Sadly my 92-year-old mother will soon have her third Mother’s Day without her son Johnny. It makes my Mother’s Day difficult too to see her in pain on this day and every day. It did not have to be this way. Are we prepared for the next Pandemic?

The melody of his voice carried down the stairwell and into the kitchen, the opposite of the direction of the wafting coffee aroma about which he was excitedly speaking. “I can smell breakfast all the way up here!” he announced with the excitement of a little boy who had just glimpsed a steam locomotive. The coffee steam swirled from here to there, and his voice met it and danced down to me.

The cadence of his feet on the stairs told me he already had energy to outlast my sleepless new mom energy, and it gave me hope I would have spring in my step beyond this season. The unexpected proximity of a parent living part of the time with us in my adult life allowed for so many unique sharing experiences. Making breakfast together with or for my dad was a pure delight because no one – no one – was more appreciative of or excited about the soft fluffiness of scrambled eggs, the towering height of buttermilk biscuits, the sunset sky hues of ruby red grapefruit segments shining from a turquoise Fiestaware bowl.

It was from my daddy I learned how to deftly mix pancake batter for lofty stacks, how to cook eggs with care so they were soft and not rubbery, how to make breakfast extra special with a tiny vase of freshly flowers from the yard. He did these things for my mom, and he did them for me, for us.

I can still see him climbing out of his red car, clutching a handful of azaleas for me he cut from the bushes he and my mama planted – cotton candy pink, fearless fuschia, signs of Texas spring bursting forth. The care he took to not only buy a new toddler puzzle but to also wrap it in cheerful paper with a bow, knowing half the fun for the kids is the anticipation of what lies beneath while excitedly unwrapping the package.

His patience. His forethought. His joy. His genuine concern for the current state of others’ emotions, aspirations, and comfort.

His spirit takes up so much space still, his words hanging in the emptiness where he sat or stood or danced with a grandbaby in his capable and willing arms.

It doesn’t feel that far from here to there. Earth and heaven. His earthly self and his eternal and evergreen gifts. But I miss the “here” more than anything. We need you. We’re better for you. We’re changed because of you, and fiercely stepping into how we honor you in milestones and the everyday. Hoping you can see us from there.

May 8, Kyle’s Memorial Day 2023, Two Years Gone

Oliver Jeffers is a Northern Irish painter known for his Dipped Paintings project. He spent months creating a painting, only to dip it in a vat of paint before a small crowd of witnesses. Only the top of the subject’s head remained out of the container. Whiskey was passed around, and a toast was made: ”What’s done is done, and what’s to come is to come.”

I can’t relate. I am a ruminater. Not to be confused with a ruminant. But maybe if I chew on the events of late March and early April 2021 long enough, they will become palatable?

No. Not today, on Kyle’s Memorial Day. Not ever.

Jeffers said, “The only evidence of this painting will be the people who witness it, like history.” He began the projects with interviews of subjects who had witnessed death. I thought, oh, how awful for those people.

Then I remembered. I am one.

Kyle died on April 6, 2021, 17 days after he began showing symptoms of COVID-19. He was 38. His wife Charlotte, dad Murray, step-dad Mike, and I were all in the room when he died. None of us was prepared for what would happen. Not even Murray, who had watched his wife Margaret die of cancer the previous week.

When we were told that Kyle’s death was inevitable, that he was in multiple organ system failure, we initially agreed to let him go. But later I thought I had been too hasty. I thought about what Kyle would do for me if the situation was reversed. I knew he would fight for me to live. I called and changed my mind. A meeting with the “care team” was scheduled.

The next day at 3pm, Charlotte, Mike, and I walked into a conference room to see a half dozen nurses and doctors of varying specialties and a chaplain waiting for us. A more detailed explanation was given of Kyle’s condition, but not nearly as detailed as I would have liked, though I wonder if I would have been able to absorb it all, had it been really thorough. Though they were trying to help, I felt ganged up on.

Fidgeting and half listening and trying to slow my racing thoughts, I needed the bottom line. “Have any of you EVER seen anyone in Kyle’s condition recover from this?” All heads moved slowly and sadly side to side. The young doctor who was a twin for Dr. Jimmy Palmer on NCIS looked like he would cry. I couldn’t fight them all. The decision was made.

We returned to the hospital that night around 7. None of us are medical people; we didn’t have any idea what this was going to look like. Now I wonder if the others, like me, thought it would be peaceful. It wasn’t. At least not for us.

Marilyn, the first of two tenderhearted nurses assigned to Kyle that night, whispered as she encouraged us down the hall toward the COVID ward. “Only two visitors are allowed in a room, so when we get there, I’m going to close the curtain so other families don’t get upset.”

Which of us would have been left behind if she hadn’t had the guts to break that rule? Mother? Wife? Father? Step-dad of 20 years? Thank you, Marilyn. Thank you forever.

We spent about an hour with Kyle, reconciling our lives before this night to our lives after. We didn’t say goodbye. How do you do that? We had no concept of what life without Kyle meant.

We held his hands, touched his face, spoke softly. His brother Austin was on the iPad on a table in front of the bed. Austin wasn’t speaking to Kyle at the time, and hadn’t been for quite a while. I often wonder what he felt that night. I’ll never know. He doesn’t speak to any of us anymore.

