Last Words

Sorry Dyno. I just couldn't resist posting this one.

If it makes you feel any better, most of you fuckers are making it dusty for me. You will all have to excuse the profanity. My father was always calling everybody fuckers. Thinking about him the last day or so has me doing it.

 

"I need to talk to mom."

He was in another state at the time and he called. We chatted for a bit and then that's what he said.
That was it.

 

My mom got a call from her sister Sharon about a month ago. She knew something was wrong because Sharon wouldn't call unless someone was dead or dying.

Her brother, my uncle, died. Three years ago. In Utah. We never even knew he lived in Utah.

The family wasn't keeping it from my mom. They had disbanded after their parents died in the late 1980s and no one knew about it until just recently.

I live on the opposite end of the country and talk to my family about once a week. We always end the conversation with an "I love you." I don't know if we do it consciously in case those are our last words to one another, but we never fail to do it.

 

Never a bad way to end a conversation. Whenever I talk to my wife on the phone, I do that consciously. I have a long commute and if, God forbid, anything should happen to me on the way, that's what I want my very last words to her to be. I know she knows I love her, but I want to tell her again.

 

Similarly, I remember myself saying "Can I talk to Mom?" and he said she wasn't here, but "I'll tell her to call you." Three days later ... boom, gone. Trying to play it back in my mind, I thought I remembered a "love ya" at the end, which wouldn't have been unusual. So, in fact, with two years to review it I'm now damn sure it was there

 

As for me, last words my mom and I exchanged were "I love you." That was at 10 p.m. I found her at 6 a.m. Try as I might, I could not bring her back.
The only comfort I take from this are our final words, the fact she passed in her sleep and the fact it was me, not her then-4 and 2-year-old grandsons who found her.

I miss you, Mom...

 

Completely agree. Ever since my sister had a near-fatal car accident in 1993, I end all conversations with family members with "I love you." Just the right thing to do. Well, except for when my sister is passive-aggressively giving me shit for not being up at her house 24/7 to help our infirm Dad, but I guess that's neither here nor there.

 

As far as my grandparents go, I've lost three of four. None of them went suddenly, each time being a long drawn-out illness, so, their final words were hardly words. More like memories of a hand being squeezed or standing by their bed.

My first grandparent I lost was my dad's mother, and I was only 15. Hadn't dealt with death hardly any outside of a friend who'd committed suicide. Anyway, she'd have days where she couldn't even sit up, or even do anything other than just lay there in pain.

But right near the end, she had this one day where she wanted to get out of bed. Sit at the table. Everybody was going ape shit.

We had family driving in from hours away because nobody knew if this was the last time any of us would see her doing that well, or if she'd turned the corner or what. So, we all descend on the house.

I go in to speak to her and she doesn't recognize me. Everybody else there, fine. Me, doesn't know who I am.

That still haunts me to this day.

 

My mom had been undergoing treatment for breast cancer for years -- chemo, radiation, masectomy, etc. She always spun it positively and acted accordingly. She never told me it was terminal.

There came a point where she was hospitalized, the doctors started talking hospice and the reality set in for me. She would have bouts of dementia where she wouldn't recognize me but during moments of clarity she was still propping me up.

"Aren't you tired of crying," she'd ask me. "I've lived a good life. I have no regrets. I love my sons and am proud of you all."

I visited on her on her birthday, about a week into her hospital stay. We had a wonderful talk and expressed our love for each other, something we had rarely verbalized in everyday life. There was no doubt of the love, we just weren't a touchy-feely kind of family.

As I got up to leave in the early evening, I kissed her cheek. Heading to the door, I said, "I'll see you tomorrow, Mom."

She replied, "I hope so, (JoJo)."

I froze in my tracks, momentarily chilled. I left without saying anything further.

I got the call about 2:45 a.m. and I never will forget the doctor using the term "expired" which to this day pisses me off. People don't expire; they die.

She was 42 and it was my brother's 18th birthday.