Life. The amazing mystery of our existence. You can plan and strategize and have it all figured out but if there's one thing that always proves to be true it's that no one ever really knows what's going to happen in life. And when something does happen, we tend to try and explain and normalize it. If something goes right, we celebrate it, knowing we must have done something to have set us up for success. If something goes wrong, maybe we messed up, but more than likely it was someone else's fault...right? When we see someone get a new job, get married, start a family, buy a house, get a new car, we accept it as normal because that's what's 'supposed to happen'. When we see someone face hardship, we feel for them but also are secretly glad it wasn't us. While we're sorry to see it happen, we also think that it will never happen to us.
This past year of pandemic life has taught us all a lot about shared hardship. In most crises, we either are directly impacted by them or we see them on the news, maybe deciding to get involved and do something to help. But with this pandemic, if you're a human, there's no escaping this one and going about your daily life after making a donation or volunteering for a couple days. All of our lives have been upended, no matter what city, state, or even country you live in. Even then, it somehow still doesn't seem real. You read about the numbers of cases, hear about the impacts of the virus on people, and watch the death count climb by the thousands every day, just in the US alone. But, if it doesn't strike one of your family members or someone else you love, you aren't truly impacted on a deeper, personal level. That is, until one day, when it does.
For those who have known me for a while and have really gotten to know me, you'll know that my childhood is a tale of two different eras. I had always known that my mom had Multiple Sclerosis (MS) throughout my life, but it never really affected anything as far as I could tell. My elementary school years were spent like most of my peers, living a 'normal' childhood with my dad going to work, my mom taking care of the kids, and me going to school and having fun with friends. But then sometime during middle school, everything changed. My mom slowly lost the ability to walk, talk, and function in daily life in the way that she always had done. At some point, it got to where the best thing for her was to be in a nursing home, where she would have expert care 24/7. I feel like I didn't fully understand what that meant at the time and why that was so different, other than knowing that if I wanted to attend after-school programs, go to church events, or visit my friends, I would need a ride from someone else. I learned how to grocery shop, cook, clean, and do anything thing else that was needed when it was my sister, dad, and I, and even more so when my sister headed off to college. I was reminded of what was missing much more strongly when I got to college and I saw my friends with their parents around, visiting on parents weekend and doing various fun activities together. By the time I graduated and started into my post-college life, my mom being in a nursing home was so familiar to me that I didn't even think about that being unusual until someone would ask me about my parents, I would share, and they would look at me with empathy. Over the years, my response to it was simply that I was used to it and she was in the best place she could be, with me and others visiting her regularly. My memories of her playing an active role in my life began to fade as I crossed the threshold of her having spent more of my life in the nursing home than out.
Out of the memories I do have of my mom, most of them remind me of who she once was. I remember her working away at her sewing machine for hours, making yet another costume for me to wear on Halloween. I remember her encouraging my love for the Titanic, gifting me one book after another, recording documentaries playing on TV, and specifically, telling me that the Titanic movie wasn't like the documentaries and that I needed to wait until I was older to watch it. I remember her volunteering at VBS at my childhood church, helping other kids with whatever was needed while I felt cool because my mom was one of the people in charge. I remember sitting on the couch on my birthdays and at my specific spot next to the Christmas tree, tearing open numerous gifts from her and my dad and 'Santa', while she recorded it all on what now seems like a giant camcorder. But, I also remember her taking my sister and me on trips to the library, the mall, and even on my first plane ride to visit her mom in Erie, PA. I remember her holding my hand and telling me it would be ok as she and I laid across from each other on stretchers in the ambulance on our ride to the hospital after a terrible car accident. I remember her tucking me in at night, singing A Bushel and a Peck and reading the kids book Love You Forever. And my very earliest memory is from she laid me down for a nap one day inside of my kids play tent in the corner of my bedroom and slowly walked out of the room, telling me she loved me.
Over the last several years, my interactions with my mom were a bit of a challenge. I would visit her and often would only have a few big updates to share, having to carefully navigate telling her about my adventures while not upsetting her by reminding her of the things she could no longer do. My favorite visits were on Thanksgiving morning when she and I would watch the Macy's parade together, something we used to do when I was a kid. The best visits were those I made with my brother and his family, as his kids would run around playing, entertaining my mom and themselves. My last regular visit with her before COVID was at the end of 2019 when I once again came looking for her loving guidance. I asked what I should do with my life, with me sitting there in despair, yet again helplessly indecisive as to what to do while she looked back at me tearfully, knowing she didn't have much to offer and simply saying "you'll figure it out". Little did I know just how much 2020 had in store for me in regards to doing just that.