When we were told it was time to extubate Kyle and remove him from the other machines, only Charlotte was able to hear the nurse describe how Kyle’s body would react. She was told that he would sit bolt upright in bed, that his eyes would fly open, and that he would take a loud, gasping breath. He would look like he was conscious. This is exactly what happened.

I was so shocked that for a moment I couldn’t feel my body. I wanted to scream what the hell was that? Why weren’t we warned? It was the most traumatic thing I have ever experienced. I can only hope that Kyle was so heavily sedated that he was totally unaware of anything.

The respiratory therapist had tears in his eyes as he pulled the tube. The bottom of it was covered in what looked like green pea soup sludge. I knew in that moment that he never had a chance. No wonder his oxygen level had been 57% when he walked into his ICU room in the second of three hospitals where he received care. How could anyone breathe through that?

For the next 10 minutes he took about ten more ragged, gasping breaths. I leaned over and whispered in a soothing voice that he was OK, he could just relax, everything was fine. And then he was dead.

A doctor came in to pronounce him. She was a tiny Indian woman not much older than Kyle with very kind eyes. She stayed about ten minutes, repeatedly listening to his chest, and gently moving curly locks of his hair up and off his forehead. We just stood, unmoving, in our posts at his bedside.

They let us stay another hour. Finally, we had to leave. We looked at each other briefly as if to say, it can’t be time yet, can it? We shambled out of the room, each of us glancing back at him. I was the last out, and I stopped to take one last photo of this unbelievable scene. I knew that if I didn’t have evidence of this moment to revisit with my own eyes, with the heart monitor display dark and quiet, that I would find a way to deny it forever. His second nurse that night, Kevin, said to me as I crossed the silver metal strip of the door threshold, “Kyle was 38. I’M 38.” His face was a sad mix of confusion and compassion and maybe a little bit of misplaced guilt.

It has taken me two years to get really in touch with my outrage that Kyle, and we, had to go through this end of his life. Why couldn’t he have been given an injection of morphine, like the veterinarian uses when euthanizing our beloved animals? Why make us all suffer through this? It is inexcusable.

I was researching medical euthanasia drugs last week. I wanted to see what is used for terminally ill people in states where it is legal. It turns out that the drugs that vets use for our animals are not legal for human use anymore. The drugs that are used now are not uniform in their effectiveness, not in time until death or peacefulness. Who made them illegal? And how dare they?

My son had a right to a completely peaceful death since he was considered terminal. Shame on the people who made that unavailable to him. I curse their arrogance for deciding, for others, what is “right”.

It took five years to get a back and forth conversation from him. Autism 26 years ago was almost unheard of. He was 5 when we had our first conversation. Me: “yellow bus.” Keith: “green bus.” We would go back and forth laughing at our silly busses. Every single day while in the drop-off line for school I would say, “Keith I wish you would just say I love you.”

Days, months, then years went by and no reply from Keith. One beautiful spring day he was getting out of the van and turned to me and said “I LOVE YOU.” My momma heart wanted to stop the world around me and just hug him and cry. Instead, I pulled away in tears. Finally the words I LOVE YOU.

October 2021 was our very last “I love you’s.” He had spent 2 weeks in the ICU and his lungs were getting worse. We had the talk about going on the ventilator. He agreed it would be best. I walked out of the room and said “I love you.” He said “I love you too.” Those were his last words to me. Two weeks later, he would take his last breath, 11 days before his 26th birthday. I was there for his first and last I love you’s.

I met Evelyn at the age of 6. She was my father’s beautiful wife and became our stepmother. At the time she didn’t have children of her own and treated my brother and me as her own. As the years went on, she became my best friend. We would talk everyday or every other day.

COVID took her away without any notice. My father tried taking care of her at home but one morning she just got worse and agreed to go into the hospital. Never did we expect that would be the last time my dad or any of us would see her again. She died alone and ever since she passed our family has drifted apart. She is truly missed more than anyone, she’s an angel in heaven. My only hope is that heaven is as beautiful as she was.

Evelyn was funny, honest, couldn’t tell a lie for anything and loved her grandchildren more than they ever knew. She loved with everything in her and she was for sure the Matriarch of our family. Holidays will never be the same but neither will our lives. Evelyn left a big void in our hearts and those who knew her, loved her! Evelyn left behind her daughter Jessica and son David. She was a stepmom to Evelyn, Tita, Denise & Macho but I was her favorite–lol. Evelyn was the only sister to Angelo, Wilson, Albert, Papo & stepsister Gloria.

I promised to always keep her memory alive. Evelyn will forever live in my heart as well as in my children’s life. She is missed everyday and everyday I still silently talk to her. I feel that she is always with me. I see her signs all the time and I pray that we are making her proud.

Losing someone is very difficult, but losing someone without any sign is harder than we think. We weren’t able to see Evelyn once she passed, no one was allowed at the cemetery and because of COVID we couldn’t do anything until August. Evelyn passed away on April 5, 2020 and we managed to put together a beautiful celebration of life for her in August. She was remembered by so many and it was a heartfelt celebration of life.