Death is a Process

My mother died on April 29. I'm still dealing with the fallout. I wanted to write something about her. It doesn't feel right to talk about my pets upon their deaths, and not her. Hell, I even wrote something about my father when he died, though that post was more about all the things that changed in my life in 2018. That post was written here on my Neocities, whereas my pets were written about on Tumblr. I suppose I'm just continuing the tradition of human deaths getting their posts here.

My mother was born in 1961, the ninth of ten kids. She had just had a birthday, so she was 65 when she died. She told me one of her earliest memories was in 1963. Her sister came home early, and when her mom asked why, she said the president had been shot. She remembered her mom turning on the TV and crying at the news.

When she was a kid, she would watch a show called Chiller Theater with host Bill Cardille. One night, they played a movie that she couldn't remember the title of, but somehow involved bloody fingers. Her older brother pretended to go to bed early, but hid under her bed. When she got in bed, he put his hands over the headboard and said, "Bloody fingers!" Once when she was recounting the story to me, I think I commented something about him being mean. She said yeah, he could do mean pranks like that, but he also did a lot of nice things for her, like once on Halloween some kid stole her candy and he got her candy back.

I can't remember if my mother was in university or high school when this happened, but she went to the Greenbrier on a school trip. This would have been late 70's or early 80's, depending on which one she was attending. It's long been common knowledge that there was a fallout shelter underneath the hotel, but this was before that information was declassified. One day during her trip, she was on an elevator and noticed an unmarked button. It piqued her curiousity, so she pressed it. When the doors opened, two men in suits passed by and looked at her funny. She decided that maybe it wasn't a good idea to stick around and went back up. Obviously, I don't have any way to verify this story, but it's what she told me.

I was trying to remember what cars she owned. I know her first one was an AMC, and at some point she had a Nissan truck. She had a Geo Metro, and I think the one after that was the Ford Tempo, which may have been right after I was born, I'm not super clear on the timeline, but that was the first car of hers I personally remember. I think she either wrecked the Metro or it died somehow, and she really needed a car right then. That day, it was raining when she went to one of the local dealerships. She was looking at the cars on the lot when an older salesman came up to her and said, "The other salesmen are too afraid to get wet. Can I help you find anything?" She explained the situation, and he said, "I have a car that's at a really good price, the catch is it's a manual. Is that okay?" She said it was, and he showed her the Tempo. I can't remember what she paid for it, but she got a really good price because they couldn't sell it. Even back then in the 90's, manual transmissions were not exactly desired. Up until our most recent car, she exclusively drove manuals. The Tempo had a special feature as well, a luggage rack on the trunk that came in handy when we went to yard sales, something we did very regularly when I was a kid. That car ended up getting totalled when she hit a deer.

Speaking of deer, the next car she got was a Saturn. I can't remember the model, just that it was a Saturn. On April Fool's Day one year, we were travelling on a relatively busy road when a deer jumped in front of us. She definitely hit it, but the deer got up and ran off. She was screaming and cussing because she thought she totalled another car, and I'm pretty sure we had just bought it not even a year before. She drove home and we got out to look at the damage, only to find there was no damage. The only sign we hit that deer was some hair stuck in the hood. That car died not super long after from some unrelated engine trouble.

After that, we got our first Ford Focus. This one was the first car we had with power windows, and when we got it, it had a radio with a six CD changer. It really came in handy when she started dating this guy in Virginia and we had to go on these four hour road trips. This one we sold for $500. The air conditioning didn't work anymore, the back driver power window didn't work, the CD changer had long broken and been replaced with a boring single CD radio, and it was just kinda falling apart, so she got a new car. I was 19, and I decided to get my learner's permit, and the old car was supposed to be mine. Well, after a couple months of driving with her, she said I drove too crazy and stopped trying to teach me. Thus, we sold the car and I didn't get my driver's license until a week before I turned 30.

The next car was another Ford Focus. This car's life ended because my mother's ex was doing the oil changes, but when they broke up, he stopped doing them and she forgot about it. The engine was grinding before the oil light came on. I only found out afterward that the oil light might as well be called the too late to save the engine light. When we finally got it looked at, it was confirmed that yes, the engine was a loss. Funnily enough, even though the engine was a loss, the car still ran until we could get another. No telling how much longer it would've lasted, but at least it didn't leave us stranded.

After that, my mother got our current car, which was yet another Ford Focus. This was the first automatic I'd seen her buy, and it was also our first car with no physical media player. I finally got my license a few years after. She was apprehensive about letting me drive the car at first, but by the end of her life, I was driving her almost everywhere.

