What Happens to Me When Mom Dies?

A friend asked about my immediate plans for after Mom dies.

A friend asked about my immediate plans after Mom dies.
It doesn’t seem like she ever will, but it got me thinking, what are my plans?

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I’ve fantasized about selling my apartment, buying a tricked-out Transit van and driving around the country for a year or the rest of my life. Moving to New Zealand and living undocumented because I’m too old and not rich enough to emigrate legally. The cliffs on the coast of Italy have been in my mind ever since reading The Talented Mr. Ripley.

But, she meant in the immediate, in the now of right now after Mom passes. How was I going to soothe myself?
I hadn’t thought about that.

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I’ll get a doggo.
From the city pound (ACC) or a local rescue or shelter. And older one. Maybe even an old one. I don’t have the energy or patience for a puppy, and they find homes pretty easily anyway. I want a dog who needs me.

When Mom passes, there will be no one who really needs me anymore. I want a dog who needs me. Like my mother, I need to be needed.

I’ll stop setting my alarm, because I won’t have to be anywhere at any specific time.

I’ll take showers whenever the fuck I feel like it, no longer having to take two other adults into consideration.

And a bath. A long, hot bath. In my own tub.
With the bathroom door open.
Then I’ll walk around in towel, or drip dry naked if I feel like it.¹

I’ll make room for whatever comes next.
I’ll clean, organize and purge.
I’ll make order out of chaos.
I’ll make space.
I’ll remind myself I don’t need to fill those spaces right away. Or ever. It’s okay to have some negative space. Breathing room.

There will be a great give-away, a potlach of canned fruits & chicken, of soups & Boost. Pull-ups, bed pads & flushable wipes. Boxes of blue or green latex free medical gloves. Durable medical equipment—two commodes, two shower chairs, a cane, a walker, a transit chair, a bedside medical table.

A smaller purge of bathroom medical supplies—tubs of A&D ointment, tubes of zinc oxide, medicated powder, bags of blue toothettes. Fleet enemas. Large rectal syringes for the saline enemas. Laxatives & stool softeners in many forms: pill, liquid, suppository. Lots of things that center around poop will find their way into the trash.

Linens for a single hospital bed will go; there will be no more hospital bed. The medical supply company will come take that almost immediately.

I will be left with what will feel like a pretty empty bedroom.
It’ll stay empty for a while.

Little by slowly I’ll give away her clothes and furniture.
It will take the longest to let go of her stuffies, but I’m off topic.
We were talking about first steps, immediate self-care.

I’ll lay on the floor & cry & cuddle my new old doggo.
Poor Sad Kevin Eileen, our cat, will refuse to cuddle, but will have a whopping resentment that I’m cuddling the old doggo, and drag his blanket around screaming.

The upside of grief: I will lose weight, unintentionally.

I’ll cancel Amazon Prime.
No more need for streaming music or two-day delivery.
There will be no more rush.
It’ll be the end of urgency.

I will lay on my bed & cry & not know what to do next because for the last however many years my entire life focus has been Mom and suddenly my purpose will be gone and it’ll be a relief, but my anchor will be gone & I’ll be floating, unmoored, drifting, which is not awful, but it is directionless & if you’re not focused on an end goal, how do you know when you’re done?

I’ll remind myself: grieving is not linear. Or predictable. My mother didn’t cry for years after her own mother’s passing death (let’s just call it what it is, death) following almost ten years of cancer. But when our cat died, she cried, devastated beyond expectation. It’s safer than mourning a mother. Mine came in a movie theater, watching I Never Sang For My Father, when I noticed an background extra in a nursing home scene. She looked exactly like my Nana Ada.

Maybe I’ll need to see Mom’s doppleganger somewhere before I cry, but I don’t think so.

I’ll remind myself that crying is healthy.

I’ll go to my recovery meetings, raise my hand and share about it and folks will crowd around me wanting to hug me and hold me and give me space to feel things and the thing I’ll feel will be “get the fuck away from me, I’m not a hugger.”

I will let them hug me anyway because feelings aren’t facts.
And because I learned from her, we all need to be touched.

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1. I haven’t been able to walk around naked in my own home between the hours of 9am and 5pm for over six years, but I suppose most people have clothes on during those hours.