My mom knew that by asking me to call her I would know something was wrong, so instead, she texted Daryl and asked him that we call her together when I got home from work. He held my hand as she told us the news on speakerphone. The stomach pain she had been experiencing was not stress from the death of my step dad six weeks ago. It was a tumor, and it was in her liver, and she didn’t know more than that. She told us that she scheduled a follow up appointment with an oncologist. Inside, my chest tightened, my stomach turned, my legs lost balance. I fell to the floor. My thoughts went dark. How? Why? What the fuck? On the phone, I stayed calm. I asked questions. I insisted that I drive home— I was in Boston, and she was just on the other side of the state. It would take me less than three hours to get there. She politely declined my offer, as she always did when people extended their help to her. She explained she would be going to work in the morning. My mom w...
Because losing people physically does not mean losing them completely