I adjust in my seat and grip her hand in both of mine. “Mom . . .” My voice cracks as I attempt to speak. “I’m sorry it took me so long to get here. I should’ve been here to tell you . . . to make sure you knew how much I love you. You’re the only person in my life who’s ever cared for me, and that means more to me than you’ll ever know.”
I take a deep breath as tears continue to stream down my face. “I wish you would wake up. I need you to wake up, and that’s terribly selfish because the nurse told me how damaged your body is and that you’re probably in a lot of pain, but I love you, Mom. I just need you to know that, and as much as it kills me, it’s okay for you to go.”
A sob tears through my chest. “It’s okay to let go.”
Almost as if on cue, there’s a small twitch in her hand, like she’s trying to tell me that she’s heard me before the machines attached to her start going crazy with all kinds of alarms.
I jump up, fear coursing through every part of me. “Mom? Mom?! Someone help me!”
Nurse Joelle rushes into the room, shouting orders at the team of people behind her. “Someone get a doctor in here stat! She’s coding!”
“Code blue: ICU room two oh three four,” the overhead announces to the entire hospital.
A short woman wearing scrubs pushes herself between the bed and me. “Sir, we’re going to need you to step out of the room. Sir. Sir!”
I hear the woman, but it’s like I’m in a foggy haze, watching the people swarm around Mom. One tall man begins doing chest compressions as another injects a needle into the IV tubing.
When the small woman shoves me out into the hallway, she closes the door in my face. My hands instantly grip handfuls of my hair as I begin to pace and freak the fuck out.
This isn’t right! It’s not her time.
I stare up at the white-tiled ceiling, wishing I could see through it to heaven so I could reason with God to allow Mom to stay. She’s the best person I know and she belongs here. He has enough fucking angels already. He doesn’t need to take mine.
I’m not ready for this!
I know I told her it was okay for her to go, but I didn’t mean it. I want to rush back in there and beg her selfishly to stay. For me.
After twenty minutes of waiting outside the door for some answers, not one person coming or going from Mom’s room willing to talk to me, the commotion inside the room dies down.
A man in a white lab coat emerges from the room, followed by Joelle, both appearing very tired with frowns on their faces when they find me standing there. I know from the expression on Joelle’s face the news she has to tell me is information that I don’t want to hear—that will bring my world crashing down.
“Son . . .” the man starts to say, but I close my eyes, wishing he won’t allow the words to leave his lips.
I shake my head as I back slowly away from them. “No. No!”
“I’m sorry,” Joelle says. “We did everything we could.”
I claw at my chest as it begins caving in, breaking my heart in the process. There’s no air. I can’t breathe. It’s all too much.
Joelle puts her hand on my shoulder as I slump against the cold brick wall, needing it to hold me up. “This isn’t easy, I know, but if you want to see her . . .”
Tears roll down my face as I attempt to breathe and not pass out right here on the spot. Everything around me fucking closes in and I continue to gasp for air.
“Do you want to go in there? It’s okay if you don’t.”
I nod. “I want to see her.”
Joelle leads me into the room. It’s hard staring at Mom’s lifeless body, knowing that it’s merely a shell, and that her spirit is long gone.
“Give him a minute,” Joelle instructs everyone in the room, and they clear out. When we’re alone, she turns to me. “Take your time.”
The silence is deafening the moment the door closes behind the nurse. I take a deep breath and use the back of my hand to wipe my tears away. It’s no use. The tears keep falling and I’m powerless to stop them.
I bend down and wrap my arms around Mom’s frail shoulders, burying my head into the crook of her neck just as I did when I was a boy. She’s so light. She practically weighs nothing as I pull her into me and kiss her cheek. I inhale deeply, trying to burn the memory of her smell—the essence of her—into my brain, because I know this is the very last time that I’ll ever be able to hug my mother.
That very thought causes a sob to rip out of my chest, and I cry harder than I’ve ever cried in my entire life.
Sunlight bounces off the chrome fixtures of the gray casket as it’s lowered into the damp earth. It’s almost more than I can take—the thought of knowing that she’s in there heading to her final resting place—but I force a stoic expression onto my face.
I will not break down.
Most of the people here, I don’t know, so I stand silently as the preacher that the funeral home recommended reads what are supposed to be words of comfort. He talks about my mother finally being able to rest in peace and we should no longer worry about her because she’s in the arms of the Almighty. I would rather her be here, where I could wrap my arms around her. God or whoever is up there has enough. He could’ve spared me one of his angels.
“This is the time we should all reflect in our lives. We’re never promised tomorrow. So don’t put things off. Get yourself right with the Lord before your day comes,” the preacher says.