Just another day.

When I walked outside this morning, the air felt exactly like it did in California when I touched down in San Jose. The light is different, though.

I clutched the handle of my drunkenly packed suitcase so tightly I thought it would snap in half. I had made it. The connecting flight in Salt Lake City, where I only had a 30 minute layover, did not best me.

My rental car ended up being at a Hertz location clear across the city of San Jose, and I had no way to get there. I panicked. But even that didn't stop me; a saint who worked at the airport location volunteered to drive me to the other location. I still don't know why she did it. Maybe she took pity on me or could sense my panic. Regardless, even that didn't best me. An hour later, and I was in a rented Aveo driving toward Morro Bay, California, to say goodbye to my dying mother.

There is something so strange about being in a new place when you know you're going to do the hardest thing you've done in your life there. I remember driving down the interstate, listening to The Shins, while the sun was setting, and being struck with the true beauty of California. I had never been before. That feeling was immediately replaced by guilt. How could I be even slightly happy or comforted when my mother was dying? I laid the accelerator down a little more firmly, reminding myself that the reason I was in California were my grandmother's words from a few nights before:

She might not last the night.

Two hours later, I pulled into the driveway of the apartment my mother and stepfather shared. My stepfather, who I had not spoken to since I was 18, was thankfully not there yet. My grandmother, my older sister and her boyfriend, and my mother's youngest were there. My older sister called me and said she wanted to make sure I was really prepared for what I was about to see. I asked
"Well, how bad is it?" and she replied, "She's just really yellow."

So this was it. This was the moment. The first time I had seen my mother in five years. Our most recent phone conversation, when she gave me her prognosis, was the first time we had spoken in three months. When she told me she was scared, and I left work hyperventilating and crying to seek comfort in my favorite bar and tequila. Typical.

I walked into the room and it was as if the blood and breath went out of my body in a single, terrifying moment. There would be no conversation, no forgiveness, no explanation. She was not lucid. She had gone so fast. Her skin was a kind of yellow they don't make for crayons and paint. It looked waxy. Her skin was so yellow you couldn't see her tattoo anymore, the dolphin on her ankle.

I sat on the edge of the bed and my grandmother woke her up. She came to and my grandmother said "Nicole, look who made it. It's Morgan." Her eyes met mine and even the whites of her eyes were yellow. I had always loved my mother's eyes. Her smile always reached them, and they were filled with laughter when she was happy. This time, I had a hard time not looking away.

"Mom," I said, while fighting back years of emotion, pain, and held grudges. "Mom, I made it. Mom, I love you."

She sat up in bed as best she could, more of a lurching motion than a calculated one. I held her hand and for a minute, I hope, I think, she saw past the morphine haze and knew who I was. The light came back to her eyes briefly, and she said "I love you". Those were the last words my mother spoke to me, though she spoke some more as the week went on.

Following this exchange, I retreated to the porch to smoke cigarettes. Tears poured out of me. It's a kind of pain that I simply cannot describe. I cried until I thought I might vomit. I cried until my eyes were swollen. My chest hurt to the point that I thought I would die. Even recalling this moment now, my chest hurts still.

I always thought I would have more time to repair my relationship with my mother. When I grieve here, I'm not only grieving the beautiful woman I envied my entire childhood, I'm grieving the woman I never really got to know. I moved away to save myself from a terrible environment.  I truly believe if I had lived with her as a teenager, I would have ended my own life.

It's funny how quickly I wanted to forgive her when I knew she only had a few more days.

On the second or third day I was there, my grandmother wanted to give us each our space to make our peace with our mother. Everyone left the room. I held her hand sitting next to her in a chair I had pulled up to the bed. I desperately wished there had been room for me to crawl into bed with her one more time, like I had as a kid, when I would wake in the night from a terrible dream. This was the terrible dream, though, and there was no way to be comforted. I guess that's what adulthood really is.

I told her that I forgave her for all of the lies. I told her I forgave her for the drinking, for the abuse, for everything she had said and done, for all of the things she told me about myself that I believed were true for so long. And then I told her how sorry I was that I couldn't save her, that I left when i Was fourteen, that I didn't call, that I selfishly let my pain and my pride get in the way of a relationship with her.

