THAT RIDE

Yesterday, April 7^th, I took the longest ride for a short trip. I sat in the ambulance with mom as we left the nursing facility and headed to fulfill her wish to die at home. As I looked at the frail crumpled figure of someone who once was so strong, I couldn’t help but think about all those years she accompanied me to moments in my life, but the biggest moment was when she took me home from the Swedish Hospital in Brooklyn, for our first ride. How filled with hope was she for the future? How happy was she to have a first son? How content was she to hold another child in her arms? Here we were once again, but this time for her last ride.

As the ambulance made its way toward her residence, her home and her life, she had this far away stare in her face, so distant so focused on something, that I was prompted to ask by her looks if she was OK, she didn’t answer me, she didn’t blink her eye. It was her final journey. I stood down in respect for her.

I have tried to prepare myself for what is the inevitable, what is for sure, what none of us can avoid, but I cannot imagine that. Believe me I am not a momma’s boy, but she is my mother for all my years so far, it is kind of hard to not recognize the truth, all my years she was there, just a phone call away sometimes, just a sweet memory always there for me.

Somewhere in this world, maybe in a dark little corner, one of us is mourning the passing of their mom. Someone sobs so deeply that it would shake our hearts and make us invertebrate, like jelly in as we witness the truth we will or have witnessed already. I will savor the final days of her life, like the proverbial fine wine, and as the line decreases along the glass, I will take a longer taste and savor it with each sip.

A debate rages in my mind, a debate so blasphemous that it defies explanation. I hope she can get better but I now she won’t, I want her to live, but I don’t wish for her to suffer. I want her to live and I want her to die.