My son was born on Monday, August 29, 2022.
My mother died eight days later in the same building.
This complicates both the elation of the former and the grief of the latter.
If you go back five years or further, you’ll have found a version of Alex that had a famously
(among friends and family at least) anti-offspring attitude. “I’d rather be a cool uncle than a broke dad any day,” I recall saying on numerous occasions. Since then though, I’ve even gone as far as reaching out to former coworkers to apologize about comments I realize belittled them for wanting to have children.
I’m the oldest child of my mother. In that way, we will always be bonded. And she clearly had a passion for all children. She birthed four of her own in six years. She was a preschool teacher for several years before opening her own home day care. From “Kay Care,” she was part of raising dozens of kids over the course of a decade.
By the end of the 2010’s, I was an adventurous young adult who refused to “settle down.” She was several years into a diagnosis with ALS. (I won’t talk about the horrors of ALS here today. I’m sure as I continue to process how I feel about my mother and the terminal illness that ultimately took her, I’ll write more about it).
And we both probably realized that if I did have a child, she would never meet them. We never explicitly had this conversation though.
But in December of 2021, my girlfriend and I found out we were expecting. After deciding to stay together and raise this child, my mom was the first family member I told. I think she was more surprised than I was that I wanted to be a father.
And as time marched toward his due date in August, she became more and more excited. She couldn’t wait to be a grandma. She asked me every day what names we were considering. She asked to see our baby registry, even when we hadn’t added anything to it since the last time she saw it. She was immensely involved in planning our baby shower; she would browse Pinterest and Amazon on her special computer using only her eyes. It was slow, and the process exhausted her.
On Saturday, my sister came down with Covid.
On Monday, Robin was born by emergency C-section.
On Tuesday, my dad got Covid.
On Wednesday Robin and Allison were discharged from the hospital.
On Thursday night, we took my mother to the emergency room for shortness of breaths. They ran a number of tests. She had Covid, too. And pneumonia. And panic attacks so severe that her ventilators couldn’t work properly and her heart rate would spike.
Five days later, we were given a very short list of treatment options to move forward with. We decided to forgo any further treatment, sedate my mother into a deep sleep, and remove her ventilators. She died just minutes after they were removed.
She never met her grandson, whom she was so excited to see.
Highs
There is the high of my son being born. Though I was long a skeptic of raising a child, it was never because I hated kids or because I didn’t think I’d make a good father. It was because I was afraid of being broke.
But now that he’s here, in my arms, I can smell him, hear him, feel him? I love him.
In his first eight days, I’ve already watched Robin learn new skills, gain strength and dexterity, move in ways that seemed impossible last week. Obviously we’ve only just begun to see what he’ll be capable of. I hope I can write more on how he’s grown, and how much more I love him.
Then there’s my partner, lover, and the mother of my child. I’ve never been as in love with anyone as I am with Allison. What her body and spirit has been through these past 10 months is nothing short of a feat of courage and strength. Sure, you can talk to women who have raised children (obviously I have talked to women who have birthed and raised children), but to witness it first hand only strengthened my opinion that women are the superior sex. And in the midst of that feat’s recovery, she provides the love-attention-affection that a growing baby boy needs. She is the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen.
Lows
There is a low of the loss of a loved one. Losing my mother especially stings. We were always on good terms.
But eventually, she decided to forgo treatment for Covid and ALS. This meant that with 6 hours notice, her immediate family was able to go to her hospital bedside and say a final, tearful goodbye. But the reality of her death still hasn’t settled in my mind.
I thought about texting her. I expected her wheelchair to be in the same spot it's been in for the past 3 years. I make a mental note of the details of my son’s development that I think she’d be interested in hearing when I see her later, but… oh… yeah.
Relief
I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again: living with ALS is the most torturous cause of death I can imagine. Years and years of progression through the body until all your nervous and respiratory systems shut down. When my mom died, she only had movement left in her eyelids and eyebrows; she was unable to move any other body part. All the while, her mind remained as sharp as it was the day she was diagnosed. She was trapped.
She couldn’t scratch an itch. She couldn’t adjust the pressure off her bed sores. She couldn’t swallow food or drink or pills. She couldn’t speak. She couldn’t breathe on her own. She couldn’t swallow her own spit or keep her snot in her nose.
But in the midst of the mourning comes the relief knowing that she doesn’t hurt anymore.
Complication
Do my highs, lows, and relief impact the other?
Are my highs less high because of the lows?
I won’t sugarcoat it: yes, they are less high.
My sister was in the throes of Covid while we were checking into the delivery room, and my dad tested positive for Covid just 12 hours after my son was born. As if the first days and weeks of your firstborn child’s life aren’t sleep-depriving enough! I was so worried for my sick sister and dad, and for my healthy grandma and mother who were all living in the same house.
But there was nothing we could do to help them but wait and hope. When we brought my son home, an occasion that should have been filled with joy and elation was clouded by texts from my sisters. “Mom hasn’t taken a Covid test, but her throat is scratchy and she has shortness of breath.”
Are the lows lower?
I’m less definitive on this one. Maybe.
I don’t think I’m sadder that my mother died the same week as my son was born simply because I had already done so much of my mourning over the past 5 years. The nature of my mother’s ALS diagnosis, a slow-moving march toward the end, meant that everyday I felt the hardship of her impending death. There were 1800+ days to feel the guilt of not spending enough time with her. I cried the day she told me in 2017, I cried the day she died, and I cried many times in between.
I have already wrestled with the idea that she will not be there for any number of future life events. My hypothetical weddings, graduations, parenting milestones, promotions, and adventures. I’ve already shed those tears.
Regardless of one’s belief in the afterlife, on Earth, right now, today, my mother does not hurt anymore. Her anxiety has dissipated either into another spiritual dimension, or dissipated into nothing. But either way, it is not here. And after so many years of so much hurt, that’s a wonderful thing. That relief makes the lows less low. Find your silver linings, even in death.
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