Step one, to recap previous posts, was my already cycling up depression. Step two began with my visit to Kansas City this past Memorial Weekend to spend time with family. I hadn’t been back there in about a dozen years, and I missed it. I stayed with Meg and her family – it was wonderful to be with them again after all this time. We had dinner on the Country Club Plaza, drove around Swope Park, and spent plenty of quality time together. Amy drove out to meet us, so only Beth was missing of the four of us sisters this time, and miss her we did.

Saturday morning, very early, one of my sisters came in to wake me up. I don’t remember which one. Mom’s husband had died. The three of us called Mom on speaker phone, and she was incoherent in her grief. They had been together 30 years. She was also completely wasted at 7am. We spoke with a neighbor of hers who had thankfully responded to Mom’s call and was there with her, and able to tell us what happened.

It wasn’t completely unexpected, just six months sooner than any of us thought. He had been diagnosed with cancer in March, during my 100-hour work-week marathons, and I hadn’t even called him until Friday, while I was waiting for my flight at O’Hare to KC. I told him how much I valued his kindness to me over the years, how glad I was that he was a part of our lives, and joked with him about subscribing him to a sherbet mailing list, so he could get gallons of orange sherbet mailed to him every week. The cancer was everywhere, but it hurt his throat most, and the sherbet was almost the only thing he enjoyed eating anymore. Then, less than 12 hours later, he was gone. He had gotten up at 2 in the morning to use the bathroom, fell, and was gone. Mom called her neighbor, then started steadily drinking. I was so thankful I had spoken to him, and horrified that I had almost missed letting him know I cared about him. He was Mom’s fourth husband, but I didn’t meet him until a couple of years after they were married, so there was never any attempt at a father-daughter relationship, just a natural one between two related adults. There was respect, and laughter, and no pressure to be anything except ourselves. We didn’t agree politically and in a number of other areas, but neither of us felt it necessary to convince the other of anything they didn’t want to hear, so we just agreed to disagree and focused on the lighthearted. I wish I could have at least have had that with my Mom.

Back to that Saturday morning. After we hung up with Mom, we called Beth, and then all worked out travel plans so Mom wouldn’t be alone. Amy and Beth were with her by Sunday, and I went ahead and kept my flight home Monday to New York, and drove to North Carolina to be there Tuesday evening. I was uncomfortable as hell about going, but I kept telling myself that this is a 69-year-old woman who had just lost her husband of 30 years, who needed help more than I needed to stay away from her. My phone call on Friday to my stepfather was the first time I had spoken to her in four years.

To use my mantra yet again, I was done. Four years ago, I had a conversation with her that was the straw that broke the camel’s back, and I realized I was done with her. I asked her not to contact me or my children ever again, not even during the holidays. I wasn’t angry, I was just done. No more toxic people in my life.

Anyway, I called work and let them know that I would be taking the week off to help with the funeral. Little did any of us know that it would be over a month before I would spend a day at my desk again.