October 24th, 2013 was not the worst day of my life. Rather, it was the simultaneous end and beginning of my life. It was the countless twenty-four hour periods leading up to this day that slaughtered my ingenuous heart in a stealthy manner that I was strangely not expecting.  Although the pain was anticipated, the events that lived in a mere 432 hours could not have predicted the substitution for my happiness in the days to come. To say the least, fifteen years before this final day had not seemed like so many centuries until it flashed before my eyes.

It was October 6th when I received the call from my stepfather, who was customarily known as “Pokey” by my toddler self to this day. He had told me that he was taking mommy to the ER again, and I remember the unsurprised sigh that I gave to what I was not expecting. Those first few days I had secondhand experience of what I would now call pathological yawning, a common experience for those who undergo a stroke, thanks to my AP Psych class. I only wish I had this little knowledge for a silly thought that I might have been able to save her. But I know that was really to no advantage of power on my part, for I could not have saved her and I knew this. I had spent the next few days focused on the hospital, a dreadful place today I’d never want to find myself. School seemed to slip my mind, and it was just the wait every day until I could get to see her again.

       We did not know what was happening to her, until it was too late. The doctors had told me a few weeks later that there was a 5% chance for a 5% recovery, that my mom was gone. It was these mysterious days between the 6th and the 24th that I lost her, and I can only wonder when she lost herself. The hopefully days were gone, I would no longer wake up with those naïve thoughts floating around my empty brain:

 maybe she will wake up today

      maybe she will talk to us today

                        maybe our life will be normal again

But it was never normal, really. My reality was always a fire waiting to burn out, and in these few days the fuse was short. The specific day that I cannot now remember because it was more than a day, within that day was a life, a family, a home; that day was almost certainly the worst day of my life. It was a late, exhaustive night that the doctors had finally explained to us what had happened, and that I would not get her back. Instead of normally going into her room with my school stories and thoughtful smiles and whispers of our plans for life together outside that small beeping room, this time I went in with a tearful heart and broken eyes. I could not merely utter an apology to her, with no positive declaration whether she could even hear me or not. I remember crying on her cold hands, once warm, once my mothers. They told me she was still inside that damned body, somewhere trapped. This is when I developed the sorrowful anxiety, the waiting, the selfish wanting her to die.

 Maybe it wasn’t selfish. Maybe it was for the best, and now I think it was. She was then transferred to hospice, a peaceful place with no medication except that to relieve pain, no beeping monitors, no stress. Except for the small elephant whispering to me every day her true reason for being there. It was the harsh waiting, and I desperately wanted it to end, because I knew that it was her worst nightmare as well as my own. She didn’t want to be like this. I floated through these days, already grieving. Already painfully deciding my plans for life hereinafter, although I struggled to foresee anything meaningful.

It was the cold 24th day of October when we had been called out of school, her spirit left her body, and she was free. I give this information lightly, for it was not beautiful. It was something I would not wish on my worst enemy. Death is pale, ugly, and indescribable even if I had had those nightmares every day for the rest of my life, I would not be able to accurately describe it. I had not really noticed where my life had gone in those passed weeks, and it took awhile for it to hit me. But hit me it did, like a bomb being catapulted, starting a war. Thus giving birth to a whole new me, or rather revealing my true self, hidden in those naïve years. A life was ended, a life was begun, and I’m still not really sure to whom they belong.