Hurricane Motherloss

Storms are unpredictable; their devastation unknown till they hit their target. Some in a storm’s path chose to prepare and stock themselves with reserves—food, water, boxed up photographs—to sustain them through the aftermath and beyond. Others, usually in a strange form of denial, believe the warning signs of a 100 mile an hour hurricane with flooding and damage a certainty, are directed to people other than them; that either the pending doom is going to fizzle out or pass them over. Even proof of the storms severity does little to motivate these non-believers into any kind of preparation. They feel they are invulnerable. But they are wrong and happen to be in the most danger. In reality they are paralyzed by fear, masked by hope and find comfort in what they know, in what is untouched, unaltered, and whole.

Like any devastating storm created by Mother Nature, that day came bringing a tumultuous and overwhelming current of emotion and change I have not yet fully waded through and wonder if I ever will. June 7, 2000 was a beautiful, warm early summer day. No storms on the horizon. The sun was shining, birds (sang) were singing, and barely a cloud touched the soft welcoming sky. It was a day most would have said was full of promise. A day made for playing hooky, loading up the car with a blanket, a good book, a bottle of wine and driving to an open green pasture and whiling away the hours in pleasant boredom. It was certainly not a day to be robotically packing up a car to drive 6 hours home, a car full of books, movies, pictures and hope never to be shared with her again. It was not a day for devastation.

June 7th, that beautiful day, was my mother’s last on earth. I at times allow myself to really ponder what last truly means. I wonder about the finality of a life cut short by damage and disease. Like driving past a fatal car accident and realizing the person in that accident just didn’t make the few feet you now pass with ease. Just like that. Instantly a human, who breathed, created, and loved, can cease to exist. Sure, those left behind are told the departed will exist in their hearts, but honestly, what piece of my mother that lives in me is not half the being she was in life and hardly a comfort on lonely nights when I’m up thinking about mistakes I’ve made at work, friends I’ve lost or can’t seem to communicate with since her death, and whether my college sweetheart of 8 years is (still) really the one for me.

The day breast cancer led poison traitorous cells to ravage and split her liver in two, causing her to cough up blood onto the rose colored rug she chose, in happier times, for her master bedroom, split me in two. A Sharyn before and a Sharyn after. Like those who chose not to heed the warning of a severe storm, I lived the last 4 and half years of her life living mine to its fullest in a haze of fear and sweet hope that MY mother would live. I never prepared for this kind of end, for a lifetime without her and I most certainly never prepared for her to die without my chance of saying goodbye.

I was told of her death over the phone when alone in my apartment. The split-second silent answer my father gave my question “is she gone?” before going on to explain, “it was very quick…” lifted my body to action from the couch then slapped me back to the floor. As my father kept talking words I will never remember, I told him to wait, that I needed a minute with “this.” I put the phone down and out of my 24 year-old body, a 5 year-old emerged—the kind of 5 year-old I had never been—and wailed, “MOMMY! MOMMY COME BACK PLEEEEASE! PLEASE COME BACK! GOD DON’T DO THIS TO ME! WAIT! PLEASE MOMMY COME BACK!” I crawled on hands and knees banging on the floor then the front door in a fit of rage, despair and utter disbelief. I had just talked with her the night before! She sounded wonderful, alert, and happy to be in her bed, under her own covers. I had plans for how we’d spend our last days! I packed a box of treasures we’d share one last time while I combed her hair as she always loved me to do. I was going to hold her, thank her, be with her. I was going to hold her hand. I wanted to hold her hand.

But on June 7th of 2000, that horrible day my mother breathed her last sweet breath on this green and blue earth, I was alone in an apartment six hundred miles away; a five year old in a heap on the floor begging for my mother.