My mom had a stroke on April 10th. 

Everything was measured in hours at that point: how many hours she had been off her blood thinners, how many hours since the surgery to remove the clot, how many hours since the second clot was found in her leg, how many hours until that could be operated on to be removed. 

Once she got through those surgeries and was put into the neuro ICU, things started being measured in days. How many days until she would regain consciousness. How many days until she could swallow on her own again. How many days she would be stuck in that bed unable to move in any meaningful way, losing what little mobility she had left. 

When we got to the ten day mark, the hardest question I’ve ever had to consider came up: how many more days do we keep her there, trapped inside a failing body with a brain that would no longer let her express herself, that would likely never regain the ability to swallow enough to allow her to breathe on her own? 

The doctors couldn’t tell us to what extent she was aware of anything or whether there was any of her personality left in there somewhere. She was very clear in her advance directive and during many conversations we had throughout the last 20+ years of her ongoing serious health problems: a life with no independence, a bed-bound life beholden to tubes for air and nutrition, was no life that she wanted to lead. 

And so we decided to let her go. Time was back to being measured in hours at that point, as no one had any idea how long her body would keep going once she was taken off meds and the breathing tube. 

“She might not even make it to the hospice facility”, one nurse told me right before they were getting ready to move her. 

If there’s one thing about my mother though, it’s that she was the most stubborn person I’d ever known, and that apparently was not just a personality trait but something deeply programmed into her physical body as well. She made it to the hospice facility and we were back to counting days. “Short days”, the hospice staff called it. That was the expectation. They were confident that she had a couple days at most. 

She went into hospice on a Friday evening. My husband and I went in to see her that Sunday thinking she was probably close to the end. I spent a couple hours there with her, holding her hand when she’d allow it, telling her over and over that it was ok to go, that we’d all be ok and we’d figure things out, that she didn’t have to hang on for us. I told her to go find various loved ones that had long passed. I told her to relax and think about drinking margaritas on the beach. I told her I loved her and that all I wanted was for her to be at peace. 

I was both hopeful that she’d pass while I was there, and dreading that she would. Every hitch in her breathing, every twitch of her body, would set me on edge thinking that maybe that was it…maybe it was happening. But it didn’t happen that day, or the next. Or the next. I followed along with the nurses’ notes on her medical chart online and called in to talk with them daily. She just kept hanging on despite all signs that her body was ready to go. Ready, but not willing. As always.

On the afternoon of Thursday April 25th I got a call that I had been expecting. Dreading. Hoping for. Her hospice nurse said she had spiked a massive fever and was definitely very near the end now. I notified the people who needed to be notified and I waited. Half an hour later they called again to say she had passed. 

All those hours, all those days, the absolute longest two weeks of my life, were finally done. A month shy of her 69th birthday, my mom was gone. 

The days afterward were a blur of highway miles and phone calls. So much to do and no clue where to start. I have no siblings so it’s just me, my husband and my dad now. And the dogs, of course. Always the dogs, who were forever her biggest concern. But chihuahuas can’t help explain estate law and I wasn’t about to tell my dad that he was on his own in terms of trying to make arrangements, so I put my business pants on and got to work. 

Having the arrangements to focus on kept me relatively calm. It kept me from being the gigantic asshole that I was sorely tempted to be a few times, from burning bridges and saying things I couldn’t take back. Time was back to being measured in days. How many days until she was cremated, how many days until we had death certificates, how many days until we needed to make financial decisions. I remember having the realization that two weeks had passed since her death, and thinking “that’s all? It seems like we’ve been at this so much longer”. 

Last week marked two months of her being gone and again, it feels so much longer…but it also still feels like she could text me at any moment. When I go to my parents’ house it feels like she’s still in the next room. I know that feeling will eventually dissipate. I know someday I’ll recognize just the anniversary of her passing rather than the anniversaries of all the various steps in the process that led up to it. But for now, the After Corinne era is still being measured in days and weeks in my heart.