This post is going to be a mess so please forgive me. It’s also going to be highly personal, so apologies for that as well. As with my previous complete post, feel free to skip if you don’t have the spoons to spare. Your health is just as important as anyone else’s.
All right? All right.
First, thank you for everyone’s kind words when I posted about the passing of my mother.
I didn’t respond to many messages, but each and every one helped me so, so much. Some of you asked if there was anything you could do to help. I wasn’t in any kind of headspace to answer that question in the moment. But I have an answer now:
Wear a mask. Vote.
This is not a political statement. Like I said earlier, this is personal.
My mom did not die of Covid. So you would be forgiven for thinking that Covid-19 has nothing to do with me and the fact that I just asked you to put on a mask came out of nowhere. But even though my mom didn’t die OF Covid, it’s very, very possible that she died BECAUSE of Covid. Even her doctors said so.
In an earlier post I said that Mom is the heart of this house. She was then and she is now. She was loving, and brave, and strong. The strongest person I ever knew and ever will know. But she drew her strength from her family, and we weren’t allowed to see her for two months.
The hospital was on lockdown because of Covid-19. It happened so fast that they didn’t have the infrastructure for video conferencing. The nurses, doctors, and other staff were stretched thin because half were permanently assigned to the Covid wing in order to help protect the non-Covid ICU patients. Once, I pushed hard enough to convince a nurse to hold a phone to my mom’s ear so she could hear our voices. She was still on a ventilator, but every time we checked in we were told her eyes would open but she was otherwise unresponsive. So I pushed.
As soon as she heard our voices, her eyes opened wide and she tried to sit up. I didn’t have to push after that.
They gave her a tracheostomy. We had to approve it over the phone. I still wonder… well, I still wonder a lot of things.
Then, after the fifth or sixth week, we met Jen. Jen was a nurse with an iPhone. She offered to let us FaceTime with my mom. We’re an Android family, so we didn’t have FaceTime. She didn’t know how to Duo.
But we both had WhatsApp, and she was willing to use her PERSONAL PHONE to let us see my mother.
Nurses really are heroes.
Mom started to improve. Slowly. Slightly. When she got her trach valve and we heard her loud, strong voice say “Hi!” for the first time, Dad and I laughed we were so happy. We were sure she’d get better. We picked out a pair of sneakers so she’d be able to walk out of the hospital in new shoes.
The hospital got an iPad, so we got one too. Yes, I know iPad supports Duo, but the nurses were baffled by it, so we got the iPad. I mostly use it to write letters to her now. I like to believe that a metaphysical postal service delivers them for me.
Lockdown ended. We had to wear full PPE to see her, but we could see her and she could see us. Kind of. She told me she’d been sad because she was starting to forget our faces. She hated our masks because she couldn’t see us smile. She hated our latex gloves because we held hands all the time and she missed simple, human contact. Despite all that, she was joyed to see us.
She was relieved and grateful to know for sure—FOR SURE—that we hadn’t forgotten her. That we missed her as much as she missed us. That we still loved her. Her vitals began to improve that day. Her doctors were impressed and a little confused.
But… we’d been separated for two months.
Her body just didn’t have anything left in reserve. Her spirit was back, and she fought hard, but there was nothing to fight with. And everything the doctors did for one system made another collapse. They couldn’t do anything that wouldn’t make something else worse. One doctor cried when he explained to me that he’d brought in every medical team in the hospital, but there was nothing anyone could do. My mother said ”I’m sorry” and I told her that none of this was her fault, that she did everything right. I said it truthfully. I said it fiercely. I heard a thump and turned toward the doctor. His back had hit the wall and he’d slid to the floor, his face cradled in his hands.
2020 has been a fucking rough year.
We brought her home. Hospice. She got to hug us and tease us and see us smile. She was so very happy for one, wonderful week, and then she was gone.
I’m glad and thankful we could do that for her. So many families this year had to say goodbye via FaceTime.
This has been a very long post, I know, and I’m sorry. But I’ve been wrapped up in my grief and shutting out the world.
Then a teenager who lived next door to me died.
Then Chadwick Boseman died.
Then Ruth Bader Ginsburg died.
Then Then Then.
Everyone is grieving. And for some reason we’ve forgotten that we’re all in this together. I need… I need us to remember. I don’t want one more person to be hurt by this fucking virus. Because Covid-19 has killed over 200,000 people in America alone. 200,000 people have families, extended families, found families, and friends grieving right now. In addition to all that tragedy, how many families have lost a loved one the way I lost my mother? How many families didn’t have to get wrecked? How many people are crying like I’m crying as I struggle to write this?
If we had all behaved as one tribe, if we all had worn our masks–not just for ourselves, but for our neighbors–how many families would not be mourning, feeling that months, days, seconds had been stolen during that final spark of life? If we had all looked out for each other, would my mother be alive today? I don’t know. I just know that Covid touches everyone, not just the people who contract it.
So what can you do for me in my time of grief?
Wear a mask. Vote.
“Real change, enduring change, happens one step at a time.”
— Ruth Bader Ginsburg
“Now, more than ever, the illusions of division threaten our very existence. We all know the truth: more connects us than separates us. But in times of crisis the wise build bridges, while the foolish build barriers. We must find a way to look after one another, as if we were one single tribe.”
— T’Challa (Chadwick Boseman)