When I say I can’t remember the day my mother died, what I mean is I can’t remember the date of my mother’s death. The day, I remember. I remember how bleak the sky looked when I finally got out of bed. I remember how quiet everything was. There were no traffic sounds. If you listened closely, you could hear the surf a block away. A lone gull was calling. There didn’t appear to be much of a breeze, unusual for the shore. There was grey light spilling into my bedroom. It was the kind of morning you knew that if you just went back to bed the day would just go on without you and you wouldn’t miss a thing. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I had, would anything have changed? I was twelve, what did I know?
The fact that there was light caused some alarm. I sat up straight, and fast.
“It shouldn’t be this light,” I thought. “Dad’s gonna kill me. I’m gonna be late for school.” I closed my eyes and laid back down on the bed.
“I should go downstairs and see if he’s okay.” Instead, I laid there and pulled the covers up to my chin. It was warm and cozy in the bed.
“He’s okay, nothing ever happens to him. Why should I get up if I don’t have to?” I thought. I decided to stay put until my father came up. He always came up to wake me for school. He would be along.
I rolled over, so my back was to the window and pulled the covers up a little bit more. Try as I might, I just couldn’t get back to sleep. Something was not right. It wasn’t the weather as it was always gray and gloomy in October. What could possibly have happened to keep my father from waking me up for school? I remembered the late-night phone call about the same time I heard my father’s footsteps on the stairs. I knew right then what the phone call was about. It took him forever to get to the top. His steps were slow, deliberate, heavy. The walk of a man who had no desire to reach the top. He didn’t have to come up and tell me. We had all been waiting for that call. We waited for that call every time Mom left. Mom had been away this time since July, three months.
Mom had cancer. We used to tell people she had cancer-of-the-everything; it was easier than running down the list. She was diagnosed with breast cancer about the time I was born but it had spread to most of her body by the time of her passing. She tried to limit her hospital stays to the summer so she would be home during the school year, and we could bounce around between her sisters’ during the summer. In those days, children were not allowed in hospitals unless they were patients. Only once did we get to visit her there. Dad received special permission to bring us. I learned, years later, that it was thought Mom was not going to live through the week.
I was about seven at the time. I remember the halls as long, white tunnels, lined with windowless doors. The air smelled of disinfectant and sickness. Unseen people could be heard moaning, crying, coughing, whispering. We passed people stumbling down the hall on crutches or being pushed in wheelchairs or beds. Conversations were hushed. It seemed like we walked down miles of hallways. You would get to the end of one, turn, walk some more. It took forever.
Finally, we stopped at a door just like all the others we had passed. We were told to wait in the hall while Dad went into the room. I remember standing there, afraid to move, holding Bruce’s hand tight, and waiting. Eventually the door opened, and Dad told us to come in. The room was white, like the halls. The bed was just inside the door facing a wall with a window so Mom could look out. Next to the bed was a small table with a box of tissues and some wilted flowers in a vase. Mom’s head was turned towards the door, and we could see her smiling at us as we entered. Her smile filled the room. It had been some time since my brother and I had seen her. As a result, much to six-year-old Bruce’s chagrin, there was much hugging and kissing. All the while Dad stood in the background, a silent sentinel, watching. Today, looking back on this day, I don’t remember if he was smiling.
Everything seemed to be going well when suddenly Dad rushed us out of the room. Telling us again to wait in the hall, he quickly shut the door behind us. A nurse rushed past us into the room moments later. After some time had passed, Dad returned saying that Mom was tired from the visit, and we would have to leave. Once again, we traversed the labyrinth of white hallways back to the entrance and outside. At some point along the sidewalk, Dad stopped and pointed towards the building.
“Look up there,” he said. “Mommy is waiting to wave to you. You can see her, can’t you? There, on the third floor.”
I never asked Bruce, but I didn’t see her. I just held onto Bruce with one hand and waved with the other. That seems like such a long time ago. So many things have happened since then. Mom came home and left, and came home and left so many times that it had just become part of our routine. How could we have known that this trip in July would be the last?
I laid in my bed, covers pulled up almost over my head, facing the wall. I listened to Dad’s slow ascent. Part of me wanted to start crying, part of me desperately wanted to go back to sleep. Then, suddenly, I wanted him to get to the top. I wanted him to tap lightly on the door before opening it as he always did. I wanted this day to start, so it would end. I wanted everything to be normal again because I knew that everything was about to change. The anticipated rap on the door finally came followed by the door slowly opening and Dad stepping into the room.
“Bobby, honey, wake up. I have something to tell you.”
He spoke almost in a whisper. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought I heard fear in his voice. I rolled over to face him. He was bent, looking mostly at the floor, or maybe at his feet, or maybe some place a million miles away from there. He looked defeated. I had never seen him look like this before. He walked over and sat on the edge of my bed. Suddenly, I was scared. This could be worse than I thought.
“I suppose you heard the phone last night.”
There was a long pause. I wasn’t sure if this was a rhetorical question, or some sort of statement of fact. I didn’t say anything.
“It was the hospital.”
His voice was quieter than before. It was as if he was talking to himself, like I was not even there.
“Your mother died last night.”
There it was. The words I was always waiting to hear. Every time Mom left I expected to hear them. Now, here they were, and I didn’t know what to do. Should I say something? Should I tell my father I was sorry for his loss? That is what you say to someone, but I had just lost someone too. Should I hug my father, should I cry? I thought I should do something. Instead, I did nothing. I laid in my bed with the covers pulled up to my chin and did nothing. He didn’t say anything else, he just sat there. He wasn’t looking at me. After a few minutes he got up, turned, and walked to the door. He quietly closed the door behind him and went back down the stairs.
I continued to lay there, thoughts jumbling in my mind. Someone should tell Bruce, I thought. I wondered if he had heard the phone. I wondered if he was lying in bed, pretending to be asleep just like me. I decided to let him sleep; it was not like the news was going to change.
I don’t know how long it was before he wandered across the hall to my room and entered without a knock, as usual.
“How come Dad never woke me up? Isn’t there school today?” He wanted to know.
He was only ten at the time. With Mom being away so much and Dad working all the time, he frequently came to me for reassurance. Now I had to tell him that his mother was dead.
“Sit down, we need to talk,” I said to him. I could see he was getting nervous.
“Mom died last night.”
He just sat there, staring, saying nothing. At first, I wasn’t sure he had heard me. Even though we both knew it was going to happen, the finality was difficult to deal with. I felt so bad for him. I didn’t know what else to say so I told him everything would be alright. Eventually he got up and shuffled back to his room. He didn’t say anything to me, or anyone else, for the rest of the day.
We had all known this day was coming, but now, suddenly, here it was. The three of us, in separate rooms, trying to cope with our new reality. Nothing had changed, but everything had changed. Mom wasn’t here yesterday, but she was somewhere. Today she wasn’t anywhere, yet she was everywhere. A phone call we had all been waiting for, yet were totally unprepared for. One short phone call changed all of our lives forever.