Mom died today...

Sunday, January 5, 2025

"Mom died today."

It took me two days to write this sentence.
She actually died Friday morning, 6:50AM EST, January 3, 2025. She made it to 2025. I thought we had a few more months, but around Christmas time, she just couldn't keep going. Her body and her mind were failing her. In the end, she went in her sleep the morning after I spoke to her for the last time, on the phone. My sister placed the phone next to her ear and put it on speaker. I read Mom something I wrote half an hour before I called her:

'Mom,
It's me, your oldest boy.
I'm told your time with us is almost done and soon you'll be with Nanny and your Daddy.
(pause)
I just want to tell you that we'll be ok. (long pause, difficult getting the words out) You taught us well. I will do my best to meet you in Heaven someday, and with God's grace all my children will follow me there.
(pause) I am writing you into one of my books, with a slight name change, to honor you and so that your grandchildren might know you a bit more.
(very long pause, trying my best not to break down in tears) You were my whole world when I was young. (pause) My happiest memories all include you. (pause, tears) I'll remember them for the both of us.
I imagine you'll be watching over me soon. And I will be praying for you. (sniffle, straightening up in chair, wiping tears, pushing through)
Try to forgive me for the mistakes I make and ask Christ to go easy on me. I'm still working on my sailor-mouth.
I love you, Mom. May God keep you and give you peace. I will come find you in a few decades.'

There is a hole in my world, now. I have not spent much time with her in the last twenty years. After Nanny (her mom) passed on, Mom decided to sell her place and semi-retire to Florida for a few years. She lived and worked with a good friend of hers from high school. They catered parties and conferences. They also spent a lot of time sight-seeing and enjoying the beach. After a few years, she missed her family, so she moved to Kentucky to live with my sister around 2008. We saw each other only a few times after that. We spoke on the phone once in awhile, but life kept us busy. My job with Roadway and YRC kept me extremely busy. Then in December 2013, I moved to North Dakota, eventually got married, had another child, and worked very busy jobs until I took a sabbatical in December of 2022 to finish school and write books. By this time, after a few days we visited Mom in 2017, we had learned she had alzheimer's. From 2020 on, it progressed rapidly. By the end, she was blind, mute, and couldn't mobilize herself. She left this world helpless and in the dark. My only consolation is that she is with God, now, and will be with Nanny and Grandma Mac (Nanny's mom). She might even be with her Daddy and GrandDaddy Orr. I do not know where they were at spiritually, with Christ, before they died. I hope they made it. I hope they all made it. Hope is all I have left, now.
We are links to our past. Our parents are the links before us. When they leave this world, that link is broken. Like a wave erasing a shape in the sand. The ocean removes it. Flattens and smooths it out. Like it was never there. Only we remain to tell others what was on the beach. When we're gone, the story of it slips further into memory as our children must tell the story, and then their children, and so on. Our parents are our direct connection to our past, to our lived memories, to the world we grew up in that only now lives in our minds and hearts. Now half of my connection is gone.
At the moment, I'm part numb, part sad, part angry, a lot nostalgic. Sitting here, writing, listening to Chicago "Hard Habit To Break." No, I didn't plan it. It just came up in the 80s playlist I'm listening to.
I feel sad for my youngest son. He will never really know my Mom. He was too young, too far away. Mom only got to meet him twice. Once before the diagnosis and once a few years later. By that time, we all knew. She had aged considerably in those few short years. Just a few years after that, towards the end, she looked as if she'd aged twenty years in just seven. Mortality came for her with a vengeance. A stark reminder that none of us are immune. None of us will leave this world alive. My Mom was ok with me becoming Catholic. We spoke about it two years ago. She was happy I came back to God, and understood my draw to the Traditional Christianity of the Holy Church. I explained my reasoning, the nudges God had given me. She agreed that I was on the right path. I wish I could have brought her to a Traditional Mass before she passed on. It just wasn't possible. All I can do now is offer prayers for the repose of her soul. I know she will enter Heaven quickly, maybe even instantly. But a few extra prayers couldn't hurt to speed up the queue, just in case.
My extended family are protestant, so they wouldn't understand. Nor, in my experience, do protestants tolerate even hearing that they're not doing it quite right and, regardless of where their hearts are at, in rebellion against the Church Christ began. But my own family is my concern, now. My children are my legacy. It is they whom I must try and bring to Christ's true Church before the end. I need to do better, as well. I have been laxed, lately. School, holidays, illnesses, deaths... so many things blocking the way. I need to get back into the swing of it. Health, Church, Family, Writing, Research, Career. It's time to finish my life better than I started it.
I will miss my Mom. I'm sure more as time goes by. It hasn't really set in, yet. I can feel it hasn't. Still numb.
Goodbye Mommy.