Let It Bleed

My mother, Dora Leigh Deskins, died last night, December 7, 2014, after discovering last month that she had pancreatic cancer.

There was a book that came out several years back called On Death and Dying. The author offered that there were five distinct stages of grief. There hasn't been much research since that time to support that assertion. My own experience seems to indicate that grief can vary widely.

My father died on January 27 of this year. I grieved for him, but I can tell you already that the quality of that grief was very different. He had lived a very hard life — drinking, smoking, generally being a rough character. He'd had three heart attacks and quadruple by-pass surgery. I had been anticipating his death for many years.

I had never even considered the fact that my mother would die.

Her death was very sudden. She was 75, but she never seemed elderly. She never drank a drop and smoked only briefly in young adulthood.

I'm feeling and thinking so many things at once that it is hard to even notice each one.

I'm struck by how casual death is. She sat in hospitals, talking to doctors about dying and now she is dead. It seems like it should be more elaborate, accompanied by more pomp and circumstance.

Death is dehumanizing, in the most literal sense. When someone is sick, you watch them gradually lose those things that attach them to their humanity. It robs us of our dignity.

I'm confused. It seems like this is all a terrible mistake, as if someone else was supposed to die. She was supposed to retire. Her paperwork got mixed up with someone else's. She paid her fees, she talked to the guy. We need this corrected, as soon as possible. This cannot be right.

If I think about her voice, it is almost more than I can bear. I cannot believe that I won't ever talk to her again. It's only been a day and I miss it more than I can stand.

I spent today at her house with my siblings and some of our families. We walked around this house where we all once lived, but now the owners are gone. It's not our house. It felt weirdly like we were trespassing. When I think of all the times I walked through that door and heard Mother or Daddy call me from another room, happy to see me, glad I was there . . . that is gone. The house is nothing now. There is no more warmth or love to be had in it, and it will be sold and others will live there or maybe even tear it down.

What do I do now? What do I do now that I don't have parents? Who do I go to when I fuck up?