This post ain’t funny

Mom died last night at about 6:10 p.m. Devon and I were there when she took her last breath. The nurse and doctor confirmed it, but today, I still have this crazy fear that I shouldn’t have let them do the autopsy, because what if she’s still alive in there? What a nightmare, waking up during the middle of your own dissection.

I have the crazy.

I’d never been present for someone’s last moment before, and I’m so lucky to have witnessed it. With all the drama and violence of the past few months, the universe allowed me the chance to be alone with only her and Devon when she left.

She’d been nonresponsive for a few days, with her eyes half open and no one home behind them. Half an hour before she died, I felt blood dripping onto my foot, blood from her surgical wound that was no longer clotting. A few minutes before she died, her labored breathing became too shallow to hear, then her eyes closed all the way, she drooled a bit from the corner of her mouth, and the pulse in her neck fluttered and stopped.

The part of me that believes in fairies hoped for a bigger pop — a gust of air, a vision, a feeling, something. But it was very quiet.

Dad doesn’t understand why this is happening to him, how this could happen to someone as wonderful as mom. His grief is very childlike. Or so I thought, until I found myself on the stairs wishing her Jedi spirit would wave at me from the corner.

Dad isn’t childlike — just honest.