On the weekend that everything changed last March, I was supposed to go visit my mom. One of the first ways I discovered what was to come was when I called the nursing home just to check before I stopped by and I was told that no visitors were allowed effective immediately. In a place like that where everyone is a high-risk patient, no one was taking any chances. This meant that my interactions with her over the months ahead would be via phone call, but I thought surely I'd be able to join her by the time the Macy's Thanksgiving day parade happened. As anyone can probably guess, that did not happen. When December came and the vaccines were announced, I realized that my mom would be among the first to get it due to her age and health conditions. After months of worrying about whether the virus would find its way into the nursing center, it seemed that we were almost at the finish line. I received word from my brother within the first few days of the new year that she had received the first dose of the vaccine and we just had to wait a couple of weeks for the second dose and then a couple more for it to be fully effective and we would be in the clear. A few days after that, I found out that she tested positive for COVID but was asymptomatic, so she was quarantined but there weren't any issues.
I was working my way through another Friday on January 22nd, catching up on some of the work that had been set aside as I watched the inauguration a couple days before. My phone rang and I saw it was my brother so I figured I'd call him back when I was free. A few minutes later, my phone went off again, once again with my brother calling me. This time I answered and found out that my mom developed symptoms the night before and her oxygen levels dropped off, leaving her unresponsive. Knowing that we would be exposing ourselves but doing whatever we could to see her, my brother and I both immediately headed to the nursing center to see her. It turns out that in those situations they make short time period visitor exceptions, rapid testing you and covering you in several pieces of protective gear before you can enter. When we got there, she was more responsive and we were able to have a short conversation, with my brother and I doing all of the talking. My brother shared about his kids and I shared about my month-long stay in Vermont in 2020 and after half an hour we headed out, not knowing what would come next. While my brother's outlook was mixed, I drove home being my usual optimistic self, thinking that I had seen her bounce back from so many health issues over the years that this was just the latest one that we would be shaking our heads at in no time.
Unfortunately, that turned out not to be the case this time. I woke up the next morning to a call from my brother, telling me that she was gone. When I first heard it, I didn't know what to think or how to feel. It felt like just another strange update regarding her health, not the end of the story. As the day went on, I started to realize what it all meant. After years of visiting her through countless health issues, COVID was really the final straw? After years of going to visit her in the nursing center, suddenly there was no longer someone there for me to go see? I'm not married yet, but my future wife will never meet my mom? My kids won't know one of their grandmothers? People across my new community that I've become a part of since I had my last real visit with her at the end of 2019 showed an outpouring of support, asking me to let them know if I needed anything and bringing me food for over a week. But the reality was, I knew what I really needed was something that no other person could provide.
My sister and her husband came out from Seattle, quarantining and getting tested before joining the rest of the family for a few days, with all of us together at my brother's place. We just so happened to have the biggest snowstorm of the season that Sunday, leading to my sister and I, along with her husband and my niece and nephew, having a snowball fight the likes of which we hadn't had since we were kids. I even spent a few hours building a snow tunnel for the kids to crawl through, remembering the time that my sister and I had the same one time when we were little. Although her funeral was originally scheduled for Monday, it was pushed back to Wednesday due to the weather, leading to us spending a few days together reminiscing about my mom and playing some games together. Apparently, my mom used to always be late to things growing up, so much so that her mom told her she'd be late to her own funeral one day, which funnily enough ended up being true.
The day of her funeral came and it was of course a hard one. The service was just those of us who had been at my brother's place, presided over by a long-time family friend pastor. The drive to her gravesite across town was a special one, as we had a police escort and drove by the library, the park, and finally, the church that I mentioned before that she used to take us to long ago. It turned out that the burial plot itself was right next to a couple that also used to play a large role in the VBS activities at church. When we got back to my brother's place, we shared memories of my mom and went through some of the massive amounts of pictures she took over the years. I even recalled that she had held many of the records in a PS1 snowboarding game she played when I was a kid, Cool Boarders 2, and it turns out that I still have the game and the memory card with her records saved on it.
But, the next day came and I headed back home. Things have moved on and I've gotten back to focusing on the many plans I have for the year ahead. It's been a month since her passing but it still doesn't quite feel real. It's a strange feeling because she wasn't able to be an active part of my life for so long, yet I always knew that if I wanted to call or visit the nursing home, she would be there. But, the good news is it's brought up memories I haven't thought of in years and it seems that it may just bring my siblings and I closer together in a new way.
The challenge in processing all of this has been that while of course, this loss is personal, we also just marked 500,000 deaths due to COVID in the US alone, and she was just one of them. As I've shared this story with others, many of them have responded that it's been a bit of a wake-up call for them in regards to taking the pandemic seriously. If it serves a positive purpose in that regard, then I'm glad. We're finally starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel in all of this but, despite our collective pandemic fatigue as we approach one year of our lives being this way, we have to keep at it to prevent as many similar stories as possible. Stay strong, stay safe, maybe give your loved ones a call and tell them you love them, and we'll get through to the end of this together.
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| Me and my mom on a pedal boat on her dad's lilac farm |
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| My siblings and I with my mom and her sister |
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| Visiting my mom's mom in Erie, PA |
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| I have always loved trains... |
