On February 6th, 2020

Hello friends. It’s been awhile.

On February 6th, 2020 I had a really good day. I had hired a bunch of new staff, and was training in 3 people. I was finally going to be able to just do my manager job instead of filling in all the shifts and working my life away. It also happened to be my mom’s 54th birthday. As I was leaving work that evening, I can still hear the phone ringing from the kitchen while I was just getting to the parking lot. I figured it was a nurse calling for some kind of snack or something and I thought to myself, “kitchens closed”.

But then, my cell phone rang. It was my grandma, and she was crying. “You have to get here right away, it’s your mother.” She didn’t say it exactly like that, but those were the words I could make out. That and a mans voice in the background saying “It’s been 4 minutes.”

“It’s been 4 minutes.”

I started running down the street. Grandma and mom live on the other side of town. I’m dialing up Ashley as I run. She meets me on my way there and we speed to the apartment which is full of police officers and paramedics. I hold grandma’s hand as she cries and cries. Minutes seem like hours until they come out and say they have tried everything they could. She was gone. We could come see the body if we wanted to. I don’t want to, but I am in disbelief. I recall a story my mom told me about not seeing her dads body and always regretting it, so, holding grandma’s hand I go into the bathroom and see my mom on the floor with her eyes half open. I’m waiting for her to open them and yell at my for staring at her and not helping her up. But she doesn’t move. She is at peace.

I stay with grandma that night. We talk as she cries and she feeds me a Xanax to fall asleep around 3 AM. I don’t want to but she insists I need rest. She wakes me at 6 AM because she can’t sleep. She’s holding a picture of my mom and daughter in Disney world. She can’t get the image of her baby lying dead on the bathroom floor out of her head. I know what I have to do and get started right away. I start cleaning out mom’s room and everything of hers in the apartment. There is no time for me to weep. I need to take care of grandma. The apartment is rid of my mother in half a day. Like she never existed. I call the funeral home. I notify work. I call the insurance company, I talk to the morgue. I took care of everything. I’ll have to take mom’s 401K and buy a house. Grandma will move in with Nick, Kat and I. Everyone insists I take moms car and learn to drive. My entire world flipped completely around.

One of the trainee’s on that fateful night, lived in my apartment building. I lived in 106 and he in 301. We got along pretty well. He worked in quite a few kitchens. On February 28th, we had a memorial service for my mom at work. Haagen, the guy from my building worked with me that night and asked to take me out for a drink after work. I texted Nick and he said it was fine. Haagen and I walked up to main street but seeing as it was a Friday, the bars were pretty crowded. I say we should just grab a bottle and drink back at the apartment. He likes this idea. We take shots of whiskey and talked about my mom, his daughter, work, life. I had to work at 5:30 in the morning so I didn’t think I would have gotten as drunk as I did. It was mom’s memorial and I hadn’t eaten that day. I woke up in Haagen’s mother’s bed at 7:21AM. I grabbed my things as quickly as I could whilst hearing Haagen snore from his bedroom and made my way to my apartment where Nick was waiting up. He was not pleased.

To be continued …