8:23 PM

You are standing in a room, in front of a person you have known your whole life, but in a body you no longer recognize.

The version of you from forty-eight hours ago had no idea you would be standing in this spot, saying goodbye to someone you have never known a life without. But here you are.

Less than nine hours ago, you were sitting in your highly anticipated hair appointment, wearing a silky black salon cape draped over your shoulders, your hair pinned up to show the dimension of the color that had changed. It’s 9 a.m. You’re half asleep, and then you text your mom. A conversation that started with, “Hey, when you go to the hospital today, can you call me so I can talk to her?”

A day ago, you were distracted, not inherently alarmed, and unaware of what the future held.

Every year, your family has a reunion of sorts: a golf tournament dedicated to the memory of your uncle, who passed away from ALS when you were a kid. This tournament brings everyone together—all the grandkids, best friends, and family members—to play and raise money for a cause.

You never really fit in with your family, but every year, you tried to belong during this tournament. Instead, the alienation felt more evident. So much so that you used work as an excuse for why you couldn’t come. This year was no different, wrapped up in an obligation to shield everyone from knowing you didn’t want to be there.

Everything about the town you grew up in felt community-driven, but small and primitive. You love your family more than words can describe, but the history of who you were while living there haunts who you are when you visit.

Your grandma was the cure to your alienation. She was a person who always found you in your space instead of expecting you to join hers. She was the main reason you came home at all.

Her age was always a factor. Sixty years of marriage, four children, eight grandchildren, and an abundance of love later, she had become the foundation of your lifeline and your favorite person.

Although you chose to live several states away, creating a life that felt like yours, you always made the effort to see her. It was never as often as you wanted. Plane tickets aren’t cheap, and time moves fast in your twenties. But you showed up when you had blocks of time to devote to your relationship with her.

But in this instance, you waited until it was too late.

The morning of the tournament this year, your grandma collapsed. She was sent to the emergency room and taken into emergency surgery. All this information felt so foreign, so far removed from your reality, and completely out of body. She had to be fine because that was the only option.

She was surrounded by all her favorite people, except you. You gave her space, with the promise that you would talk to her when the chaos died down. But that’s not what happened.

The next morning, the same morning as your hair appointment, you texted your mom in an attempt to make up for the missed time from the day before. You were hopeful you’d hear your grandma’s voice on the phone, but instead, those three dots of typing turned into a text that said her artery had burst and she wouldn’t be waking up.

Debilitated by the words splashed across your screen, with no room to process them, you called your mom, who was openly sobbing at the realization that she had just lost her mom.

You dialed up your dad, unable to know what to do in this situation. He told you to do what you thought you wouldn’t regret later.

A last-minute flight booked. Your hairstylist driving you to the airport. Tears relentlessly streaming down your face as you tried to process flying home to say goodbye to your favorite person.

More adrenaline than understanding. Movement toward everything that needed to be done, to hell with the feelings you would have to sort out later.

You’re sitting in the airport, waiting for a plane to take you to your nightmare. Racing time toward an inevitable end. Kindness from strangers, handing you tissues as tears stream down your face. Public embarrassment, with no room to care.

The most enduring two-hour flight of your life.

No headphones. No distractions. Just the beginning of your grief settling in. Static air and memories flooding your mind. The realization that only memories will live on.

Your feet hit the ground at Portland International Airport. You navigate your way through the airport and get your rental car, following instructions that feel fuzzy and signing up for things you’ll have to pay for later because your senses are overloaded.

You drive another two hours, listening to murder documentaries the whole way. Because death feels both comforting and existential.

You call your mom again. You ask her to bring one of Grandma’s favorite outfits because you know she was too vain to breathe her last breath in a hospital gown.

The hospital smells sterile.

Before this year, you used to associate this place with the furthest point from your house. Now, your navigation knows its address well.

Your mom was diagnosed with stage four cancer back in June. It is now August, and here you are again.

You walk up to your cousins with puffy, red-stained eyes. In a room where everyone is distraught, you try to find comfort in commentary to shield yourself from your own heart breaking.

The nurses shuffle you into this room while you hold on to a dress that connects her to several beautiful moments.

You stand there, in front of a body connected to cords and tubes, while her chest fluctuates, taking in more air than she ever breathed on her own.

A day you always knew would come is now staring you in the face, with a face you don’t even recognize.

A body that doesn’t even seem human anymore, a product of skin and machinery keeping her breathing and her brain functioning at a barely perceptible level.

Your mom is present with you, although being present in your own body at this moment doesn’t register.

You choreograph the perfect goodbye as if you’re in a season finale of a TV show. The kind that leaves you in tears, and you carry the weight of it with you for the rest of the day.

You dance while holding your mom, carrying yourself with strength in the face of grief. You make this moment as intentional as she led her life, so that when you finally find your way back into your body someday, you can look back and say, “I did everything I could to show up and be there for her.”

The doctors come in and explain the procedure, then list her time of death. You stand side by side with those same cousins you barely wanted to see less than 48 hours ago.

Her favorite song plays as they unplug her machines, and everyone ends with a prayer as the people who have passed before her welcome her into a world that is still unknown to us.

Just like that, you lost her. You lost the last phone call, the last hug, the last time she felt alive.

Life is about choices. You chose not to be there when it happened, but you chose to show up when it mattered most.

Some things you can’t make up for. Choices, decisions, and effort all have a timetable. You have a timetable.

You stood in a room, in front of a person who is no longer in your life. Then you had to leave the hospital room and just never see her again.

As if your life didn’t just change entirely. As if you won’t spend the rest of your life missing her.

You never thought you would be walking these halls that day, with the time of 8:23 p.m. engraved in your mind.

The moment when a beautiful and truly loved life found its end, while you spend the rest of your life missing her.