STEPHANIE MANTHE

Stephanie is a mother of two, a digital marketing manager, wife, daughter, sister and a great writer. She wrote about the experience of losing her mother two years ago and agreed to share an excerpt here.

IN HER STEAD

Seven years before my mom died, we were told to prepare ourselves. The doctor somberly explained to us what was happening in her body as end-stage liver failure left her careening on the edge of a medical cliff. A bag hung from the tube in her abdomen, draining the built-up fluid from her belly. In her brief moments of waking, she would talk to my sister as though she were her own mother, long deceased, planning trips to the summer lake home, long sold.

In darker moments of waking, she saw enormous spiders crawling up the walls and the clock. It was the ammonia reaching her brain. From the withdrawal. The lack of boxes of Franzia Chablis.

It’s unlikely she’ll recover from end-stage liver failure, the doctor explained to us. Best case, she will be in a long-term assisted living facility. But, that will be difficult to find, as she’s uninsured. She let that lapse following the divorce from our dad after nearly 30 years of marriage three years prior. It had gotten worse since then. ‘It’ being ‘she’. And the drinking. More likely, however, the nurses told us, we need to find a hospice facility. They are more apt to take uninsured patients, anyway.

But, here’s the thing. She didn’t die. She went to an assisted living facility after being released from imminent danger at the hospital. And, then, just weeks later. She was home. On her own. Living. In her stupidly big, single-family, suburban home with four bedrooms, three bathrooms, and her two little dogs. She was home. And, even more miraculous? 15 months later, she was at my wedding. Sober.

In July of 2015, I wrote her an e-mail. “I’m so proud of how hard you’ve worked to feel better, get better, and be better over the last five years. I love you so much.” Five years after we were told to prepare ourselves, she was still alive. Unbeknownst to me at the time, she had two-liter bottles of Pinot Grigio in the fridge.

It wasn’t always this way. It wasn’t until 2010, 2016, 2017 that I started looking back at my childhood with an investigative eye. Because, as a kid: she always showed up. She stood up at PTA meetings. She brought the best snacks to softball games. She came for lamb eye dissection day. She was on the sideline of every single volleyball match. She even sat as a judge for my National Academic League competition. She was smart. And funny. And loving. And bold. She taught my sister and I to be strong women. Strong individuals. To stand up for what we believed in fully and unabashedly. She popped popcorn before my friends ever walked in the door. She sewed every elaborate Halloween costume up until (and probably past) we were too cool to dress up for Halloween. We had a homecooked meal almost every night, and made Christmas cookies at the holidays. She was a great mom.

Sure – there always seemed to be a glass of wine tucked around the corner from the fridge under the microwave. Or, there was that one Christmas Eve that we started making Christmas cookies, and she drove through the McDonald’s drive through asking if she could buy eggs from them. Or, the time I had friends over, and she was sprawled on the kitchen floor with an ice cube, a potato, and a new set of earrings my dad had bought her for their anniversary: half-crying, half-laughing trying to repierce her ear. Or, the time she was so sick she couldn’t go to the James Taylor concert with my dad. Or, the time she was so sick she couldn’t fly to Florida on our family vacation. Or, there were the eight or so apartments and houses that my sister and I lived in during our college years that she never saw. Hindsight, I tell you.

Living alone, divorced, both of her children—whom she spent her entire adult life centered around—grown, prospering, living out of state, that glass of wine tucked under the microwave was now on her bedside table. I’m not really sure how long she stayed sober after her liver failure in 2010. But, we could tell six years later when things were rapidly headed back downhill.

My mom’s cognitive function was never back to “normal” after her hospital stay in 2010. When ammonia floods the brain, there’s no escaping the permanent effects it has on one’s reasoning, memory, and core functions. For my mom, it also completely negated her filter and sarcasm. She was mean. And hurtful. And, when I wouldn’t call her for days after one of those phone calls, she had no idea why.

When they told us to prepare ourselves in 2010, I did. I began mourning my mom from that day. So, when my sister and I hadn’t heard from her in several days in early August of 2017, I already knew. I went out to dinner with a girlfriend, and I said, “I think my mom is dead.” I posted a “test” photo of my 11-month-old daughter on Instagram that night; she never missed liking a post of her only granddaughter whom she’d never met in person. It went unliked through the next morning. Calls went unanswered to her landline and her cell phone. Messages unreturned.

My sister and I decided to meet and go through power-of-attorney paperwork that was signed during the 2010 hospital stay. Make a plan. We both left work. Meg called the bank: there’d been no activity since before the weekend. We accessed her activity prior to that: party store, discount cigarettes, party store, party store, gas station. We called her only living sister (her eldest sister, 20-years her senior, had died about a decade prior of drug and alcohol addiction) to see if she’d spoken to her. She had not. They’d had a blowup a few days ago, something that was prone to happening between the two of them, only amplified by my mom’s anger and drinking. “Sorry,” she said, “I’m out. I just can’t.” I get it.

So, we called the local police for a welfare check. I already knew. I already knew what they would find.

My sister didn’t. She went back to work. I went home. They called us back: no answer at the door. We guessed at the garage code. They called back. They were so sorry. We cried.

My daughter took her first steps that night with us all around my dining room table, on the phone with my dad.

She had died; most likely, a couple of days prior. Official cause of death was a heart attack. But, we all knew that she died of her alcoholism. Of her mental illness. Of her sickness. Of her pain.

She never met her granddaughter, but she was a flickering light of brightness in what I believe was the worst year of her life. My sister just got married two weeks ago. Our mom’s hotel room was booked for the reception, the wedding Save the Date unopened in her mailbox along with the invitation to her granddaughter’s first birthday party when we got to her house in Michigan. I’m now pregnant with my second child, one who will not know her grandma, even through Facetime. But, I will tell both of my kids about their grandma. About her boldness. And her strength. And her neverending love for her two daughters. When they are older, I will tell them about her struggles and about how to ask for help. Because, asking for help is not a weakness, but another facet of your strength.

I love my mom. And, I grieve for her. And, I celebrate her and the women she has left behind in her stead.