Twenty Years Without Her: A Personal Reflection on Loss, Love, and Saying Goodbye
This beautiful woman left us 20 years ago today. I remember most of it as if it were yesterday.
I got a call, probably from Aunt Jan, and needed to call my Mother (Dad was perhaps at work.) We needed to get to the nursing home to say goodbye.
I tried and tried and couldn’t reach her. She must have been out working in the yard. (This might have been before she’d gotten a cordless phone and CERTAINLY before she got a cell phone.) All I could think of was that I needed to get there immediately.
I still lived in Centralia then, so I hopped on my bike and raced to Mom’s as fast as possible.
I couldn’t believe it, my best friend was gone.
I don’t remember much after that except at the funeral home. I needed to see my Dad. He lived in another city then, and I did not know how he was holding up. I bent down to kiss her one last time, but it was not the same. Our lives would never be the same.
Sure, I’ve been injured (falling off of said bike too many times), and until that point, I thought lovesickness was the most painful experience I’d ever gone through. I was wrong. Sure, there are hospital stays where they might “call the family together,” but you never really prepare for it.
I loved her madly, and I know everyone says this, but not a day goes by that I don’t think about things I’d like to tell her or experiences I would have liked to have her alongside me for, like meeting Aunt Lisa.
The night before I left Centralia to attend college in Chicago, Dad and I stopped by the nursing home to see her. The second I stepped foot in her room, she and I both burst into tears. (Like I’m trying hard not to do right now.) Dad called us both babies. That’s fine.
I am still unsure what I think about the afterlife, but I do hope she is somewhere out there and that I’ve made some choices with my life that would make her proud.
