Heart … broken

It’s a day wrapped in chocolate and candy hearts. But not for me. Valentine’s Day will always be the day my mother died.

Growing up, I remember her railing against the manufactured romance and cooing niceties in which the 14th day of February had been drowned. It was a Sweet’N Low holiday for her, saccharinely sweet and completely artificial. At the end of her life, in what I can only imagine was a final act of defiance, she stuck it to Hallmark executives everywhere by waiting until the clock inched past midnight to breathe her last.

As always, she had the last word.

In the wee hours of that morning, I awoke with a start. Sitting straight up in bed, for a moment I didn’t know what roused me. But then I heard it. The tinny jingle of the kitchen phone. I knew in that instant my life would never be the same again.

The doctor had called two days prior. Sensing the end was near, he encouraged me to come and shepherd my mother through her last few hours. At that point, she had been in and out of the hospital for months. She would slip and then rally, shuffling with frequent regularity between her rump-sprung couch and the hospital’s sterile confines. But there was something different in his voice this time. It had a tone of certainty that unnerved me.