Always On Time, Except When It Mattered Most

12:05 a.m. That’s when everything changed. Or maybe nothing really did, as I’d been anticipating this moment for quite some time. I couldn’t have predicted when exactly it would come, but I knew it would. That explained why my phone remained by my bedside, kept on. Just in case.

It’s a strange thing, to anticipate some monumentally finite thing, yet miss the actual moment. But in the anticipation, I think, the end can already be found. That’s how it was for me, this time. And the time before that. I knew the end was coming, even if I didn’t know exactly when it would arrive. Turns out, it was 12:05a.m. on a Tuesday morning in January. And I wasn’t there. I was on my way, but too late. Which is kind of funny, because my life has always been about being on time or early. Yet with the two most important endings, I’ve been late. And by exactly the same amount of time, 15 minutes.

Fifteen years ago, I was home, choosing some music CDs (remember those?) that I thought might somehow reach my dad. I put the ones I chose in my car and headed to my parents’ house. En route, my sister called. “Daddy just died,” she told me. All I remember is thinking, through my tears, what an idiot I was to be home choosing music CDs.

This time, we were primed for the call, my sister and I. We kept asking the nurses if they had any idea when the end might come. “Hard to tell,” was one answer. “Not yet,” another assured us. We spent our hours in the hospital, which was itself an amazing thing, in these COVID times, and then went home. My sister brought her sleep over bag several times, but didn’t use it. Because it wasn’t that time. Yet.

Each time I walked in the door of my apartment from the hospital, I was conscious of walking into my apartment. It was something my mother could no longer do. As was undressing in my bedroom, and brushing my teeth and washing my face before bed. I was struck by the things we lose in life, the simple abilities that turn out to be devastatingly difficult and complex when your body loses its ability to function. Each little thing I was able to do reminded me of something my mother could no longer do. It was like death by a thousand cuts, just a pile-on of losses, one upon another, upon another, upon another.

We had joked often, my sister and I, how our mom was like a Timex watch. If you’re old enough, you recall the tag line: takes a licking and keeps on ticking. My mom, in a tiny body, had weathered incredible amounts of illness. She was on her fifth bout of cancer, but only a year before had broken her hip and required surgery. Along the way, she’d also developed congenital heart failure and had a heart attack. But being my mom, she never complained. Ever. She took it all in stride. “How are you feeling, mom?” I’d ask during our phone calls. “Can’t complain,” was the routine answer. Then she moved on to asking about my kids, husband, and dogs. Usually, she asked about the dogs first.

It was heartbreaking to hear her tell my eldest that no, she didn’t think she’d be able to make the trip to visit him in Naples. But it was in something small she acknowledged to me on the phone about a week before she was hospitalized for the last time that made me think something was really, terribly wrong. “It’s painful to talk,” she told me, as she ended our conversation prematurely. This from a woman who never, ever complained of pain. So I knew it was bad. Really, really irredeemably bad.

We had about a day and a half of my mom being lucid in the hospital. Then it was all about pain management. So there were no more conversations, however brief, and no more phone calls with grandchildren. We did get, my sister and I, some hand squeezing from her, but maybe that was only a reflex. Who knows? We played music for my mom, things we thought she might like. Elvis. Nat King Cole. Could she hear? I couldn’t say. I like to think she could.

On Monday, January 11th, I left the hospital in the early evening. My sister followed a bit later. As was her habit, she checked in with the night nurse. At 10p.m. she sent me this text: Status quo. No changes. She is resting comfortably.

Shortly before midnight, my sister got a call from the nurse. “It’s time.” But distance was our enemy. We arrived too late. Fifteen minutes too late. Just like last time. I wonder what it is about fate, about cycles in life repeating. Is it meant to be punishing? To be comforting? To be random coincidence, devoid of any deeper meaning? I’m not sure it matters.

My sister and I stayed with my mom until someone from the funeral home came. We were told to leave before he came up, because we weren’t meant to see how they handled her body. So we left. I drove my sister home, arriving back at my apartment building after 4a.m. The outside door was locked. No doorman in sight. I rang and rang, but no one came. After twenty minutes, I called and woke my husband, who’d left the hospital hours before I did. He came down to let me in. “Great time for the doorman to go fucking AWOL,” I declared.

I walked into my apartment, exhausted and crying. It was one more thing my mother could no longer do.