Re-Home

I’ve had bad days before - who hasn’t? Bad days are just a part of being alive. But the day I buried Mama in the family plot, between my granddaddy and great-gramma, was the worst day of them all.

It was worse than the day I received the phone call from the ER, telling me she had a stroke and required emergency surgery; Worse than the day a neurosurgeon and hospice nurse sat me down and told me a tissue sample had come back positive for Glioblastoma - brain cancer - and she was already Stage 4; Worse than the day she had the ventilator removed, and I sat up at her bedside all night, clutching her hand, listening to her labored breathing and terrified that she would choke to death just by swallowing. It was worse than sitting down with an estate lawyer to discuss her will and what legal proceedings to expect. And it was infinitely worse that the day I got that final phone call from the head nurse at the hospice center, telling me that Mama had slipped away in her sleep, and I hadn’t even been there to hold her hand and tell her I loved her as she breathed her last.

The few folks who had shown up for the service shuffled past the open grave, tossing in their flowers and paying their respects before shuffling past me, with a nod and a solemn look, back to their cars and quietly driving away. I stood there, silent and alone, imagining those few attendees going back home to a pot roast dinner left stewing in the crockpot, and silently thanking their lucky stars that they weren’t in my shoes, before promptly forgetting about the funeral in favor of looking ahead to the good future they were sure waited for them. I kept standing there, in the ninety-degree heat that was typical of a Shenandoah summer, rocking slightly on my heels and staring at the quickly-wilting lilies and limp ferns the florist had used to make the wreaths, and desperately tried not to think of going home to an empty house and eating tuna straight from the can while standing over the trash in case I vomited it all right back up.

Eventually, I did go back home, but only when I realized it was getting late, and I saw the cemetery caretaker driving up in a mini-digger to drop dirt on top of Mama’s coffin. I fed the barn cats and the chickens, then milked the goats for the evening with the sound of late summer crickets buzzing along the edge of my frayed nerves. Inside the over-quiet house, I took a hot shower to soothe aches and pains I didn’t understand why I had - I mean, I hadn’t spent the day on my feet running the assembly line at work, or out in the garden or orchard hauling in the summer harvests. I had spent the day sitting on an un-cushioned and uncomfortable wooden pew in a 250 year old church, buttoned up into a very uncomfortable dark navy dress and a pair of flats on my feet that rubbed my heels raw, then standing beside a grave dug in what felt like the most uneven patch of ground I’d ever had to walk on in the heat and humidity of a late summer afternoon. And yet, somehow, my body was sore and aching and I didn’t understand why.

That day will always be the worst, because from that point on, I knew exactly what I had lost with Mama’s death.