Some of this might seem pointless, especially the stuff about the cars, but it's stuff I want to remember, and to share with you.

When I was born, I was late in the worst way possible. My mother had been in labor for three days, but the local hospital refused to do a C-section. She ended up having to go to Charleston to get one. When I finally came out, I was blue. She begged the doctors to take me away, because she didn't want to watch me die. I remember she told me that it was tradition to smoke cigars to celebrate a new baby, but neither her or my dad smoked, so they chewed bubble gum cigars.

She took an active role in my school life from the beginning. I still have an award she received for volunteering at Head Start. In elementary school, she'd come in on Fridays and read to my class. She also was part of the PTA, and I think she was even president of the PTA for a while. I remember being at school after hours for PTA meetings and running around empty hallways. There were also times when I forgot my homework, and the janitors were kind enough to let us in so I could get it.

Once, when I was six, my mother made me help her clean the living room. I hated cleaning with her, not just for the normal reasons anybody would hate cleaning, but because she would always end up yelling at me. She pointed to a little toy on the floor and said, "Pick up that green thing!" I don't know what happened leading up to this, but she must have already been pissed off, because she said it very forcefully. The problem was, the toy was blue and I was six and autistic, although she didn't know the last part at the time. I asked her what green thing. She bent me down over it and said if I didn't pick it up, she'd hit me. I probably took too long to tell her the thing she was pointing at was blue, but again, six and autistic. She started counting and when she got to three, she hit me. I finally asked her if she meant the toy that was actually blue, and picked it up. My mother always told people she never hit me. She seemed to forget about this incident. To be clear, it was the only time.

In the third grade, I threw a minor temper tantrum and ended up getting suspended for three days because I wouldn't talk to the principal or vice principal. My mother did not take this well. When we got home, she screamed at me, asking why I did it. I told her I was afraid the police would come and take me away. This wasn't true, I just wanted her to stop screaming at me. This only upset her more. I remember waking up the next morning and going downstairs to find her crying over this. She went to the school and fought with them over it, leaving me to sit in the office all day waiting on her. In the course of those meetings, the vice principal told her I would grow up to become a criminal. Hilariously, this vice principal later got a job as a professor at my university, and I had him for a class in my first semester. He was nice enough to apologize for his remarks. Going through the house, I found notes she took for that meeting. She really did go to bat for me against the school. I just wish she didn't scream at me over it.

Throughout my childhood, she was always taking me places. I remember going to the Blue and Gray Reunion, a Civil War reenactment in Philippi, pretty much every year for a while. I remember going to parks and zoos and museums and even caves. Caves were a big one. Places like Laurel Caverns and Seneca Caverns. Those were a lot of fun. She dated a guy in Virginia for a while and we went to Skyline Caverns, which has a section full of crystals that only grow in a vacuum and are very rare on Earth. While she was dating that guy, we also got to see lots of historical sites around the area, like Monticello and Montpelier. Montpelier was especially cool because we got to tour it while it was still gutted for restoration. I'd love to see it again, it's certainly completed now.

That reminds me, the first time my mother heard the word "coon" in the context of a racial slur was when she was dating that guy from Virginia. She was sitting in the car with him, and he said, "Look at those coons over there." My mother was looking for a raccoon, so she was like, "Where?" The guy said, "Those coons over there!" and pointed at a black couple pushing a stroller. She said that was one of the reasons she broke up with him.

My mother had several boyfriends after my dad. I don't have any recollection of this, but she told me one of them hit me behind her back, and she got rid of him as soon as she found out. There was a long stretch of time when she was doing online dating. That's how she met the guy from Virginia, who we visted for long stretches in the summer and a few weekends during the school year. There were a couple from Ohio as well. The third to last one was the one she was with the longest, also from Ohio. We'd go to his house weekends, sometimes he'd come to our house for a weekend. When she was with him, we often visited the large flea market he lived near. He was also relatively close to Dayton, where we visited the National Museum of the USAF and Carillon Park, among other things. This boyfriend also took us on vacation out west, where we saw Mount Rushmore and Yellowstone.

To tie off the thread about going places with her, anytime there was a school trip or something I wanted to go on, there was always money for it, and if there wasn't, she found it. If there was a place I wanted to go, we usually found a way. Usually. I was into ghosts as a kid and read about a haunted place in Berkeley, California, which I confused for Beckley, West Virginia. I asked my mother to take me, and she refused. Bitch.

