Dear Mom,
Tomorrow it’ll be a year since you died. Monday, May 13th, 2024, the day after Mother’s Day. I’ve thought about you every day since then, but it still hurts. I guess one of the downsides of not experiencing too much death and loss when I was young is that now I’m not terribly well prepared for it as an adult. Talking to my patients about death has, in some ways, actually gotten harder in the past year, even if I can relate to them better. I hope it eases up soon though—it would be nice to be able to remember you without tearing up every single time.
I think about your last day often. I don’t know why, but it feels weird that you died in the same hospital in which you birthed me. It seemed like you were aware enough to understand what was happening in the last hours. We asked if you were ready for us to try pulling the breathing tube out. You paused, closed your eyes and seemed to think for a moment, and then nodded yes. It couldn’t have been more than three or four minutes before you slipped away.
If my calculations are correct, I knew you for 13,267 days. That’s 36 years, 3 months, 27 days. Or, 1,895 weeks and 2 days. Or, 318,408 hours. Or, 19,104,480 minutes. Or, 1,146,268,800 seconds. Time really flies, doesn’t it?
I’m glad I got to say the most important things to you before the end. You gripped my hand and nodded when I said I loved you, that you were a genuinely good mother, my greatest inspiration, and that I was sorry for all the crap I’d put you through when I was a teenager. But it still hurts because there were so many other things I needed to tell you, but never got the chance. I wonder if there were things you had wanted to tell me too, but kept putting off for another time? I always knew you’d die someday, but I never realized just how quickly that limit approaches until it’s already past me, and now the chance is gone forever. I could try to tell you now in writing, but it’s not the same.
Do you remember your visitors in those last days? If it weren’t for the whole you dying part, the scene would have been pretty funny. When your practice manager called to say she was coming to the hospital after you’d been admitted to hospice care, she told me she had spent the last three days contacting you patients to tell them your practice was closing. She said it took three days because so many of them demanded to know where you were hospitalized so they could come say goodbye. Some were quite insistent. Do you remember that hospital staff member asking me to tell visitors to limit themselves because security had already started turning people away? I know you remember the one who made it through, insisting on buying us all coffee and sandwiches from the cafeteria. But, I suppose people knocking down the doors to say their last goodbyes is what you get when you’re one of the the most generous people any of us have ever met.
Maybe you did get a little delirious at some point. What other explanation is there for a psychiatrist who’s about to enter hospice, but keeps asking whether all her patients all have enough referrals to other doctors and prescriptions to last until then? For god’s sake mom, you were actively dying, your patients would surely understand. Then again, you wouldn’t have been the mom I knew if you weren’t neurotically obsessed with your patients until the very end. It’s things like that which made you the best doctor I’ve ever known. And it’s not just me—everyone who knows you agrees. You were a rare breed.
In terms of your books, don’t worry. I took the ones I wanted, and most of the rest were donated to various libraries and bookstores across Baltimore. Even for a hoarder, you left a lot of books. After a while I gave up trying to estimate how many you had, but it couldn’t have been fewer than 5,000. Maybe a lot more. I suppose the city of Baltimore owes you a debt of gratitude. You’ll also be reassured to know that your granddaughter is already reading the Berenstain Bears herself. I took a bunch of the other children’s books you had stored away, so they’ll be put to good use. Oh, and I found a copy of some “hoarder’s guide to estate planning”, but it was still unopened, in shrink wrap at the bottom of a giant box of crap. Looks like you’d bought it in 1998. I actually didn’t mind going through all the boxes, a lot of your history was in there.
The other month I was in a bookstore—your natural habitat—and for a split second thought I saw you. I did a double take and of course it was another woman who vaguely resembles you. Sometimes I find myself pulling a book off the shelf and thinking “a new edition she hadn’t seen yet? She’s going to want to hear about this”, and then remembering that if I text you, I won’t get a response anymore.
By the way, dealing with your accounts was way more of a hassle than the books and the junk. You kept telling me to put the leftover money in your retirement accounts toward my kids’ college fund, and I kept telling you that as a physician married to a physician, I’m doing just fine money-wise. At one point I was so tired of dealing with the state that I considered just leaving the money to them to save me the hassle. But then I remembered what you always said, “When I’m gone, make sure those sewer rats in Annapolis [i.e. the government] don’t steal everything.” You’ll be pleased to know that the state actually seems quite interested in giving me your money, but all parties involved are quite frustrated by the bureaucracy. Seems like even if the state wanted to, they’d have trouble stealing your money. You’d find it funny. In any event, I’m thinking of donating your estate to the Folger Shakespeare Library, or maybe the Jane Austen Society, or St. John’s College. I’m almost certain those would be your top three choices. I’ll let you know as soon as I figure something out.
Sorry this is so scattered, but I know if we were talking together you wouldn’t mind. I know how you think, I inherited your style (and a bit of your ADHD).
Neither of us believes in an afterlife. As cold, hard materialists, there are some consolations you and I have to do without. Then again, we both know there is no such thing as true consolation when it comes to grieving and death. The dead are gone, and no beliefs are strong enough to fully gloss over that reality. What am I doing here, then? Maybe I’m talking to the part of you that is still alive in me? Or maybe I’m just talking to the universe, hoping to get some kind of response? I guess I don’t really know what I’m doing. Things feel more disorienting without you. You were an anchor in life that I relied on, and now that anchor is gone. I miss you, I love you, and not a day goes by that we all don’t wish you were still here.
When I feel a breeze, I tell myself it's your breath Returned home to the wind; But I feel no comfort; This is stifling air. I rage at an empty sky, But no one fights back; Heaven—why couldn’t you wait? Why take her last years On Earth, with us who need her, When she'll still be yours for eternity?
