In Remembrance... (Part I)

It all started in 2002. I was full of joy. I was the type of person who smiled even when they were angry. I had family & friends who poured love, hope, and joy into me. I got accepted into every college I applied to & I got a full scholarship to the one that I chose. I finally got my first boyfriend.

Then I went to college and the stress & isolation led to anxiety & depression and my joy disappeared bit by bit. Eventually, I was miserable & crying everyday. It took me two years to rebuild it, brick by brick. Even then it was a different type of joy, not as carefree, all encompassing, or abuzz with possibility. And I was always painfully aware of the fact that this newfound joy could be snatched away at any second. Still, as the 1st semester of my senior year of college drew to a close, I was reveling in the fact that I was happy for the first time in a long time. Then, it happened.

I should have seen the signs. My mom had started losing weight, but I chalked it up to the fact that we didn’t have a car, so she had to walk everywhere. Plus, I’d noticed that she was eating smaller portions & had given up cigarettes. I attributed it to all to a desire to be healthier & it made me super happy because I thought that meant she’d be around even longer. But she was also lethargic all the time. I thought that it was because she was depressed because she had been unemployed for a really long time & hadn’t had any luck in the job search.

I was wrong. One day, my older cousin came over and insisted on calling an ambulance. My mom hadn’t gotten any worse but she wasn’t getting any better either. Her energy was gone. Still, I fought and protested alongside my mom because nothing had really changed, it didn’t seem like a true emergency, and she insisted that she didn’t want to go. It was all for nothing. My cousin called the ambulance and my mom went to the ER.

Once we got to the ER, they ran a series of tests. The timeline of her hospital stay is a blur. But I still remember the doctors coming in and announcing that she had end stage renal disease [ESRD]. It felt like a punch to the gut. Especially since I had just read a book in my Sociology of Health class, called Mama Might Be Better Off Dead, which chronicled the trials and tribulations of a black family navigating several health crises, including a patriarch with ESRD. Ten years later, I don’t remember the details of the book, but I do remember that it didn’t end well for the patriarch.

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I recall very little else about my mom’s stay in the hospital. I remember that I went home her very first night in the hospital and came back early the next morning. They hadn’t moved her to a permanent room yet, so she had spent the night in a private room in the ER. She told me that she was scared. Another punch to the gut. It took everything in me not to burst into tears. I did the only thing that I could do, apologize. I felt so guilty and sad and ashamed that I had left her alone in the dark in a tiny ER room to go home and sleep in my bed. That was the first time my mom seemed fragile to me.  I also remember that a handsome black doctor came in to check on her and make small talk and she joked that I would catch a husband messing around with her. I blushed and retorted that I would rather die alone than meet the man of my dreams this way. Still, we laughed and laughed. We both needed that. 

After about a week, my mom was stabilized with dialysis and released....