Continuing the other thread, she finally broke up with third to last after he cheated on her for the third time. The last two boyfriends were local. Second to last helped me to get my current job, actually. In both cases, she spent a lot of time at their houses and kept a lot of stuff there. The first time I had to carry a bunch of stuff out of her ex's house, I told her if she ever did it again, I wouldn't help her. Of course, the final boyfriend she had just couldn't put his foot down and when I got roped into helping her get her stuff out again, it was even worse. There was a section of his closet that was so thick with her clothes, I couldn't get my hand inbetween them. I had to have a friend help me, it was ridiculous. This was also when she got really into plants in a big way. Don't get me wrong, she always liked plants, but at this boyfriend's house, she had a place to put them. She made me help her carve out a space for those plants in our house, which was better than what we had there before (a mess), but it allowed her to go beyond even what her spineless people pleaser of an ex did.

When I was in second or third grade, my mother hurt her back. She had fallen down the steps of our porch, which were concrete. There was a surgery available at the time, but the doctors told her nobody would operate on her. From here on, it was a sore point. Sometimes she'd tell me she was sorry we couldn't go out and do things like we used to when I was a lot younger. After her injury, she got on disability, but she still worked under the table cleaning houses for a long time. This was one way she could make ends meet. She became a wizard with finances and became very good at getting assistance through government programs, an adaptation she was forced to make. She also volunteered with Literacy Volunteers for a very long time, and even won an award for it. She did a lot of things with them, like homework help and fundraising. She was also on the board for a long time. I remember spending a lot of time at the library because of this. This is also how I got my online handle, as the computer class I always mention when I tell the story was through Literacy Volunteers.

When I was in third grade, possibly related to the suspension, I was diagnosed with ADHD. I started seeing a psychologist and taking medication, and would continue through high school. I remember I was on Adderall, but was taken off in sixth grade because I think a study came out about Adderall's addictiveness. I remember being on Vyvanse in high school as well, which kept me up at night and left me extremely irritable when I forgot to take it. I wouldn't find out that insomnia was a sign of an improper dose until literally last year, when I attended a work conference. I was on Wellbutrin the whole time I was seeing that psych, I think.

Somewhat related, at some point, I had a bed wetting problem. My mom talked to the psychiatrist, who did the psychiatrist thing and prescribed a pill. When I went to dad's house, he balked at the idea of a pill and instead woke me up in the middle of the night and made me go pee, which he thought would train me to do it on my own. I don't know who was right on this one.

When I was a junior in high school, I was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome. I think it was a year or two before the DSM V came out and put Asperger's in with Autism Spectrum Disorder. I found the report from the diagnosis when I was looking through things.. It said I was great at processing written language, but had a hard time with spoken language. I thought about this, and about all the times my mother insulted and belittled me when I didn't immediately understand what she said, all the times she got angry when I didn't catch something. She fought so hard for so long to get that diagnosis, she knew what the report said, and yet when I acted like I was autistic, she still treated me like shit. What kind of fucking sense does that make?

She called me a worthless piece of shit to my face, twice. The first time, she pointed to something and said, "Hand me that thing!" Of course, the thing she was pointing to was just one thing among many other things, so when I paused for a second to figure out what she actually wanted, she said, "You really are a worthless piece of shit, aren't you?" The second time, we were driving somewhere and she asked me what a sign said right as we were driving past it. I told her I couldn't read it in time, and she said the same thing, exact same wording. "You really are a worthless piece of shit, aren't you?"

I tell you what, the worst thing about your own mother calling you a worthless piece of shit isn't that she said it, it's when you start to believe it. Not because of the two mentioned examples, that's just fucking stupid, but you know.

I remember once, when I was in university, I had spent a few nights at a girl's apartment. Nothing happened, she was just a friend helping me out. A week or so later, I was in the car with my mother, and she said her boyfriend at the time told her I was going to get that girl pregnant and she was worried about it. I said, "Emma's trans." She said, "Oh, thank God!"

One time, maybe a few months after I got my driver's license, I was driving home from the lauindromat with her. At the time, we were going to one in Jane Lew, so we took 79 home. This particular morning, I was very exhausted. I can't remember the specific reason why, but I was so tired, I was almost starting to nod off. I tried to pass another car and I guess I barely avoided an accident. She said, "You cut that guy off! You really cut that guy off!" I don't know why, maybe I was just that tired, maybe I was just happy to have not wrecked, but I started laughing. Instead of yelling at me, she started laughing, too.

