October 8, 2024 – Time Stops - 4
My mother is dead. No warning.
I drove home on autopilot with my brother. He would spend the next week sleeping in my office—our mother's room. He slept on the same bed where she once found rest, joy, and peace. Shock is foreign to me. I've felt surprise, fear, anxiety. But shock? Never. Yet there we were, my brother and I, driving home, speaking of our mother's death like it was the tragic ending to a movie. Maybe if we kept talking and kept driving, fate would intervene. Maybe the hospital would call and tell us to come back—she was ready to go home, but not in the way they meant. As I write this, grief rises in me like a bubble pressing against my ribs, ready to explode. I still don't understand why she's gone. We arrived at my house. The world, for once, felt still—just as I needed it to be. Symbolic of loss. Symbolic of pain. It's funny how I didn't need daylight, only the quiet of the night. Even the dogs, for once, didn't bark.
I went to my room. My brother went to the office. In the dark, we sat. Separately. Silently. Then I heard him first—his breath breaking apart in sobs. I crossed the hall. "It's okay, buddy." That was all I had to offer. It wasn't enough. We needed something neither of us could ever have again. I left him there and returned to my bed. But sleep didn't come. I spent the night thinking of my mother, alone in the morgue. Was she cold? Did she have a blanket? Were they being gentle with her? Did she have footies on? She hated cold feet. And I wondered—how did I not see? Why didn't I take her to the hospital? She wasn't getting better after that last round of chemo. She was getting worse. How did I not see? My God, I failed her.
Morning came, unwelcome. And do you know what I did? I opened my computer and started doing lesson plans. Because if I proceeded as if it were an ordinary day, maybe it would become one. Maybe God hadn't lied when He said He wouldn't put on me a burden too great to bear. My oldest brother FaceTimed me. There was a time I joked that he had it easy—living with his dad and stepmom while I was in the hood getting evicted with our mother. It was just a joke. It wasn't until that morning that he told me why he had left. He found a letter from our mother, begging his dad for help. He left to make things easier for her—one less mouth to feed. With him gone and my sister in college, she could manage two better. It shattered me. I was the youngest. There was so much I didn't know. There was so much I was shielded from.
I put my phone on Do Not Disturb for everyone except my siblings. I pushed people away. Condolences made it too real. Too final. A constant reminder that something irreversible had happened. The days after my mother's death were strange. I had no trouble eating—I gained five pounds in a week. I had no trouble sleeping—it was the waking up that destroyed me. Every sunrise felt like a slap in the face. A reminder that the world kept moving while mine had stopped. I wanted it all to pause—seeing people go to work, the gym, and brunch shattered me. Laughter shattered me. What's so damn funny? Did no one realize the world had lost Veronica D. Alston? I needed the world to grieve with me. Instead, it kept spinning.
Even in my household. The kids still had to get to school, still had football games. Can you imagine, my son scoring a touchdown and I am in the stands crying because my mom would be so proud…I spent the days and weeks in the same clothes. I only remember grooming myself when I would see a text from one of my friends turned sisters reminding me ‘hey did you brush your teeth', ‘wash your ass’, ‘put some lotion on’.
As I write this, I think, and thought’ of Donny Hathaway's Yesterday, often. ‘There’s a shadow hanging over me, yesterday came suddenly. Why she had to go, I don’t know, she wouldn’t say.’ The pain in it. The way he sang like grief had swallowed him whole. I thought about how he committed suicide. I'd be lying if I said I didn't understand. Some days, I fight the demon on my shoulder, whispering, ‘Do it. You can find peace, too.’ Some days, I believe it. I think about how much easier it would be if I weren't here. But most days, I know better. So don't go yelling at me.
My mother died 11 days before my birthday. At first, I wanted her funeral on my birthday. It felt fitting. But everyone talked me out of it. So, instead, on my birthday, I paid for her funeral and submitted her obituary for approval. A week later, we buried her. It felt like ripping open a wound that was already infected. If I could do it all over again, I probably wouldn't. **To be continued.**