Grieving with Grimace

It’s been a week since my mom passed away at home. The whole ordeal was a blur, waking up to see her still sleeping but no longer breathing, calling all the right people to take care of a body, consoling my dad who just lost his wife, calling my mom’s friends and family to tell them the news, meeting with the funeral home about cremation services. It’s wild just how much work is to be done right after one of the most stressful and saddest moments of your life just happened — planning ahead of time only helps so much.

Even when someone is slowly fading away and the end could be any day now, the end is still a shock. When you’re in a routine of caring for someone who is dying, you’re trained to look at the signs, like discoloration of the knees and feet, to monitor breathing patterns. The last week of her life was mostly spent sitting at her bedside, watching White Sox games (they were winning and then they were losing badly), and crocheting a baby blanket for my cousin. I’d tell her about my day (nothing too exciting happened) and how the Sox were doing in case she couldn’t hear the TV. Her eyes were closed 90 percent of the day. I’d give her a tiny bit of morphine every three hours as instructed. Then when it was time for me to go to sleep, I would give her a kiss on her forehead and say, “Good night, see you tomorrow.” We had already spent so many days like this together, why not just one more day? One…