Remember to drink more water. Remember to wash & fold my own clothes. Remember to be nice to others (mostly) no matter what. Remember how to shave and how to get rid of the hiccups. I remember him and her. My father and my mother seem to be present in my life every day and every day I feel like living in the past just to be near them again. Almost nightly I think about the last time I saw my mother. It is too inappropriate to share exactly what I saw; in short I saw death happen before me.
It was sudden even though I knew it was coming. Her breathing for the past hour or so was very labored; we all knew what to expect. No doubt we weren’t ready for it. You can never be really ready for it because you never want it to happen. We were all in her room; her bed was replaced with a hospital bed a couple days ago. I was holding her right hand with both of my hands. I was trying to help her hold on but when the final hour came I was telling her to let go. I remember even saying it to her but I wasn’t sure if she had heard me. It seemed like my mom had been taken over by her delusions that day but she still heard and saw everything, she just couldn’t respond to any of it. She was still there, that I know. I remember I had come home around 6 or 7 with my friend, Robin, after we had gelato and told her that I needed to spend time with my mom so she went home. Two hours later my mom passed away. I texted Robin and all of my good friends the message, “She’s gone.” Robin was shocked; she was just at my house. The entire situation felt unreal and tormentingly real at the same time. I was holding her right hand, cupping it with my two. Every breath had longer and longer pauses between each intake and exhale. My heart was on edge. Every pause was earth shattering and excruciating. There was a very long one; it seemed to be at least fifteen seconds but that fifteen seconds scared me to the core. I remember looking up at my sister with my mouth open, gaping for air, tears soaking my eyelashes and cheeks and I needed some reassurance from her that it wasn’t the end, not yet. But the look I got back from her was that of a terrified child and then my hope was lost and I collapsed inside. Then another intake. I was relieved and pained that this breath appeared. Part of me wanted nothing more but for it to end finally and another part of me wanted to stay by her side forever. I think there were only several more breaths before the silence of death came and blanketed us for a moment until we knew that this was no fifteen-second pause, but, in fact, the end had come. As soon as I realized that it had happened, I felt a sudden radiant force through my hands, up my arms, through my back and passed on to my aunt whose hands lay on my shoulders. It was the sensation you get when your arm falls asleep; it was tingling and powerful and very warm. It was my mother. I started to hyperventilate, like I was breathing harder, like I was breathing for my mother, and myself like it would bring her back. I couldn’t stop. This was the second time in my life when I had hyperventilated. The first time was a week after my father passed away. My whole family was at my house and I collapsed near the back sliding door after looking at the corner of the studio where my dad’s face would be in the window. I collapsed next to the phone, the lamp, the bronze statue of a dragon I had gotten for my dad when I went to China in 8th grade. It was bought in the market in Xi’an next to where the Terracotta warriors are. I collapsed next to the phone book, the address book, the bills, next to the dining room table and the outlet on the wall. I sat there, a mess of flesh and bones, so uncomposed and mangled with no certain sitting position engaged. My mother, my sister, my brother: my only immediate family I had left at the time huddled close and grieved with me. It was something I will never forget. It was exactly what I needed. I needed to know that I was not alone in the feeling I was enveloped in. I needed some kind of comfort, however desperate it was.
I sat there, her hand in my hands, hyperventilating with uncontrollable tears. All I could think was “no”. That was all I could say: “no” and “mom”. I was not alone with this struggle for vocabulary. My sister was also saying this. “Oh mom,” she said with such love, endearment, and lament. I remember putting my head down on the precious hand that I had encased with myself, they did not move though. Each cell of skin still touched the same skin cell of her. It was like it had become that statue of bronze. I couldn’t not hold her hand. It was necessary for me to know that she was still there in the room; her energy was still inside me. I remember my mother’s face, the expression left on it; it was calm and distant like she really was looking into the light. Her mouth was open and relaxed with fluids expelled from when she passed. She was still beautiful, though. She was frighteningly beautiful. Her cataracts where not grotesque, they made her eye look like the universe. She was the universe, to a lot of people. She was the universe to me. That night I think I brushed my mother’s hair for the first time. That was also the first time in two hours that I let go of her right hand.
