I meant to post something closer to the beginning of the month, but that didn’t happen.

Then I thought about waiting until Father’s Day, because I was so smug I didn’t do one, maybe it would be ironic if I did one anyway.

And then my mom died.

It was a strange call. I had just seen her two days before, and she had seemed OK. Improving actually. Well, they do say that that sometimes happens just before passing. She saw two-thirds of her grandkids (as in two of the three, not, like, two-thirds of each kid), and she gave her grandson his little gift, which we had been trying to accomplish for some time. Illnesses and schedules kept getting in the way, but we got it done.

And then it was time to go, and we said our goodbyes and I-love-yous and . . .

Then she was gone.

I didn’t believe it. I actually had to drive down and see her.

When my dad passed three years ago, no one got to see him. It was the middle of lock downs for Covid-19, and it just wasn’t feasible. I think it had been at least a couple of months since anyone had seen him in person (we did have plenty of video calls). That seemed real. We knew how sick he was.

But I had to see my mom. And there she was. The color was wrong. She looked like she was sleeping, but the color was wrong. And that’s an odd memory for me to have because I’m colorblind, so why would I judge someone’s color that way? I don’t know.

One of the nurses told me that she went completely silently in her sleep.

She had been awake a few hours before. Apparently, she was hallucinating. This wasn’t uncommon. She had been hearing voices for some time. But this wasn’t voices. She said, “I have to get my shoes, and leave with my husband.” Apparently, my dad appeared to her, with a big black limo, and said it was time to go. So she was trying to get her shoes on to go. The nurse got her settled, got her back to sleep. And then when they checked on her around sunrise, she was gone.

There were other things. Her good friend told my sister that mom had told her, “I love you, goodbye,” on their last phone call. She had never expressed love before to her friend like that. She had seen Jess and they had had a kind of final discussion about her Celebration of Life for after she died, so that was squared away.

It’s like she kind of checked all the boxes and was ready.

Was I ready? Look. You’re not going to think well of me when I say this, but yes. That last day, she was showing some of the signs of memory loss again. There have been many times in the last year that that has happened. And when it does, she would get very upset, and then she would take it out on me. Never my sister, always me. She would threaten me with violence, call me names, it wasn’t pleasant. She would claim people were stealing from her, or kidnapping other patients, and she would demand I call the police and when I wouldn’t do so, well, I might as well have been the Gestapo for all she cared. So when I saw it starting again, that last day, well, when I drove home, I remember very clearly thinking, “I don’t want to do this anymore.”

I don’t want to do this anymore.

And now I don’t have to. So. Sorry, not sorry, but yes. I was ready.

And maybe ready longer than that. After my divorce, she told me, “Everyone is better off with you out of the house.” Really, mom? She would spend time with my ex just because that’s where the kids were, mostly. I remember one time when I tried to have us all together, and she showed up late, and completely ignored me. After Thanksgiving, 2020, just after dad died, she spent the day with my ex and the grandkids (who, that year, were with their mother), and due to the usual terrible planning that my ex is capable of, they ended up having Subway for Thanksgiving dinner. To this, she had the gall to say, to my face, “It’s not what you have, it’s who you spend it with.” That year, I was alone for Thanksgiving. So, you know what? Yeah, it is who you spend it with, mom. And you spent it with my ex.

I didn’t resolve any of this with her while she was alive. To what end? She was never really aware of how she treated me, and telling her I didn’t like her much wasn’t going to solve anything. Frankly, she was losing her grip on reality by then anyway, and I don’t even know if she would have heard or understood me in any meaningful way, much less remembered that she said such awful, hurtful, tone-deaf things to me.

I have no guilt. I have no regrets. Eventually, the anger will subside, because she can’t hurt me anymore.

I went to see her every Thursday after she moved to the group home. I answered every phone call. I showed up every time she got taken to the hospital. I did my bit.

Did I get a free churro? No. But that’s alright. It’ll all be alright.