“They are putting in a breathing tube. She can’t do it[breath] on her own,” she said through tears.

“I’ll be there as soon as we can get there.”

And I race home with That Baby in tow to shower and pack us for a whole day from home. We run out the door and clamber into the car. I imagine that the traffic will of course suck rocks, even in the carpool lane but I am pleasantly surprised and we sail smoothly through the 30+ miles to the hospital.

On the drive I begin to think about why I am racing to the hospital for the demise of this woman. To say a final goodbye? A woman that I have felt only apathy for over the last year or more.

A woman who was amazingly talented and strikingly beautiful but who was also a woman who has been old since she was young. I don’t mean old in the “old soul” sense of the word. I mean just a bitter old woman. A naive, ignorant old woman her entire life. A woman who rarely had anything good or nice to say to and/or about other people.

Why am I begging for an open road to see a woman who married a gambling, con-artist, thieving, child molester and had three children with him? A woman, who after she would kick him out, let him back in for his one hundred dollar bill, because she was painfully poor. Regardless of his abhorrent abuses that scan the generations. A woman who became a drunk early into her career as a parent. A woman who stayed a drunk far into the adulthood of her children. A woman who verbally abused her own dying mother until the day of her death. A woman who favored one son to the mental and emotional detriment of her other children, even to this day. A woman who fought my pregnant mother in the middle of street to not marry my father because - well, who knows why.

This is the woman who taught me as a child such gems as “Shit or get off the pot!” and “He’s sucking wind!”

A woman who only found me important when I finally became pregnant.

When this woman began to grow ill and after her macular degeneration had kicked in, my mom moved this woman into her home and took care of her. This woman complained and called my mother names. She accused my mom of being all sorts of things. She demanded her own domicile and so she was moved. But still my mother had to attend to her, morning, noon and night. No one else would come. And still this woman was not satisfied. Finally, she broke my mother’s heart in the worst possible way.

Someone else had to come. My mother couldn’t do it anymore.

This woman’s health degenerated.

Now she is here. And my mother is there everyday and every night. Authorizing procedures. Following the care. Asking questions. Holding her hand. Being desensitized to the smell.

She cannot make the “big” decision, when it comes to that. That honor has been bestowed on this woman’s Oldest Son, by this woman. And yet, he is not there.

So, why am I racing to the hospital?

I realize that I am going for my mother. My mother who is alone and hurting. My mother who will never be the eldest son. She will never get the credit she deserves. But she certainly has the scars to show for trying.

I wonder though, why do we mourn the loss of life for those who never lived life at all? Those who spent most of their life mourning the year that they were sixteen? Why do we make peace at a person’s death bed? Will we feel differently next week if they live? Why do we weep when the old and/or very sick are dying? Why don’t we celebrate their opportunity to escape that which pains them?

My mom says that I am so hard, so cold. Maybe I am. But I am still wondering why?