We proceeded to wash her. I wanted to clean her hand, asking and pleading like a babbling child not to let go of her hand. There was dried blood in her cuticles and under her fingernails from her frantically removing blood clots from her mouth earlier in the day. I tried washing her hand but the feeling of her limp, lifeless hand was too much to handle. It was a precious body that had been with me all my life, which I had started from but it was now just a body. Still there was a connection to it. I thought of all the things this hand had done for me, but still it was a limp hand that no longer had my mom in it. The task of washing a hand and digging the dried blood out of from under her nails seemed onerous and impossible; I didn’t want to hurt her. She seemed so fragile like her skin was made of wet paper. I went to get my camera, my head flooded with the confusion of what to do next in this situation. My camera didn’t work. I asked my aunt for hers; I am sorry for leaving that picture on her camera. I took a picture of my mother, eyes still open, mouth still gaping, hair brushed. I needed some documentation of what had just occurred. Soon after I felt a panicky, claustrophobic feeling come over me. I couldn’t stay at my house. My mother was gone; I could feel it and I didn’t want to be around my family. I needed to be with my boyfriend, Scott. I felt anxious, restless, and drained. I hastily asked if I could leave, got in my car and drove. About halfway to my destination my aunt called me. She asked if they could take my mother’s body away. She asked if I was finished saying goodbye. She asked if I was ready. I felt I had nothing else to say to her. I had nothing else to do. I was driving so I made my decision quickly. “Yes, it’s fine.” I couldn’t even think about it anymore. My mother didn’t just die. She wasn’t being carted away. She didn’t have cancer. Everything was fine; I need to get to Scott. Please just let me get to Tony’s house, please. There was no response from Scott telling me if it was ok to come over, his phone must have died. When I arrived at Tony’s there was: “Whoa, what are you doing here?” “She passed away an hour ago.” “So, what are you doing here?” “…I don’t know.” I didn’t know how to answer that. I just needed an escape and something else to think about. I couldn’t think about the fact that both of my parents are dead. Tony was sitting on the couch eating a bowl of macaroni and cheese; I think he was stoned. Later on: “Fingers…” “What?” “Both of my parents are dead.” His head was on my chest while we lay on the couch in the dark at Tony’s house. “Yeah,” he said. And silence overcame us again. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking about. Frankly, I didn’t care. I was just trying to feel something; anything but there was only numbness. I couldn’t cry. It scared me; as hard as I tried, I couldn’t feel a single thing. I felt nothing, not even sadness. I could not feel sadness for the fact that I couldn’t feel anything at all. And that night I drove him home, dropped him off, and didn’t come in. I didn’t even look up as he got out of the car. I only said “Bye” because he said it first. I remember getting home. I remember going to bed like any other night. I remember hating that I felt like any other night. I hated knowing that my mom wasn’t there and she would never be there again. I can’t believe I slept that night, but I was done feeling.
A month later we had her celebration of life. My family doesn’t have “funerals” and we don’t bury our dead. I’m not completely sure why. Both of my parents were cremated. I designed the front of the program for the celebration. I had flashbacks of the year before, especially because I used the same style for the program for both my mother’s and my father’s. I found the picture of my mom and me when she held me in her arms the day she got out of the hospital after giving birth to me. It was outside our back door; wood constructed garage wall in the background, same homemade “Welcome Home New Baby” banner on the wall; “By Eliza, Tristan, Elena.” Tristan, only three feet tall, stood close to my mom, tugging on her shirt and giving the camera the most honest confused look. This is a familiar image to me. There is an identical photo of my father holding me with a smile on his face; I have it framed in my room. The celebration of life was eerie; I had been there the year before for the same occasion. The microphone was set up on the patio at my aunt’s house. This house holds many memories. My mother and her family first bought this house in the seventies and she had spent some of her childhood here going to the same elementary school I went to. My aunt at this house, in the very place where my sister was standing about to eulogize my mom, married my father and my mother to each other. I snapped a Polaroid of her right before she started her speech. I needed to help lighten her mood or just let her know I was right there. She began her speech in a sincere, sentimental manner and then came the conclusion, “Now I realize that I want to be like my mother-“ and then her tears interrupted. It was soon my turn to speak. Just like last year I decided to speak at that moment with nothing written or prepared. “I remember last year I stood here and said something pretty damn cute but I don’t know if can do the same now. Uhmm…” I had to speak, it was for my mother, and she loved my improvisation. I then told the story of how the reunion of my parents brought beauty to the world and how when my father died, the thing that pained me the most was knowing how much my dad wanted to be with my mom and how much my mother missed my dad.
Back to September 2nd, 2007. “One of the things I remember most about my father is when I was in kindergarten, he would brush my hair everyday before school. He couldn’t believe how tangled my hair was and said how leprechauns must come into my room at night and tangle it. “Well, my hair has been pretty tangled lately so I guess they’ve been around.” Then the tears came and I sat down. My mother spoke too but the only thing I remember from her speech was when she said how much my father’s children meant to him and how much loved us. I think at that moment overwhelming sadness came over me and my siblings and my sister and I cried. I think it hurt so much because we all knew it was true; we just wanted him to be there to say it to us.
