Zero to Sixty

Five years ago, today, my mother died.  She died in Jupiter, Florida, where she had lived for the final twenty of her almost eighty-nine years.  My sister Kara was with her.  I was not. 

June 3, 2017 was a Saturday.  I had driven down the Shore on Thursday night, celebrated Work From Beach Friday, and gotten up Saturday morning to run north on the boardwalk at the 17th Avenue Beach in Belmar, over the Shark River Bridge, and through Avon-by-the-Sea, Bradley Beach, and Ocean Grove on my way to Asbury Park.  It was a running route that took me past the Belmar Fishing Club, which is located on a pier at Belmar's northern end and two or three blocks south of the Belmar side of the Shark River Bridge, and which on this morning seemed to me to look especially beautiful. 

Belmar Fishing Club - Belmar, New Jersey 

Saturday, June 3, 2017

It may seem impossible to believe that a day that began bathed in such beauty could turn so bad.  Yet it did.  

By the early part of that afternoon, Kara called from Mom's hospital room.  Mom was failing badly and wanted Kara to call so I could have the chance to tell her I loved her and to say goodbye to her.  Five years later, and I still do not know if Kara and Mom were crying on their end of the phone.  I was sobbing so violently on my end that for ten minutes after the call ended, I was convulsing in the middle of the living room.  Had I tried to bite my own tongue, it would have more closely mimicked the epileptic seizures of my childhood.  Considering I had not had one in more than forty years?  It proved to be very much like riding a bicycle.  

By late afternoon, Jill and I were in her car driving south to Florida.  We had not even made it through Delaware when Kara called to tell us that Mom had died.  We drove on through the night and arrived in Jupiter on the morning of June 4, 2017.  It was a Sunday.  

On Friday, June 9, 2017 (which coincidentally was Mom/Dad's anniversary), Kara, Jill, and I headed north back to New Jersey.  Before we did, we walked to Mom's beach.  It was a place where she had spent some of the happiest years of her life.  

For the second time in one week, I used my cell phone to say goodbye to Mom and to tell her that I loved her.  

This time, we both were in Jupiter.  

Mom's Beach - Jupiter, Florida

June 9, 2017

-AK