What a pep talk. I found myself grinning in the blackness of my bedroom, knowing she was right. I was so much stronger than I was before. No matter what happened next, no matter what my future held, I would be alive to see it. Nothing could stop me. If Xander, Alec, and Christian were in my life, great. If not, I would give myself some time to be sad and then I would move on. That’s what life was about, right?
“And this whole thing about Diane,” Leah went on, poking me exactly where I didn’t want to be poked, metaphorically. “You know what you have to do about that, right?”
Damn it. Yes, I knew what I should do. Didn’t mean I wanted to do it, or that I would. Overcoming years of bitter feelings towards that woman, towards my dad, was hard, and it would be a constant battle.
Slowly, almost unwillingly, I said, “Yes. I know.” Silence took over the phone call for a few minutes, and I found myself frowning. Couldn’t help it. Talking to Leah made me remember everything I was missing now that my mom was gone. “I miss hanging out with you,” I muttered.
There were a lot of things I missed. Too many.
Feeling my emotions start to drown me, I said, “Hey, I’m going to sleep. I’ll talk to you later, okay?”
“Okay. I miss you, too. Goodnight, Elle.”
I hung up, pushing my phone onto my nightstand as I stared at the ceiling through the darkness. I’d lost so much. So, so much. Mom…I knew kids lost their parents, but I always thought I wouldn’t, not until I was older, more of an adult myself. I never thought I’d lose her when I was eighteen.
I missed her.
Leah’s mom dropped me off after school. I unlocked the front door, walking inside and dropping my backpack on the floor. I went into the kitchen, completely unaware of what horror waited for me in the living room. Bent inside the fridge, I got out a can of pop, cracking it as I walked out of the kitchen and into the living room, grabbing the remote off the coffee table and turning on the TV as I took my first sip.
My attention was solely focused on the TV. I backed up to plop myself on the couch, but I sat down on something hard, something that shouldn’t have been there.
I jumped back on my feet, my heart in my chest when I saw that my mom was there, just…just there. In her work clothes, one foot on the couch, one hanging off the cushions. Her eyes were wide open.
Right then and there, I knew something wasn’t right, but still, my fingers curled around the pop can, and I whispered, “Mom?” My voice cracked on the word. One word. One word was all it took.
The pop can slid from my hand, crashing to the floor and spilling on the carpet. I fell to my knees beside her, touching her shoulder, saying again, “Mom?” I shook her gently; her head only lolled back and forth, her eyes vacant, pupils dilated.
She was…she was cold. Her body was cold.
I swayed, ultimately tipping myself backwards and landing on my butt as I stared at her. No tears came, because I think I was in shock. It was the moment I’d dreaded ever since meeting my mom in the hospital and learning she had brain cancer and was refusing chemo and the other available therapies.
There was no way to guarantee any of it would work, she said, no way to guarantee that it wouldn’t come back. She didn’t want to live the rest of her life sick and miserable, in a state of constant fear.
You know those moments you anticipate, but hope never come? Those moments of your life that you knew would define the rest of your living days? This was one of them, this was mine. This was the end of everything I’d known.
I didn’t cry that day, but I bawled my eyes out later, when I was alone in bed. Dad and Diane came, helped arranged the funeral, helped me pack up what I needed from the house. The rest just got donated, the house sold and the money put into my account since Mom had left everything to me.
Watching Mom regress, watching her start to lose her muscle mass, her memory getting progressively worse and worse, all while she tried to keep her job to put food on the table and pay the bills…it was the hardest thing. And I’d known it was coming. Stage four cancer wasn’t just something you miraculously beat with no medical help. For so long I’d known, and still, when I came home that day, finding her cold and dead on the couch had been the last thing I was anticipating.
I missed her. I missed her more than I missed anything. I missed coming home to her, spending time with her. Yes, we’d had a rocky past, both of us had made mistakes, but we were best friends. We were mother and daughter. We weren’t supposed to say goodbye so soon.
For the first time in a long time, the tears that prickled my vision were from thinking of that day, of my mom. I didn’t fight them, didn’t stop them from coming.
“I miss you, Mom,” I whispered into the darkness of the night, curling into my sheets and pressing my face against the pillow as I cried.