I don’t remember what I dreamt about, I only remember how I woke up. I heard the familiar sound of my light switch flipping up followed by the terrible blinding light that I associate with early, dark, cold high school mornings. My mother sat on my bed and put her hand on my shoulder, shaking me to wake up. “Kel,” she said “Kelsey…” There was something different about it. I opened my eyes confused. It was summer, why was my mom waking me up at seven-thirty in the morning? But I saw there were tears streaming down her face and her voice was weak and quivering. This was the first time she looked weak to me. Then came “Your father…”
“Your father…” The first thing that came to mind that he got into a car accident and that he was in the hospital. Whenever I thought of anything bad happening to my parents, I always thought it would be a car accident. And finally spat out “Your father died last night” which was rushed at the end and ran into the dam that broke. “What?!” I sounded like a puppy that just had their tail stepped on. It was a quiet and hurt and weak shrill noise. “He died in his sleep…” more sobs “How?” I could feel my own dam breaking. “I don’t know” And there I was in a world of pain, lament, police officers, paramedics, camera flashes I could see through the sliding glass door and through the studio’s windows projecting onto the couch that faced south. I lay there, heart aching, chest collapsing, and flooded with despair and confusion. There, on my bed my mother’s body covering mine, her only child home at the time, crying out, crying, gasping for air, wailing. “We didn’t even get to say goodbye!” she wailed, pleading with someone, something. A paramedic hovered in the doorway, watching on the outside a most depressing scene. I think she said something about losing her father when she was seven, like she could even console us about what just happened in our lives. For a split second I was conscious of the fact that I was only wearing sheer underwear and a tank top and my comforter had slipped exposing my lower half to all the foreign people bustling around my house, sent here to deal with this loss. The consciousness melted and was forgotten within another second. My father was no longer in my life and he would not be coming back. I remember being moved from my house to the Grindley’s house; my aunt and uncle were very helpful. I didn’t see my dad. The last time I saw him was when he walked through the living room to the front door to leave and my sister and I were on the couch and said bye to him. I think he had a headache. That was the last thing, ever.
What everyone said was a blur unless it came from my mother’s mouth. I was only paying attention to her. I remember we had to call my siblings. I remember this very well. Tristan didn’t pick up the first time. We called Eliza. My mom and I were out on the back porch of my aunt’s house; we had many Easters here, it was a place of celebration except for today it was a place of refuge. Eliza answered, I had my hand on my mom’s back. It was only us. “Eliza…your father died last night in his sleep.” “What?!” It was the same noise that came from myself, it was so small but so filled with strength and emotion. This phone called turned into a crescendo of crying and wailing and oh-my-gods. My sister was in Seattle. She had flown in last night. She was staying in a hostel. She was coming home. Next, Tristan. We called again, he answered and the same noise appeared, it was such a primal noise, it sounded so little and weak, like a building collapsing in on itself. Tris was in Portland. He had been living there for four months. My mother and her son united in grief, it was a strong unification, a strong bond in the worst circumstances. Tris was coming home but he wasn’t getting on a plane like his sister, he was going to drive thirteen hours down to Menlo Park, non-stop, speeding the entire way on his motorcycle. My mother was distraught about this but it was something Tris needed to do and she knew it. So started the congregation of family. By nightfall, we were together in the living room, crying.
All of my other family members were contacted. My mom had to call her mother in law and tell her that her son had died. I couldn’t bear to hear Grandma K cry over the phone but I did and I can still hear it. Everyone was at the house the following week. It soon turned into a family event we were hosting. It was hard, every time I went into the kitchen I expected to see my dad mixing his special drink for everyone. My aunt Di was in the kitchen instead. I told her who I expected and she said with another bout of tears coming on and arms outstretched with the embrace soon following, “Oh I know, honey, I expect to see him just come through the door saying it was just a big joke.” By the time this sentence was done we were in an embrace in the middle of my kitchen with quivering chins, eyes squeezed shut and jaws clenched in mourning. It was at first a silent cry and then the first gasp, so dramatic and prolonged and held back arrived and breaks the painful painful chest tightening silent crying; then the wailing comes.
I’m supposed to know how I’ve grown from this and who I have become. I don’t know. I think I am stronger emotionally, but I could be confusing that with a lack of emotional release. I don’t know if I can fill the hole left in myself or if I even should. I expect more from the people around me because there isn’t the extra stability given by my parents anymore. I am never fully content for more than a second because there is always this nagging loneliness in the back of my mind, tugging at my attention to remind me once more of what has left me. There is always “I wish mom and dad were here”, there is always that and I don’t know if it will go away. Maybe what I have from this experience is a stronger threshold for sadness or pain although it has caused me to become annoyed with people when they cry over spilled milk. I can’t stop comparing my life with others and I try to make myself believe that I am maturely superior to others; this hubris is often misplaced. Misplacement leads to my anger; my therapist calls it outrage. As much as I try to deny it, I have anger pent up inside and it shows it’s ugly face at the worst and least appropriate times. I am angry at the world and what has befallen my family and me. Ever since my mom died, I feel an obligation to enlighten people about appreciation. I know many people who don’t appreciate their parents or anything for that matter. The world is beautiful and I feel like telling everyone to lighten up and live while they can, as cliché and nauseating as that sounds. I suppose I get this philosophy from my mother who lived her life one day at a time. I don’t think she was self-pitying once in her life; she was always looking forward and generating light and love. I still wonder how she was so optimistic. How can I become that? How can I become that selfless and loving? This is what I ask myself daily. Maybe that is how I have changed. And my father, the perfect combination of goofball and intelligence, how do I become that as well? I am left questioning my origin and whom I will become with no spiritual guidance from those who created me. They just wanted me to be happy in life, that was all; I am still having trouble achieving even that small goal. I keep questioning what I should do with my life and where I should be going and what do my parents want me to do? As much as I ask myself what they want, I still know: they want me to be happy. The problem is I don’t know what will make me happy; I can’t seem to satisfy myself or give myself an answer. Without my parents, I cannot bring myself to figure out my future; the stability and support has been ripped out from under me and I’m dangling still.
