Mothers, Sisters, Daughters - Part One

death and near death

Dear Readers,

Here is the first essay in a series titled, Mothers, Sisters, Daughters. The past few months have been emotionally heavy around the girls and women in my life. I’m trying to tell these stories, to record and preserve them. I hope you’ll find them resonant and true.

Love,

Charlotte

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illustration by Michael Linog

Two weeks after Noah was born came the news that my sister was miscarrying another baby. While I nursed and healed and peeked out into the world from my postpartum fog, Emily bled for weeks. There were flashes of hope for her in the friends and family who grieved with her, the doctors who took extra measures, and the children she surrounds herself with who call her Tita. Everything was moving forward. Then one morning things came to a staggering halt.

She’d had some tests done and thought the pain in her abdomen was the result of a vaginal ultrasound. But on this notorious morning, things got more intense. She called her mother-in-law for help while our own mom was across the hall asleep. The tensions in their relationship, the result of many attempts at repair, were too fraught to make her own mother the obvious place to go for help. There was no chance of her climbing into a car to get to the ER so they called an ambulance and rushed her to the trauma center. Something was very wrong. 

When she arrived at the hospital, she was white in the face, blue in the hands, and freezing cold. She heard a sense of urgency in the doctors’ voices, their terse debate about the course of action, and finally the decision for emergency surgery. Death was in the shadows waiting. Her husband was not allowed to see her. They needed to move fast. She was bleeding out into her abdomen.

When they made that cut and suctioned up enough blood to see, they found the ectopic pregnancy and the ruptured fallopian tube. By the time they’d removed the broken tube and cauterized it, Emily had lost half the blood in her body. Her beating heart was a miracle. She’d been moving through life, mourning the loss of her unborn children. Had she ever stopped to consider her own fragility? Are we all just a fine piece of crystal waiting to be fumbled? To explode into a thousand tiny, almost invisible, shards?

While we waited outside the OR for the news, to know whether she was alive and what state she’d be in if she was, I watched Emily’s mother-in-law comfort her son. Tony hadn’t gotten to see his wife since she was at home unable to walk, barely conscious, wet with her own urine, shivering, and white-lipped. Lola, we call her, rubbed his back. She made him laugh.

Lola has four children too. I know them all and their families. I’ve heard the stories we all have about our moms. I know she’s not perfect and that she’s fought for relationships with her kids, which made this time of need more poignant. When Tony and Emily needed a mom, she was ready, and they could receive her. This is not something Emily and I share with our mom. I wish it was there, but it isn’t.

I left my mother at fourteen and hadn’t been geographically close to her until a year and a half ago when she moved right down the street. I’ve seen mothers and daughters maintain an emotional connection over the distance of hours, states or even countries. This is not how it went for us. We’ve been something like that shattered crystal swept into a neat pile.

The gulf expanded as I hopped from state to state to state and finally settled into a life with my own kids. As I’ve grown into the role of mom, I haven’t had mine at my side. It’s taken five years of motherhood for me to confront my heartbreak about the ocean of distance between us. The years of space are like waves piling up on the beach, rolling into each other indefinitely. When will they stop? When will they unfurl from each other?

My Mom was in that waiting room too, but she wasn’t a comfort. She was scared, I know. She was wrestling with her own uselessness like we all were. She made phone calls in a corner by herself, and I bore the weight of her presence – her absence – and wanted to weep.

When the doctor came out with the news – She’s alive; We took her ruptured tube – Tony hung his head and wept. Lola held him and wiped his tears. Then she commanded him to rejoice that his wife was alive, and he listened. He opened his mouth and gave thanks.

I visited Emily in the ICU, only about an hour after the anesthesia had worn off. She was smiling and knew the nurse’s name. It was so typical of her, my sister, who may be the worthiest mother I know. She moved to South Carolina when I had Zoe to be with us, to help me, and has cared for my children like they’re her own. It’s not just my kids, it’s every kid she sees, and it’s been this way since she was a kid herself. Her eyes beam. Her face shines like the moon, a light in the darkness, pure and beautiful.

As a girl, children flocked to her. Maybe it’s her homely, big-cheeked smile, her unfiltered vivacious giggle, or her uncanny ability to laugh at herself. Maybe Emily learned it from our mom who made sure we were always surrounded by kids. She ran a daycare out of our home. Foster children lived with us.

Or could it be something more mystical? The shape of her heart; the texture of her pain. Whatever it is, this mother-nature, she has it and comes by it more innately than I. And so, her loss is even more painful to watch, especially as the big sister, house teeming with kids, birth stories that are barely stories at all. There’s a corner of my heart where my shame about it all is buried and just starting to see some light. Why do I deserve all these kids when Emily has always been the more obvious mother?

When her tube burst and Emily lost her baby and almost her life, our mom went out of town. I leaned into the motherly pull I felt, into the desire to never leave Emily again. I tried to do what I thought she and Lola would. I went to her bed every time I had an hour to spare. I lay down with her. I put Noah in her arms propped up with pillows hoping this little namesake would pour some of her fullness, all the blood pumping through her veins, into her Tita’s body. I wanted Emily to breathe her in like a tonic. That first month she moved slowly and carefully from the bed to the bathroom and back again. I never went into her room without wondering why my mom wasn’t there.

I can’t be Emily’s mom. But I can, like Lola, care for her in a way that is nurturing and maybe even motherly. This mother-nature I see in women around me, that I saw in my mom growing up before I left her, is invaluable and necessary at the drop of a hat. Because no matter how steeped in life we become, death is never as far off as we imagine. A mother, quick to smile, quick to weep and hug, should always be a welcome sight.