Grief has made me selfish.
Or at least that’s what it feels like.
I don’t have the capacity to worry about what other people want anymore. I don’t have the energy to manage everyone’s expectations or carry everyone else’s emotions. Most days, I only have enough room to think about myself and what I need, what I want, where I want to spend my time. And for someone who has always put everyone else first, that feels selfish.
Maybe it isn’t.
Grief has stripped away everything that doesn’t matter.
My mom’s sudden passing taught me louder than anything else ever could that we are not promised another minute of this life.
I didn’t get to speak to my mom on the last day she was alive. I carry that with me everyday.
It was a Monday. I had worked all day at my office job and then went straight to my waitressing job. Usually, on the quick drive between the two, I’d call her. We talked every day. But for some reason, that Monday, We didn’t.
Instead, she texted me a picture of her drink sitting in a Falmouth Road Race mug I had given her after I ran the race in 2016.
“Getting ready for your big day.”
A few minutes later another text came through.
“Just checked the weather for next week. Wednesday looks like it’s gonna be a nice day.”
I smiled when I saw them but didn’t answer. I was busy. I figured I’d call her in the morning like I always did on my drive into the office in Needham.
Besides, I had so much to tell her.
I was going to see her in just four days. My race bib for Falmouth had finally arrived after weeks of worrying it wouldn’t make it before my trip. I couldn’t wait to tell her.
The next morning I called.
She didn’t answer.
It was early. She’d call me back.
I thought I’d just call her on my lunch break while I drove to Waltham to pick up my race bib.
Two rings.
“Hello?”
I was confused.
Did I dial the wrong number?
Why was a man answering my mom’s phone?
I looked down at my screen to check the number before hearing, “Who is this?
“Actually…how about you tell me who you are. Why are you answering my mom’s phone?”
Silence.
That silence.
Even now I can hear it.
I could hear him take a breath, and somehow, before he spoke, I think part of me already knew. He knew he was about to say words that would permanently divide a family’s life into before and after.
“This is Detective Sullivan with the Dennis Police Department. I am here with your mom.”
“Okay…can I speak to her, please?”
Another pause.
“I’m sorry to have to tell you this over the phone…but your mom has passed away.”
That was it.
I didn’t cry.
Everything around me disappeared. My hearing turned inward. His voice kept talking, but I couldn’t understand a word he was saying. The world I knew was collapsing, and I was sitting in my car in the middle of an ordinary Tuesday.
“Hello?”
His voice pulled me back.
“Can you give me your phone number so I can call you? Your mother’s phone is locked. We’ve been trying to figure out how to reach you. I’m going to stay with her until they’re able to come get her.”
“I have to go.”
I hung up.
Somehow, without realizing it, I had stopped my car in the middle of the road. The driver behind me was laying on the horn.
I had just left work for my break and to go pick up my race bib.
Instead, I turned my car around and drove back.
I walked into the office and stood in the doorway of the operatory where the doctor was working.
“Can I talk to you?”
She looked at me and immediately knew something was wrong.
We walked into an empty room.
“What’s wrong? Is everything okay?”
I still wasn’t crying.
I still thought maybe this was a nightmare.
“My mom is dead.”
Her reaction became the one I couldn’t have.
She immediately started crying.
“What? What do you mean?”
“I have to go.”
I grabbed my bag.
I needed to call my siblings.
Phil was on vacation in Toronto with his family. My first thought wasn’t even that our mom had died. It was that my phone call was going to ruin the memories of his vacation forever.
I called my sister first.
By then, I was crying so hard I could barely speak.
“Katie…Mom’s dead.”
The sound that came out of my sister is something I will never forget.
It wasn’t crying.
It was devastation.
A sound I didn’t know a person could make.
Sometimes it wakes me up in the middle of the night. I often think about how unfair it was that I had to be the one to tell them. That one phone call shattered not just my world, but theirs too.
Then I called Phil.
He reacted like I had.
Complete shock.
Then I called Chris.
Everyone needs someone like Chris when tragedy strikes.
He’s calm. Steady. He’d worked in the funeral business since he was a teenager. While I was trying to understand a world that suddenly made no sense, he quietly took over the things that needed to happen so I could simply feel what had happened.
For most of the past year, I blocked that day out.
I replayed it only in pieces, like my mind was trying to protect me from something I wasn’t ready to fully feel.
But grief changes.
And now I’ve reached the part no one talks about enough.
The anger.
I’m angry that I didn’t call her that Monday. I’m angry that I didn’t respond to her texts. I’m angry that a part of me wonders if she knew something was wrong, if somehow she knew she was leaving this world and I missed my chance to talk to her one more time.
I’m angry that I have to continue living this life without her.
The warm weather brings me right back to that Tuesday. Every sunny afternoon feels like a reminder of the exact moment my life split into two.
That’s why grief has made me feel selfish.
Because I’ve become fiercely protective of my time. I’ve learned, in the cruelest possible way, that time is the one thing none of us are promised.