My Mom

Some personal news.

My mom and I.

Dear Friend,

I will be honest with you, I don’t want to write this, because I don’t want it to be true. I am still in a place where I simply can’t accept that it is true, even though of course, factually, it is. It’s incredible how you can know that something is going to happen, and then actually be there while it happens, and yet still not quite be capable of accepting it. My mother. My mother has passed away.

There, do you see how completely impossible that is? I mean, fake news, right? My beautiful, vibrant, fierce, silly mother is somehow…what? Yeah, I can’t type it again. I am sure that there are some of you reading this who know exactly how I feel.

My mom had been getting periodic treatments for a cancer of unknown primary site (CUPS) for several years, but as of early January she was still working full time and going about her normal life. We thought it was under control. We had spent Christmas and New Years together. She had given me a gift of various fun socks, with things like axolotls and planets and deer on them. She was excited to read the new draft of my book, as she had only read the first part before, and was thinking about writing a book herself. In our text message exchanges, she was always sending unicorn emoticons—unicorns smiling, unicorns snoozing, unicorns surrounded by hearts.

Then my father passed away unexpectedly on January 15th, and later that day she was taken to the emergency room with chest pains. They sent her home. Then it kept happening. As the family tried to navigate the unexpected loss of our father, both emotionally and financially, despite all of her efforts to take care of herself, while still being there for everyone, things only got worse.

Her speech became slurred and confused, and she lost the ability to use her left arm. “I just want to make sure I’m not having a strike,” she said. She was hospitalized before we’d even had our father’s funeral. Tests revealed she’d had a heart attack and a series of strokes (or “strikes” as my siblings and I now call them). This hastened her decline more dramatically than anything we could have feared or imagined. Within weeks her prognosis had shifted from years, to one year with treatment, to six months, to two months, to weeks, and finally—we were warned—days.

I am grateful that I was able to be there with her the whole time. I am grateful that on her last day, this past Sunday, I spent the whole day holding her hand and lounging next to her on the bed. When I got up to get something, I would lean over and kiss her on the check and say “Mom I’m just going to the kitchen to get some tea, I’ll be right back, I love you.” One time she even nodded in affirmation, ever so slightly, or at least I am almost sure that she did.

This is impossible. Utterly impossible. And yet here I am.

Fortunately, I have already prepared essays for the next month that I planned to share with you. Our upcoming session of Essay Camp is already in the can. Working on The Book Supplement has given me something to do when I feel like I am going to lose my mind. Maybe that sounds weird or stupid, but it’s true. Even if it’s just in my head, it makes me feel like I can be of use, that I can help people, can help books, which I love, and have an excuse to interact with others in a way I find manageable right now (also about books). The fact that I have woken up almost every morning since Monday to find a new review draft waiting in my inbox for me to edit has kept me going in a way that is both unexpected and a godsend.

On New Year’s Day, my mother and I were driving around together. We went to visit my dad, and shared some food together, and she kissed him on the cheek and told him she loved him. He smiled, still in love with her. I don’t understand how just two months after that, both of them are gone.

This has been impossible for my siblings and I in many ways. My sister has made a GoFundMe page to help with our mother’s end-of-life expenses and funeral costs. As she wrote, we “had not anticipated financially covering burying both our parents in such close succession.” My sister, who works as a homebirth midwife, has not been able to take even a single day off.

Here is the page: https://www.gofundme.com/f/honoring-victoria-blooms-final-days-with-love

I wasn’t sure if it was appropriate to share this here, but I felt that I would be letting my siblings down—not to mention my mother—by not trying to do my part.

Thank you for reading me, for reading books, for getting excited when I said I wanted to start a book reviews vertical, for being interested in writing and in Essay Camp, for chatting with me here in the comments and on Notes, and everything else that you do.

I hope that you and your loved ones are all well. If they are not, I am so terribly sorry, and I am there with you in that feeling too.

Much love and thank you,

Summer

My parents at their hippie wedding on our rented houseboat.

---