January 27, 1994

The 30th anniversary of the worst moment of my life is coming up -- and so I thought I'd write about it to honor my mother and my self. Writing more is something I am doing on my current sabbatical.

“Suffering is not increased by numbers: one body can contain all the suffering the world can feel.” —Graham Greene, The Quiet American.

I waved to her and walked off to the bus stop. That tender, precious memory of my mother waving at the kitchen screen door is my last of her alive.

Within a few hours, she’d suffer a heart attack. And I’d return and see the furniture pushed aside and strewn about, evidence of the paramedics’ scramble to save her life. My dad, bereft. Our little world, irreparably shattered.

It’s crazy how fast death happens. There one minute and gone the next. One morning, I am hollering at my mom to stop rushing me for school. (My hair wasn’t going to spray itself! Big hair takes time!)

The next, I am hollowed out by the most crushing, painful emptiness anyone can experience — the entire suffering of the entire world as long as there have been people, contained in one lanky pre-teen body.

The day before her death had been a snow day, and school was closed. I’d shoveled the sidewalk and hung around with my mom and dad — just the three of us. We did laundry.

On the morning of January 27, I’d been annoyed at my mom. She was always rushing me and I didn’t like it. I knew the bus would be coming soon and I didn’t need her reminders. “The more you yell, the slower I go!” I lobbed. We made up and kissed goodbye, like always. I went to school.

When the school bus returned home, we passed my house. There were strange cars out front. I assumed my mom had friends over.

As I walked home the few blocks, I rehearsed what I would tell my mom when I saw her. She always greeted me in the kitchen to lavish attention while I shared all about my day. On this day, I had big news that was sure to elicit her sympathies. “Guess what subject I have homework in?” I was going to ask her. This was going to be a delicious conversation, because mommy was very attentive, and I expected that once she named all my seventh grade subjects, she would then express appropriate surprise and pity for me that I had homework in every subject!

When I walked through the door, my dad was sitting in my mom’s chair. This was odd. Uncle Walter, Mommy’s brother, was there. So were two of my cousins. They were all watching me with piteous looks.

Nobody said anything and heat began to spread under my skin. I surveyed their faces, and then turned my back to them to set my black denim backpack on the floor. It was quite heavy with books, seeing as I had homework in every subject.

My dad called me over to him. I wanted to make a joke, but wasn’t sure what to expect. He took my hands, and looked up into my face. He was crying — and I’d never before seen him cry.

“Mommy died today,” he said.

My mind reeled as I struggled to process this information. “Nooooo,” I think I shouted, willing it not to be true. Begging reality to please reverse itself and bend the other way.

The universe itself tore in two. Who I was just moments prior — the same 12-year-old girl who had said goodbye to her mother that morning — began to fall away, and a great battle ensued over who would take her place.

All a jumble, standing there before my tearful dad, I tried to make sense of this violently unwelcome new dimension.

I simply had to see her again. This was now the big news of my day and I needed to tell her. Whenever I was hurt, or scared, or sad, or happy, or excited, I ran to my mother. She let me crawl into her lap, and folded me in her arms, enveloping me with motherly comfort. She bore witness to it all — even patiently listening to me recount the plot twists of my TV shows.

And in that moment, that trying, colossally earth-shattering plot twist, I needed her most of all. She was my closest person in the whole world and only she could get me through this. How could I see her just one more time? But of course, and that’s the cruelty of death, she was gone.

The world was suddenly without comfort. It was full of sharp edges. All tenderness and beauty was destroyed.

After a few moments, I stopped crying. I pulled it all in. This emotion was too big and had the power to swallow me whole. So, I boxed it up and put it somewhere on a shelf.

Later in life, I learned it takes eight minutes for light to travel 93 million miles between earth and the sun. By the time I came home from school that day, the last photons to bounce off of my mother were already billions of miles away. Mommy had disappeared, and at a cellular level, I was a different person. I would have to be from then on.

Where my story went from there is one of more loss, and eventually, hope. It would be two decades before I found the courage to reopen that box and reunite with that beloved innocent child within who just needed her mom, and this time, as a mother myself, I gave her (me) a big hug.

It was quiet in our kitchen. I could tell there had been a dreadful buildup to telling me the news. Everyone was staring at me. Giving me space to say what I needed to say.

The new me looked around and announced, with conviction, “I need to do my homework.”