March 08, 2007~~9:21 p.m.
Eight years.

March 8, 1999 was a Monday. At 5:30 I was in a classroom at Sonoma State University learning about multicultural education. My mom was in the ICU of Kaiser Hospital in Oakland... dying. It was the only day I chose not to go to the hospital because it was difficult to make the trip down after my morning class and get back in time for my evening class. When I left her on Sunday night, I told her I loved her and that I'd see her on Tuesday. She wasn't conscious, but I know she knew. I know she died while I wasn't there to protect me.

Most of the time I feel really good about that and feel like she was taking care of me right up until the last moments of her life. Today I wonder what might have been different if I'd just blown off my class and gone to the hospital that day. At the very least, I'd have had one more day with her instead of away from her, but maybe just being there could have altered the course of events. Maybe the next day would have been the one that things started to turn around.

I'm not really beating myself up over this or anything. I don't think my absence caused her death or that I'm responsible in any way. I just wonder, that's all.

...

The husband never managed to inquire about my well-being in any way. Tonight I lost it, just a little bit, when I got home. I couldn't stand one more minute of same-old/same-old and when he asked, in passing, about my day and I said it was hard and he just kept right on with the everyday bullshit surface-level conversation I could not hold it to myself any longer. "Today is the day that my mom died." I told him. "I've been horribly depressed for weeks and you've said nothing." I started to tear up and went upstairs to take care of some things before I fell apart completely. He went off to a parent meeting about Elle's band trip.

When he got home, he said nothing in particular and just got back to the daily business of helping Shoe get ready for his vocabulary test tomorrow. Then he got on the phone with a friend to work on some online fantasy baseball stuff. That's where he was when I started writing. This man has the most fucked up priorities I've ever had the misfortune of dealing with.

I've been crying the whole time I've been typing here, so it was pretty obvious when he got off the phone and walked through the room. Now he's all "supportive husbandy" sitting next to me with his hand on my arm, but looking away while I write.

I don't want to have a discussion with him. I'm hurt. I'm disappointed. I'm angry. And yes, all of that has to do with him. But underneath all of that, I have a separate, far more important to me pain that is my business of the day. And I'm not going to relegate that to the back burner so that we can discuss what a crappy friend he's been to me over the last month. I'm just not going to do it.

...

My mom and I certainly had our differences over the years. She was not perfect, nor am I. She did some crazy parenting shit that I still don't understand. But in the big picture, she loved me. I always knew that. We were close even after I left home for college and made a life for myself 400 miles away. We talked on the phone everyday and once I had kids, she talked with them everyday too. She was the one person in the entire world that I could always trust to have my back.

I told her I loved her every time we talked, but I'm not sure I ever really knew how much or what it meant until she was gone.

I miss her. I miss the way things were. I miss the way things should have been.

~Alice