I sang her the Garth Brooks song we used to sing to my little sister together. I sang her amazing grace. I searched my brain for other religious songs I could sing, to comfort her, or I guess myself, but even with my music degree from a Christian university, I came up with nothing.

I stepped outside to smoke. The light in California is something to behold. Everything seems to have a glow around it. The breeze was soft and chill, and I could hear the gulls cawing and the sea lions barking in the bay. It shimmered in the distance.

If I die anywhere, let it be California.

My stepdad gave me a crisp 100 dollar bill and told me to drive up to Hearst Castle, the estate of the late William Randolph Hearst. Apparently my mother had loved it there. Hearst used to throw parties for some of the biggest names in Hollywood, political figures, etc. My mother would have fit right in.

My stepdad made it a point to tell me how proud my mother was of me. I thought it was funny because whenever she and I talked, it was to scream at each other.  It was nice to know, even if it wasn't true. I choose to believe it was. She and I were never great at communication.

The Hearst estate was a welcome and beautiful distraction. I saw some zebras, remnants of his long gone zoo, grazing along the side of the road. I stopped and saw elephant seals lazily basking on the shoreline, kicking sand upon themselves like thin blankets.

At this point, everyone was gone except my grandfather and my aunt Noel. Having her there meant the world to me. At this point, I learned my grandfather had also struggled with alcoholism. He beat it, though.

I left because I didn't think I could handle being in the room when she died. When I got the news that she had died, I was about to drive through a Starbucks drive through. That was a year ago today.

Grief, for me, isn't something that is going away. When I first came back to Tennessee, I felt like I was underwater and I couldn't breathe. It took me awhile to get back to work. I didn't want to be touched. I had no interest in male attention. When I finally did come back to work, I was a raging bitch. Stress got to me more.

I thought after a few months went by I would be fine. I wasn't. I was making irresponsible decisions with my emotions. I entered into a relationship with someone because I really wanted to be with someone, and I truly cared for him, but I'm not sure I would have done that if I weren't still struggling with the grief. I relapsed back into my eating disorder for a few months. I started drinking heavily.

I denied that any of this had to do with grief, or with guilt.

It's a year later. I made it. A milestone. I missed her on her birthday and thought of all the times I said I would send a card, and didn't. I missed her on mother's day. I missed her when I smelled blistex or vaseline lotion, and when I was Christmas shopping in Target and had to leave because I was so blinded by tears I couldn't read price tags anymore.

I missed her on my birthday and on Christmas and listened to old voicemails she had left me just so I could hear her voice. I feel like  my sadness has turned me into a cliche.

Its been a year and I'm just now starting to feel like myself, and like I can breathe again. There are days I don't think about her much at all, and then feel guilty for forgetting about it.

There are still days where I can't physically get out of bed because the sadness and the loss is that deep.

A year is a pretty short time. I wish she could see me now. I'd love to have her make fun of my hair color choice, or see me do stand up comedy, or meet my dog. She would love Oz. I see other people have their milestone moments, weddings, children, and selfishly my first thought is anger that my own mother will never see me through moments like that. She won't dance at my wedding, if there is one. If i Had kids, which I likely won't, she won't know them. She won't see me get my graduate degree or my doctorate. It's like she stopped knowing me at our last good memory.

I miss you, mom. I miss you calling me fourteen times in a row until I picked up the phone. I miss you never having figured out time zones and time differences between California and Tennessee. I miss your laugh and your handwriting and the way you always smelled. I miss you waking up at midnight to cook boil in a bag rice. I miss you giving me your clothes and jewelry whenever I visited. I stole some when I left California, but I didn't think you'd mind.

I wonder if this day will ever get easier for me. I wonder if this pain will ever really go away, but I think it will stay with me forever. I am so lucky to have an amazing family and supportive friends who have stuck with me through the mood swings, the drunken crying, and the conversations about my mother. For those of you who stuck around to the end to read this, damn, you must either really care or be really bored.

Most importantly, what happened to my mother has allowed me to take a deep look inward at both my drinking and my mental health and monitor them closely so I don't take a similar path. I still haven't made it to a grief counselor, more out of pride than anything else, but I know my mother wouldn't want me to suffer. She really did want everyone to be happy and healthy. That was something I took for granted about her.

Today, when I walked outside, the air felt exactly like it did when I landed in San Jose, but I feel different than I did that day.

I may never be healed, but I am healing. And I love you, Mom.