I’ll never forget the race down the hospital corridor.
I tore out of the elevator, dodging wheelchairs, nurses, visitors, running as fast as I could, trying to get to my dying mother’s room to say a final goodbye. I didn’t know she was already gone. I didn’t know I was already too late.
A blur came out of my periphery and blocked my path. I slammed into it, vaguely registering it as my father’s best friend Brian, whose strong arms pinned me into place, stopping me in my tracks.
I struggled in his arms, unable to speak. I wanted him to let me go, the words wouldn’t come to tell him I needed to get to the room…I might only have seconds left… he didn’t understand I needed to go….he couldn’t understand what was happening….nobody had told him it was time….if he would just release me…I could make it…..
“Nikki”
My name choked out of his clogged throat. I looked up at him, straight in the eye and instantly understood. She was gone. My legs buckled. He crumbled.
Late the night before my younger sister had come into my bedroom crying. I wrapped my arms around her, my tears had already been flowing too. We both went into the sitting room to our Dad. His eyes were wet when he looked up at us walking in.
At 19 years old, I curled up like a kid on one side of my Dad, my baby sister who’d just celebrated her 13th birthday snuggled into him on the other side. He wrapped his arms around both of us and the three of us sat crying together, all heartbroken, all in pain, all knowing what was coming.
My mom’s health had declined rapidly since September, her hair gone, her body shrunken, eaten away by the horrible disease that is cancer. I have no idea why on the eve of her death how the three of us all suddenly became overcome by grief, as if we knew….as if we all sensed it was her final night alive. My Dad calls it the night we “howled at the moon”.
My Dad went to the hospital that Friday morning and called me at home. His voice was soft and quiet, he told me to come to the hospital. He said he felt she was about to pass away this morning and that I should come and say goodbye.
I called a taxi, in a blind panic directing him to the hospital, a 15 minute drive away. I’d paid him before the taxi even turned up the hospital avenue…I jumped out of the car while it was still moving, while the driver yelled protestations at the danger I was putting myself in when I was too impatient to wait for him to pull up to the main doors.
Brian’s wife Una walked over to me and took my hand, we walked together the rest of the way down the corridor. In her room, my Dad sat beside her bed, his head in his hands, his tears starting all over again each time he had to watch one of his three children walk into a room realizing their mom was gone. My mom lay so still, peaceful, pale in the same bed she’d been in for 30 days. She’d been admitted into hospital after a rough Christmas and never came out.
Before the cancer ravaged her, she was a gorgeous woman. Every kid thinks their mother is beautiful and I was no different.
She had bright blue eyes which sparkled with mischief, smiles and secrets. Her pale skin was flawless, unblemished. Her hair was her crowning glory, strawberry blonde glossy waves that fell past her shoulders. A true Irish cailin.
People adored her. She radiated warmth, love, fun and intelligence. I recognized from an early age my mother was the type of person who attracted people to her. Everyone wanted to be in her presence. As a child it drove me wild with jealously. I went to the school she taught at and would watch the groups of children who’d follow her around the playground, falling over themselves to impress her, seeking her approval. I’d seethe quietly, worrying what if they were successful, would she love one of them more than me?
As an adult I feel nothing but heart swelling pride at the impact she had on people around her. I had no idea, no clue that so, so many people held her in such high regard.
The emails, the cards, the phone calls, the visitors flooded in over that weekend. Literally hundreds of stories about my mom were told or written to us, she’d touched so many people’s lives. Friends, relatives, past students, people I didn’t know, drove across the country, flew in from the UK, Europe and America to pay their respects, to be there for her funeral.
For five days, we held a wake as we waited for all the people to get to our home town. It was a true celebration of her life accumulating in a final mass in our locality’s large church. I stood on the altar and spoke about my mom looking down at the packed room, making eye contact with my friends, with her friends and each of the three boys in the room who thought they were my boyfriend (awkward).
Every single pew was filled, people filed up the sides of the church, filling the standing room at the back and spilling out onto the church grounds. I spoke that day about exactly what our family had experienced since her death, how touched and proud we were at the astounding amount of love that had poured from every direction, people whose lives she had touched.
A year or two ago my sister emailed me a link to a Facebook page for a school reunion at the school my mom had taught at. Past students were posting on the wall, looking forward to the event when someone posted a picture of my mother. Dozens of comments appeared over the next few days as her past students shared memories of her, mostly hilarious stories of her classes, some kids sharing the positive impacts she’d had on them and their lives.
This month marks the 13th year since she passed away and yet just two days ago a friend in NYC told me that a comment I’d written on her Facebook post was seen by a girl who was taught by my mother. The girl got in touch with my friend to ask if she knew whether I was her old teacher’s daughter. She said my mom had changed her life, during the two years my mom had taught her , they’d developed a bond and said my mom had helped her hugely with her self-esteem and spent a lot of time with the class teaching the benefits of reflection and belief.
This girl must’ve been taught by my mom at least twenty years ago and still, she remains front of mind.
The pain of losing her was immense. It was both psychical and emotional. I was angry for a long time. I was terrified I would forget her, forget her smell, her laugh, her hugs and her love. Some days I was fine, some days the grief would hit me like a ton of bricks.
Years and years later I was comforting a friend through a horrible break up. I told her that time was the only healer, that only with time would she start to feel ok again. She looked at me irritated and asked me how the hell would I know, I’d always been the one to end my relationships, I’d never gotten my heart broken.
I stared at her in utter disbelief….never gotten my heart broken? My heart was smashed into a million pieces when I lost my mom, it’s still only slowly been pieced together. For years that heart ache caused me to push friends away, push my Dad away and turn cold towards any guy who wanted to be with me.
It still hurts sometimes. It kills me when I hear people bitch about their mothers or not appreciating them, I want to shout at them to love and cherish every single second they have with their mothers. But most of the time I’m grateful to have been her daughter. She gave me the love of writing, she taught me so much about people, she taught me to want and expect the best.
She comes to me in my dreams every few months. Always beautiful, always smiling. My brother and sister say the same thing. Those mornings I wake up smiling myself, I feel peaceful, I feel loved.
Dazzler in NYC 