This isn’t a story about how I fell down the stairs freshmen year and everyone saw my underwear, or how I had my first kiss and I threw up right after because all I could think of was a dying slug. This is a story of my mom and how she only exists in the deepest parts of my heart.

To other people, their mom is someone who buys all the groceries, cooks, cleans, nurtures, and provides. To me, my mom is a blurry memory that I can’t quite put the missing pieces together. As I sit in class trying to pay attention to the things that hardly matter to me, I wonder if she watches me grow up from afar  like the other mothers who watch their children grow up. Why did the creator of all things take away my mom? She was a beautiful human being that was full of memories and life. Someone who loved her children and all of that disappeared within seconds. She turned into a number in a morgue that everyone soon forgot about from drowning themselves in liquor to numb the pain. Years go by and everyone moves on with their life and soon, the grave fills with weeds and is left untouched.

The story of her passing wakes me up at 3 in the morning every night with anxiety and heartache. Her last day spent on this earth was the place that made her the happiest. She was listening to the soft waves of Laguna Beach with me in her arms walking across the shore line while my brother was playing football with my dad. Later that day we returned home and my mom put us to sleep. She was lying in bed reading a book like she did every night. She went to turn off the light but her arm fell limp. She tried again but then her head fell limp. She attempted her last time before she fell back and her whole body fell limp. “Kathleen” my dad yelled but there was no answer. He picked her up and put her on the bathroom counter dialing 911. The sound of ambulances that I was too young to hear showed up at my house within minutes. She had suffered from a stroke. My mom had suffered from a stroke that night and nobody ever got the chance to say goodbye. She was taken to the hospital that night and the doctor treated her for stress instead of a stroke. The wrong medication led up to a bigger stroke and then there was nothing else that could be done to save her. At her last moments, I wonder what she was thinking of. Fifteen minutes ago my dad was in his normal routine and now he has to make a decision to pull the plug on the woman he loved, the woman who he made vows to, and the woman who he was supposed to grow old with.

I was 18 months old when my mom was taken from me and only stories fill the missing pieces in my heart.