Lazy Germophobe

  It’s a chilly July morning (FINALLY!) and I’m wrapped in my mom’s napping afghan. It feels like a hug. My last actual Mom-hug happened in June 2018. Five years ago. On an unknown date in late July 2018, we talked for the last time. It was one or two days after my son had had a significant surgical procedure. “How’s our patient?” she wanted to know. I was happy to update her but quickly felt anxious to get back to him and ended the call. Soon after that conversation, she was back in the hospital. She’d been there in April and—I had forgotten this until just now when I read through my old emails—earlier in July. COPD, pneumonia, UTIs, she was not well. Still, the sudden decline surprised us. She wasn’t with it enough to talk to me on the phone. I left for Harrisburg early on Tuesday morning, July 31, after being informed on Sunday that this likely was the end. The 400-mile drive gave me (too much) time to imagine various bedside scenarios. I figured my sister and I wo...

My mother’s father died when she was in her 20s. My father’s father died when I was three. My own father died when I was 12. My mother had two relationships during the remaining 35 years of her life; the fellas were nice enough, but neither man was a parental figure to me, and there was no emotional connection at all. That was OK. I didn’t lack a father, because I got one the second I met my then-boyfriend’s family at age 19. His dad already had three wonderful, loving daughters (and two sons), but that didn’t stop him from whole-heartedly embracing me as his own. That was 32 years ago. Thirty-two years. That’s a long time. I’m lucky. I had my first dad for only 12. I loved him deeply, and it was mutual. He took a piece of my heart with him. I don’t know how it works, but I sure hope he gets to meet my dad.