One Hundred Goodbyes

Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye.

My mother died on Thursday, felled by a brutal complication of cancer treatment. Her death was simultaneously merciful and unfair, sparing her from weeks of teetering on the edge of life with god knows how many tubes going in and out of her, and yet taking our mother away from us, away from the world, away from a home she was so achingly close to returning to after weeks in a hospital bed. 

Saying goodbye to a parent is an experience that words cannot fully encapsulate--and that's under the best of circumstances. Being there as she passed was horrible, obviously, but not nearly as horrible as not having the opportunity to be there. That happens to so many people, and it is a different fresh slice of hell to have such a large part of your life taken away while you can only hear about it from afar, I imagine. Anyway. 

Regardless, what comes next is the absence, coping with the void and what's left when someone passes away. And I sit here in my mother's house, surrounded by all these things that were just for her, just so, these things waiting for someone who would never be back. Files. Notes to self. Underwear. Dishes she could have done a better job of cleaning but she's my mom so of course she didn't do a better job of cleaning them. Art, wonderful art, hers and others.

Then, hiding behind a plant, an IV pole. A harrowing pile of medications. Unopened cans of food for her gastrointestinal tube. All these things waited too. 

But mostly, what remained were objects of love, reminders that a grandmother accrues over nearly 67 years and surrounds herself with. A cocoon of memories that I'm sure she had and that I can no longer ask her about. And you have to do something with all of them.

In one drawer of random things, this little picture thing. It's old, and kinda gross, because Mom was not the cleanest person. The sort of cheap little thing that comes from these vacation spots, because they can be, and that's okay. On the other side:

This nice, tiny picture. It is not my mother's only treasure from that vacation, obviously. She had numerous bigger, better pictures. And they weren't in weird, gross plastic keychains. I wasn't there with them. And yet it's the sort of thing that someone could not possibly convince a grandmother to get rid of, with all the memories she associates with it. But now, it's a thing. That's not to say it has no sentimental value, but again, there are other pictures from then that my sister and her family already have, ones not ensconced in plastic and grime. But the thought of just... throwing a picture away seems unfathomable.

I'm keeping it. I don't know yet if I'll wash it.

That is one decision. It takes 15 seconds. There are one hundred such decisions to make, one hundred more things that belonged to her and only her, one hundred more instances of having to tell my beautiful, departed mother goodbye.

Goodbye, Mom. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye.