10 years ago today...

I talked to my mom for the last time. Neither of us knew it at the time but approximately 24 hours later I would get the call that changed my life...my mom was gone. We had a ritual. I would call every Wednesday. My mom was an EMT so she didn't have regular 9-5 hours but she always took Wednesdays off so she could bowl. She loved it and bowled with her league every Wednesday morning for over 25 years. So on that last Wednesday of her life, we had a fairly normal conversation. The normal "what's up" kind of chatter. You can probably imagine the things I would have told her if I had known it would be the last time.

Instead on Thursday when my phone rang I felt a twinge of annoyance. It had been a long week and I was settling in to watch some tv. I didn't answer the phone at first. I let the machine pick up and only heard the words "emergency phone call". I picked up and it was my aunt telling me my mom had just collapsed and died. That's all she knew and I couldn't wrap my mind around it. How could my mom who took care of everyone else die? It wasn't suppose to work that way. She was going to live forever. Obviously, I was very very wrong. Eventually I got more details. She was out on a call (car accident with minor injuries) and as she was loading a patient into the ambulance she slumped and then suddenly became the patient. It was too late. She had a massive heart attack. I've heard "She died doing what she loved" so many times it makes me want to scream. I don't care what she was doing. The bottom line is she died and I no longer have a living mother.

I have to try recalling blurred memories to share with Matt and William. Matt never met her and William was born long after her death. They try to understand but they never will. They will never know just how much she loved bowling and Christmas and trekking through the woods on the search for mushrooms in the spring. They will never know the subtleties of her wit and teasing. They will never know how much I hurt her, at times, with my smart mouth that all young people have. They will never know how often she and I used to argue simply because we were so much alike. William doesn't even really understand that he has another grandma. He knows my mom died and he can say that back to me but he doesn't "get it". And that's O.K. He's 4 and I don't know how to explain that my biggest fear is not losing him but of him losing me.

Losing my mom changed me in ways I can never describe. I'm the same but different. I don't take my loved ones for granted. That's a given. And I spent the first few years after her death trying to do things just the way she would. But she wouldn't want me to do that and I can't. I'm not her. We were two very different people who were exactly alike and I think that can only make sense to me. So, as I approach the 10 year mark of losing my mom I'm going to spend some quiet time to myself remembering. It sucks how much memories fade but the essence of the person lives on.

Thinking of you Mom.
Suellen Pickering Barton
May 7, 1942-February 18, 1999