A couple years ago, my mother got uterine cancer. This had nothing to do with her death. In fact, she kinda won the cancer lottery. It was the slowest growing type, was in its first stage and contained entirely to the uterus, and it's not like she was using it anymore. All they had to do was a hysterectomy and she was done. The recovery from the surgery stopped her moving, though, which made her disability worse. Soon after this, she got a MRSA infection. Her doctor prescribed her an antibiotic, which she ended up having a bad reaction to. She found this out after a blood test at her endocrinologist revealed her kidney function was low. The doctor literally called her and told her to report to the emergency room, and she was eventually admitted. My mother hated this hospital stay. I don't want to get into too many details, but one egregious example of something that the hospital did to her was give her a drug that was the same kind of drug as one she was allergic to after she told them about the allergy because they were literally trying to give her meds she was allergic to. My mother didn't know she was allergic to the one they gave her and was wondering why she broke out into hives until she looked it up, but the people giving her the drug should've known. There were two effects of this stay. One, not moving a lot compounded with the surgery recovery to make moving even more painful, and two, she didn't want to go to the hospital ever again. Literally told me not to send her there, even if she was dying. Well, she won on that one, at least.

As a quick aside, on the first night in the ER, they provided her a bucket toilet to pee in so she wouldn't have to walk out to the bathroom. After a while, the doctor, not realizing something was in it, tried to move it. She raised it over her head and the contents spilled out on her. My mother and I both laughed at the poor woman, but she took it in stride.

After my mother's back injury, her condition gradually worsened over the years, paired with a lot of other health problems. She slowly started being unable to maintain all her stuff. This produced a hoarding problem. I was no angel in this, I have similar brain worms, but I'm trying to be better. For example, I got into making my own pocket notebooks, for which I was saving cardboard from pop boxes. I have a lot of this material saved up, so I decided to stop collecting it until I get a chance to at least make more notebooks. I don't want my fun little craft hobby to develop into hoarding. I recognized something could be developing, and I hit the brakes. I don't think my mother had these brakes in the first place. She kept buying plants, for example, and buying tools for the plants. I've found several moisture meters, a few clearly used, but several more not even opened. Going through the house, there was what probably amounted to hundreds of dollars worth of yarn. It went to the dump because it was where the rats roamed. I couldn't verify it was sanitary and it's not something you can just clean easily. It was in a room we couldn't access for years because she had so much stuff in front of the door. Even before she was disabled, she had a problem, the disability just made it so she couldn't deal with it. I stil don't know how she managed to take care of so many fucking plants, which she then proceeded to torment me with by putting them in my way and screaming at me when they inevitably got knocked over.

This woman screamed all the time. She screamed bloody fucking murder when she misplaced something, for example. Cries of, "I just had it!" or, "Where is it!" were heard constantly because this bitch probably had ADHD too. THe whole fucking family is six different flavors of neurodivergent, though I don't think most of them are diagnosed, it just became obvious when I knew what to look for. She screamed almost anytime she was upset and cried and whined to the point where even when she had a legitimate complaint, even if it warranted such a reaction, even when I was in the wrong, it felt like it was bullshit. When I confronted her about screaming once, she said I shouldn't care because it wasn't directed at me, but it didn't matter that it wasn't directed at me, it still felt awful hearing it. This had a severe impact on my mental health. I thought, if only I didn't have her second guessing me and screaming at me for my mistakes and making me walk on eggshells, I could take anything else life threw at me. I guess we'll find out now.

One day, I got my mother her dinner, like normal, and I went to work, like normal. I got home at my normal time and took a shower like normal. Something felt off, like maybe I should check on my mother, but I went to bed anyway. I got up an hour or so later and had to go to the bathroom, and I thought about that feeling I got earlier. I decided to go to the bathroom first. Might as well do that before my life got comopletely turned upside down. I did my business and came back out. When I finally checked on her, she had already been gone a while. Her skin was cool, and her body was stuck in position. I had left my phone upstairs, so I used hers to call 911. The operator answered, and I said, "I think my mother's dead. She's stiff and cold and I need you to send an ambulance over." The operator said, "Do you want to start CPR?"

What I wanted to say was, "Lady, she is in rigor mortis. You have to be dead for several hours to undergo rigor mortis. She is day-ead. There is not anything you or I or anybody else can do for her."

What I actually said was, "She's stiff and cold. Please just send somebody."

I messaged my friends in our group chat about the situation. The ambulance got there and we got to work removing the body. I remember the dog, who was laying on the couch at my mother's feet, was barking and snapping at the paramedics when they tried to move her. I had to carry him out to the porch so they could remove her. My best friend arrived not long after. He had left work to be with me. After he arrived, Code Enforcement came and promptly condemned my house because, well, the house was a wreck, and not just because my mother was a hoarder. The building itself is almost certainly beyond saving. I've felt like I was living in a ticking time bomb for over ten years, always wondering with every noise, every little creak, is this it? Is this the day the house collapses on top of me? When it initially happened, I was afraid because I didn't know what would happen to me. Now, I think I'm kinda glad I don't have to live in that anymore. My friend who came to be with me immediately offered his couch to me. I took the dog and some essentials and I've been living there since that day.

