I’m on an Amtrak going home for Christmas. When I say home, I mean Rochester, NY. The home that I grew up in belongs to another family now. I’ll be staying a block away, though, like I have been for the past nine years.

We just passed through Syracuse and out my window I see a thin coating of snow on the tracks on the ground and on the branches of the trees. Despite Rochester’s reputation, it doesn’t always snow on Christmas. It’s nice when it does.

Ten years ago at this time my father and I were making phone calls to inform our friends and family that my mother had just passed away. I had come home on the 22nd because my father told me that I should. We went straight to the hospital when I got to Rochester. She was in the ICU. She was lying in her hospital bed, barely conscious. She had a feeding tube but she was holding on. She opened her eyes to look at me. “Are you okay, Mom?” And she shook her head slowly back and forth.

No. I’m not okay.

We spoke with the nurses and the doctors and then left to go home. On the way out, I think I said something to her like, “Alright, Mom, we’re leaving but I want you to get better.” I remember the nurse giving me this pitying look. I didn’t understand it at the time. I do now. Everyone except me knew that she wasn’t getting better.

Her health had declined so steadily and so consistently throughout the past decade. This was just another hospital stay or another surgery. It would be tough but she would make it through and go home. She would be fine.

But she wasn’t fine.

We pulled into my driveway and I saw a ramp they had built for a wheelchair. We went into the house I saw the portable bed in the TV room where she had been sleeping. 

They had kept so much from me about what was actually happening. It was both to protect me and not disrupt my life but also because of my mother’s shame that she was dying of cirrhosis. She always hid her drinking and now she was hiding what it had done to her.

On the night of the 22nd, I was sitting in our cold house (my mother had a thing about keeping the thermostat low to save money and we all just got used to it), silently watching television with my dad. He was already getting quiet and slow. He would rest his elbows on his things, his hands clasped together, and drop his chin to his chest and just nod off at any time. Here was more evidence of a parent whose health was fading and I just didn’t see it, I had to hear it from them but they would never tell me.

“Dad.”

“Mmmm?”

“Were you sleeping?”

“No, no. I’m fine.”

I kept thinking why aren’t we there? If she’s really going to die, why aren’t we there?

So, I went to the hospital that night by myself. I went to her room. The lights in the ICU were off, it was like bedtime for everyone there. I went into her room and pulled up a chair next to her. There was a nurse there and – I’ll always remember this part – he bent down and screamed in her ear, “Mrs. Penty! Mrs. Penty, YOUR SON’S HERE! Can you squeeze my hand?!”

Her bed was a little high off the ground. “Can I lower this to hold her hand?” He showed me the button on the bed, so, I lowered it and held her hand and, true to our relationship in better times, we sat there and watched TV.

I sat there with her, chatting and watching The Big Bang Theory. Yeah, The Big Bang Theory (this was ten years ago, I still thought Sheldon was kind of funny). After an hour or so of one sided conversation, I went home, crawled into my bed and slept.

The next morning my father and I went back and we learned that her conditioned had worsened in the night. Dr. K, a man I would see again in a few months to when my father was in the ICU, explained to us that it was time. They removed her feeding tube and then we waited.

People say that being by your parent’s bedside as they pass away is a blessing. Well, I’ve done it twice now and I’ve gotta be honest: not that cool.

The day after, my father and I went to my friend Jon and his mom Christine’s house for their annual Christmas Eve party. Christine then invited us to Christmas Dinner the next day. And I’ve been going ever since.

I guess this is the part of the essay where I say how much I miss her. But the ugly truth is, now that she’s gone, I feel like a weight has been lifted. I don’t have to worry about how drunk she’ll be when I get home or the ridiculous fight we’ll have as she slurs that she hasn’t had a drink in months.

This would also be a good time in the essay to mention how crazy it is that ten years have passed, how I can’t believe it. It’s hard to reconcile those ten years with her actual death, though. Her death – and my father’s – have always felt like forever ago and yesterday at the same time. They’re always with me and yet there’s so much distance between who I am now and who I was when they were alive.

I still struggle to remember the good things about my mom despite having so much left unresolved between us. I remembered something the other day.

There used to be this ornament on our Christmas tree. It was a hollow ball that you could open into two halves. It was meant to have little presents inside it. She used to hide things for me in it leading up to Christmas. Sometimes, it was a note with a clue to where something too big to fit in the ornament was. She did stuff like that for me all the time.

She was charming. She was funny. She was anxiety ridden. She was loyal. She was a good teacher. She was a talented actress. She was a good mom.