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1 March

The Greatest Loss

Bottles of McCormick vodka lay hidden in every nook and cranny around what was once my grandmother’s 800 square foot condo where my mother had been living with her. I grab the ribbed top of the bottle, twist it, and the sharp smell of the vodka nearly makes me vomit. Emotions crash around inside of me like a clumsy band member dropping a cymbal on the ground. My mind plays frame after frame of the events that led here, and I feel myself becoming unraveled as I recollect what happened.

Mom was a joyful, funny, lighthearted person. Laughter seemed to follow her. She married her high school sweetheart and had me, by what the doctor’s said was a “miracle” since her fallopian tubes were smashed against her uterine wall. Her love had a palpable sense of warmth to it.

Somehow she had transformed. After years of being begged and pleaded with, she had found herself with not only liver failure, but stage 4 metastatic cancer. The diagnosis is one where when you hear it, you start planning the end. Thinking ahead to when it will feel like the earth opens up and a giant sinkhole threatens to take you in whole. Their last day. Doctors gave her 6 months to a year, but confirmed that she would be lucky to see the morning light for 3 more months. Two weeks later, hospice visits regularly as end of life care is administered. Sitting by her hospital bed, I noticed her skin looked like someone took a jumbo yellow highlighter and doused her in it. Even her eyes were jaundiced. Her hair was greasy, gray, and matted. Her belly looked like someone stuck the end of an air hose into it and blew her up with air until she was about to burst like an overinflated balloon. The white, sterile room felt like a furnace as temperature rose higher and higher, her body literally fighting for its life. Her breathing became alarming. Each breath came with a wet crackle letting us know it was here. The final day.

A family that was once so happy was destroyed by alcohol. Siblings without their sister. A husband without a wife. A child without a mom. Grandma’s body couldn’t handle the stress of watching her youngest child self-destruct, and passed away a month before mom did. My inheritance is everything that was left behind on a day they both thought they’d be coming back home. A condo full of memories, dusty knick-knacks and now dead plants looks empty to me. All I see is the pile of hidden McCormick bottles, a stark, jarring reminder of reality. Alcohol is a thief.