The next day, we got to work. Code Enforcement gave us until Friday to get stuff I needed out before they put the plackards up. After that, I and anybody helping me would need a permit to get into the house. We made so much progress on it, they gave us a week on the first permit. That was when it became clear the house itself wasn't worth saving, but at this point, we're trying to save the land and build a new house. Also on that day, I went to the funeral home and made arrangements for the remains. My mother always told me she didn't want a funeral or any service, she just wanted to be cremated. I followed her wishes. The only reason I went through a funeral home was because that's just what you have to do in West Virginia. When I told my aunt about it, she told me that the rest of the family wouldn't accept that, and I told them that if they wanted to get together for something small, I'd even come, but no services is what she wanted and I would not be involved in any planning. That was their baby and they were in charge. As for the remains, it took a week or so to get them back. They told me I could either get an urn through them or go somewhere else and buy one, even said it might be cheaper, just to make sure it was a certain size. I found one on Amazon that was purple (her favorite color) with a hummingbird and some flowers on it. When I got the ashes back, they put them in the urn for me and sent me on my way. That morning, I printed out a ten milliliter measuring cup in transparent blue PLA, which was a filament she really loved. With that, I scattered a portion at her parents' grave, a portion at the house in front of the window where she sat with her plants and watched the birds at my feeders, and a portion in the woods behind the house where generations of pets are buried. After I was done, I put the measuring cup in the urn and sealed it. 30 milliliters of her were scattered, and the rest stay with me.

The death certificates took way longer to come in than the ashes, which really sucked. I needed those to do anything with her accounts, including the car and the home loan. I ended up not getting those until a month after she died.

The first time I heard the phrase, "Death is a process" was probably on some YouTube video, but I'm sure it was within the last five or so years. The phrase is a very accurate description, not just for the physical action of dying, but also for the social consequences. I'll be dealing with the effects of my mother's death for a long, long time.

At this point, the property's in probate and it remains to be seen if I'll be able to keep it due to her debts. There's a loan against it which it wouldn't be a huge issue to keep paying, but I don't know what they'll make me do about the credit card debts, which the estate is still liable for. I did pay off the car and put the title in my name, at least. It would suck to lose the land, but I'll live. As for somewhere to live in the meantime, my friend said I could stay on his couch as long as I needed. The house I'm at has two bedrooms and the landlord is a mutual friend's mom. I would just move into the other room, but my friend's dad and his girlfriend moved in there last year. They're still looking for a place, so I may end up moving in there anyway, but my uncle has an apartment I can move to in August if I can't find anywhere by then. Hell, I may move back in with my friend once his dad moves out anyway. It's a bit up in the air, but I'm not in danger of becoming homeless right now, and for that, I'm grateful.

I finally finished getting things out of the house. I got almost everything out I wanted, plus some bonus items. I'm just glad to be done going in there, at least until we start the demolition.

As for her goddamned plants, I took a bunch, plus her terrarium she made. Family took a lot of others, and some were sold at a yard sale, but I've still got a bunch on the porch. It sucks. I told her she needed to downsize, but she wouldn't listen to me. Before she died, she told me, "Please don't let my plants die when I'm gone!" Under the circumstances, I think I've done pretty well. A few of them are definitely dead in her absence because I had no idea what to do for them, and it's not like I can ask my mother. Most of them seem okay, with a few not doing so great because they're outside and I don't have anywhere to put them out of the sun. I may even take a couple more because I'm fucking insane I guess.

There's so much more to this story, but I can't do more. It's taken me weeks to write this because it's been so much. I've probably forgotten some things I wanted to say, but I want to finish this this week so I can focus on other things, like the story I've been working on, or the next anime season review. I need to move on. My relationship with my mother was complicated, but it's over now. The truth is, I loved that woman. I also hated that bitch.

I hated her. I loved her. I don't know how to sort that. I feel like I haven't even grieved all that much. Maybe that's because I've been too busy dealing with all the other things surrounding her death. Someone told me I've been very strong after her death, and I don't know if it actually is strength so much as just rolling with the punches. I still randomly think about her, about how I can't ask her things anymore, or about how I bought that cyan PLA because I thought she'd like the color and I never got to make her anything with it. For a while, I couldn't stop thinking about how I found her, something which has, fortunately, mostly passed. Maybe one day, I'll figure out how to unpack all this. Right now, I guess I'm just taking things one day at a time.