me things I could not / would not have known today.