(I am writing these posts in retrospect, figuring that some documentation, though late, is better than none.)

Tuesday night, ~9:30PM.

Graem was being a pill, and was extremely tired (as was I), so I decided to head up to bed early with her. She had finished her ba-ba and was crying, when Shawna came upstairs to tell me Uncle Bobby was on the phone. I was frustrated with Grammy, and asked her to tell him I’d call back. Grammy quieted down after a few minutes, and Shawna came back upstairs. She told me that I needed to call my uncle back, it sounded urgent. I ran downstairs to get my cell phone and came back to bed. As I was dialing, I told Shawna, “I bet my mom died.”

When I got a hold of my uncle, he told me. I was sort of surprised, but had been waiting for this call for years. For a while, I felt nothing–didn’t know what to do or say, or know what I was about to undergo in the next 24 hours. I asked what had happened–my uncle said it was a stroke. I would get the details later from my Uncle Fred. After a brief discussion, and trying to reach Dennis, I hung up the phone. At that point, I think Shawna said, “You have to go.” I asked her if she would come with me. She said of course.

We called back Uncle Bobby, and got into a more detailed discussion–we patched in Auntie Cate, Uncle Fred, and eventually Dennis. Dennis was shocked too, and when we talked about the trip to the Philippines, he was immediately on board. Uncle Fred wanted to know the details of how soon we could get there–all the funeral arrangements were obviously a pressing matter. We told him we had to work on it, but that we couldn’t leave the US any sooner than Thursday EST. We all discussed passports, how we didn’t need visas, and other logistics. I was so thankful that we had just received Grammy’s passport on April 13.

It wasn’t until I hung up the phone again that it started to hit me.  My mom was dead.  It was such a weird and surreal sensation, and would continue to be.  It still is every now and then when I have the realization.  The rest of the night consisted of more calls back on forth on logistics of when we could go, who could go, and how the heck were we gonna pay for this.

At some point, I called Kim–I feel a bit of a connection with her over the loss and re-loss of our mothers in bizarre ways.  She was obviously very kind, but as I started to talk to her more, the loss hit me harder.  It felt like I was going into shock–I got the chills and was shaking a bit.  Not to mention the crying–not overwhelming, unable-to-talk crying, but just sobbing.  I told her that I was exhausted and going to have a long night, and was not looking forward to waking up at 4:30 the next morning to leave for an 18-hour day at a design charette.  Immediately, Kim said, “Are you crazy?  Don’t go to work!”  The idea hadn’t even dawned on me: I asked her, “What am I going to do anyway?  I can’t make any travel plans yet, and I’m not going to be walking on a plane.”  Kim said, “You have two options.  Stay home and cry, or go into work and settle your projects because you’re going to be leaving for at least a week.”  Again, I had not had the presence of mine to think of either of those two options–and of course I chose the latter.  Shawna agreed with me, she pointed out that she was going to be subbing, and Grammy was going to school.

At some point that night, Grammy wasn’t sleeping, and there were no more decisions to be made, nor actions to take, so we slept our last night in our own bed.