It has been a harrowing nine months since my mother was in a head-on collision. Our lives were forever changed on July 15, 2024. Today, her suffering is over.
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Mom and Gram, sometime in the early 1980s.
She was asleep when I walked in. The nurse said they were purposely keeping her unconscious. Still, as I looked at the broken body that was my mother, I could see her wincing in pain. No one knew if she would ever wake up again.
My home is 1,725 miles from hers. I sent an email to family of my arrival, only realizing then, I had no contact information for my nephew. We hadn’t spoken since shortly after my grandmother’s funeral 13 years ago.
My mother raised David after my sister abandoned him at 16 months old. He was my little brother and nothing else mattered right now. The head-on collision had erased the chasm between us. We texted briefly after my cousin gave me his number. He offered to pick me up at Newark Airport.
I climbed into his monstrous pickup and wondered how much silence would dominate the 90-minute drive to my hometown. He was worried I hated him. I wondered if he was still racist and bigoted. We found our answers before we even exited Newark Airport. In between catching up, there were lots of “you stupid bastard, learn how to drive” and “come on, what the fuck are you doing?” because, of course, we are the only ones who truly know the proper way to drive.
We spoke until just before sunrise. He cried. “You used to take me everywhere and we’d do all sorts of fun shit and I didn’t appreciate it and I’m sorry.” I refrained from correcting his run-on sentence. Eventually, the words, “David. Stop. Stop apologizing. We’re good,” tumbled from my brain and out of my mouth.
We were no longer those struggling people of a decade ago. I was diagnosed with PTSD, a result of severe childhood trauma. He was, understandably, an angry young man. His parents abandoned him and refused to admit his existence. We shared our common experience of being abandoned by our fathers and how that shaped a part of who we are. Mom did her best to teach us to be honest and good.
The first time I saw her after the accident, silence controlled the room. Her eyes fluttered. She tried to focus. Was she awake? No, well, maybe. There was no way to tell if she comprehended anything we said. Aunt Elaine and Uncle Dick, her brother and sister, had been there every day since the accident. They sat in silence. They spoke to her. They worried.
Bruises – red, blue, black, and purple – littered themselves across her body. The broken bones are too numerous to list. A special surgeon repaired all the tiny bones in her right wrist. We all worried whether she would be able to crochet again. I thought of the blue and pink and white blanket she made me, which has been on my bed the better part of three decades.
As I stood there looking at my mother, who at once appeared peaceful and wincing in pain, David leaned in to me and softly said, “Just so you know, I’m ready to go when you are.”
His tone was understood. Neither of us were handling the situation well. This is our mother. She spent her career helping others and, now, lies still in a hospital bed, relying on a machine to mechanically inflate her lungs so she can breathe. I choke back tears, but, later, alone, the salty liquid flows like the stream we always drank from in the Shawangunk Mountains.
I leaned in to David and spoke quietly. “I’ve been ready to go for a while, but I’m waiting for everyone else to leave so I can talk to Mom alone.”
David nodded and unfurled his arms. With a booming voice he said, “All right, y’all need to get the fuck out so Irene can talk to Grandma alone.”
Everyone nodded. There were, “oh, okays” and “of courses,” uttered. They left me alone with the beeps and boops from the machines now surrounding her.
My life is 25 hours away from hers. It is impossible to stay, so I made my goodbyes. I am short and couldn’t reach to kiss her on the forehead in the single place without bruises. I gently caressed her left cheek and thought of the times David and I had been bruised and beaten down by the world. She never gave up and always had her hand outstretched to lift us back up. I leaned in as far as I could and, holding back all the tears that wanted to fall out, whispered in her left ear, “it’s okay, Mom. You worry about getting better. I’ll take care of everything else. David is helping. It’s our turn to take care of you.”
Sewing room at Gram’s house.
A drawing of T-Rex by Wyatt and me. I drew the head and teeth. Wyatt didn’t like my horns and said they needed to be “more pointy.”
A notification popped up on my phone. It was from my friend, Jina. I rarely read emails on my phone, save for things that are emergencies, and this was no different. When I returned home a few hours later, I read my email, nodded my head and spoke to my monitor. Yeah, that’s right. Now you know why it takes me so long to reply to emails. I tend to talk right back at you and forget to actually type out the damned response.
I don’t think this is anything related to my trauma. It’s just how my brain works. It’s also why I have written about a dozen awesome posts in my head over the past month, but never actually typed them. Sometimes, I type them in dreams and forget to do it in the real world. Today, I’m going to start typing them out and share them here.
Mom and Gram, sometime in the early 1980s.
The last time I saw Mom, she was lying unconscious in her hospital bed. I didn’t know if she would ever wake up again. After receiving the phone call that Mom was in a head-on collision, I gathered my strength and arranged to fly to Middletown to see her. Now, after five days in my old hometown, I had to return home, a 1,725-mile trip. I didn’t know if I would ever see her smiling eyes again, but my life is 25 hours away from hers and I had to go.
My cousin, Kaylie, never calls me on the phone. When my phone rang on Monday, July 15, I didn’t want to pick up the phone. I did because I knew I had to.
“Hi, Kaylie.”
“Did anyone call you yet?”
“No. What about?”
“Garget has been in a car accident.”
I have officially lived more of my life outside of New York State than in it. Considering the first 18 years of my life – minus a one-year stint in Hollywood, Florida – were spent in the Hudson Valley, I don’t think the New Yorker in me will ever go away.
I grew up about 90 minutes north of New York City, surrounded by trees, woods, and plenty of nature where I could, and often did, get lost. The first time I ever traveled into New York City was about six weeks before my 21st birthday.
When I say I sometimes miss New York, I am thinking of two distinct things – the variety of food and the trees. The people I know in western Nebraska don’t really understand the amount of trees I grew up around and how nature was always, and often literally, right outside my door.
Right now, I’m missing the trees.
I have often wondered how, statistically, I never became a drug addict, homeless, or ended up dead. Researchers have also found that folks like me, who endured immense traumas early in life, could keep going because there was one person who made a difference when it was needed to make you think you could keep going. This could be a few people over time and not always the same person. They were just the right person at the right time, when you needed someone. My grandmother was often that person in my life.
It’s not the first time he’s come to visit me. Michael Myers has appeared to me in dreams before. He always scares me. I’m conditioned to be afraid of him. He is, after all, a multiple murderer. Last night, he appeared just outside my window at 15 Corwin Avenue, the house in which I grew up.
He gently tapped on the glass with the tip of his knife. He stood there, looming over all the shadows filtering in from the moonlight. I was terrified, of course. Who wouldn’t be. Was he there to kill me? To kill someone else? I didn’t know. I rolled over and faced the wall, trying to pretend he wasn’t there. In my little mind, that would mean he would go away.
My mom had just taken me to get my hair cut. She had to run a few errands before we went back home. I was sitting in the front passenger seat. We were stopped at the red light by the police department when a friend of hers started talking to her from the next lane over. After a few minutes, her friend asked her who the boy was with her in the car.
“That’s not a boy, that’s Irene,” Mom said. She said it matter-of-factly like her friend was an idiot for not recognizing me. I was six years old.