I Cannot Tell if the World is Falling Apart or Falling Together

I cannot tell if the world is falling apart or falling together. There are people marching in the streets with their fists raised against racism, which gives me hope but CNN says we’re all going to get coronavirus because people are not marching six feet apart and they are not wearing masks, or not all of them are. So many people are out of work because the economy shut down. We have friends who have lost their jobs and their health insurance and they have families and kids on the cusp of college and now, no job, no health insurance, and who knows if the kids are going anywhere, let alone to college?

I cannot sleep at night even though I take my .5 milligrams of Ativan before I go to bed. I wake up at 2 in the morning and either the moon is shining, like an iPhone flashlight, right into my eyes, or I am sweaty, even in the new sweat-proof, silk pajamas my husband bought me for Mother’s Day, or I am sure that my mom’s spirit is leaving her body. I check my phone and double check it again to make sure the nursing home hasn’t called me to tell me my mother died.

I feel like if my mom died, I’d hear a bell ringing from Jerusalem, where she has never been but always wanted to go, and that bell would alert me that she was called home. But, of course, that isn’t going to happen and the mezuzah I bought her on my Israel trip when I was seventeen is now in the bowl in my kitchen. I had the movers take it off her apartment door when she moved into the nursing home and I stuck it in the bowl in my kitchen to put on my own door someday.

I think when my mom dies I will wake up suddenly from sleep and I will know. I will feel it in my marrow, in my stomach, in my neck, that my mother is gone from this world. Or maybe I won’t feel it. Maybe, I will be asleep dreaming about bees or underwater coral or my boyfriend from middle school and me couple skating at the roller rink?

When your parent is dying and it is a slow process, you have a lot of time to think about how you are going to feel when they are gone. It isn’t a helpful thing to think about because all I can feel is grief. I know how much and for how long I will miss her — until I am gone. It is hard to process everything right now: my mom lying in a hospital bed in a nursing home, the possibility of a second wave of coronavirus cases, and the passion and purpose of protests taking place all over the country. The world is changing and it can change for the better, but my mom won’t be here to see it.

I won’t be calling her to tell her how her grandchildren marched across Magnolia Blvd. in North Hollywood, right by the apartment where she lived and loved so much. She won’t be here to see the video or hold the signs or know that wrongs are being righted. There is nothing my mom loves more than people, all people, and she would love to be here to see these changes but I know, I know, she won’t be.

The world is changing and I choose to believe it is changing for the better. And in my own little world, there are some major changes coming for I will soon be a motherless daughter and I don’t want to be. I want to kick and scream against it and I want my mom to rewind to before she fell and I wish I had lunch with her more at Magnolia Grill where she ordered the summer salad. I wish I could take her to Mod Pizza where she’d order all the meats except for sausage. I wish she could be here to witness all the people in the streets. She is the type of old lady who would be on her balcony asking if anyone wanted a water bottle, or clapping and dancing and giving a thumbs-up. She is always a supporter of what is good and right.

When I go to sleep at night, I feel the anguish of wondering if the world is falling apart or falling together. I don’t know if I will hear the bell ringing from Jerusalem or if the moon is going to shine in my eyes and wake me up and tell me gently or harshly, “Your mother is gone.” So I wake up at 1 am and check my phone to see if the nursing home is calling. But they haven’t called me. Not yet.

Adapted for Patch from Robin's weekly column "SLEEPLESS IN THE SAN FERNANDO VALLEY."