I was all alone in that bittersweet room that was crowded enough to show the impact that one person can have on so many other people, physically surrounded by family who loved me, mentally somewhere else. Trapped in my own mind, I suppose. Sometimes, after a death, mental imprisonment is preferable to the counterfeit words that people feed one another. This wasn't the first time I'd felt lonely in a crowded room, but it was my first experience where the only person I cared to speak with was lying in a coffin. It was just a few days ago we had walked my Siberian Husky together, and she had spoken of the doctor's amazing news that she had beaten cancer. I was jolted from my solitary thoughts with: “How did she die?”

It was Susan. For the record, it wasn't actually Susan, but that will be her name for the remainder of this reading. Susan is loving and well-meaning, but never misses the chance to converse...okay, let's call it what it is: gossip. You have a Susan in your life too. She's the one you called when you wanted to make sure the entire city knew how excited you were to have that new job, but she spoke to all the same people when you lost it.

“Oh, I'm sorry, is that rude of me to ask?” Well, yes. It's pretty damn rude. Maybe not on the surface, but in a gathering of people who loved my mom, and with dad and I being the only ones visibly shaken at this very moment - ask someone else. This is just more inner dialogue, of course, as I would never speak such complete truth at a funeral home.

When people tell their almost-true-but-slightly-embellished stories at the funeral home, they like to say “I remember it like it was yesterday,” and it is certainly a rare occurrence for anyone to question the validity of someone who speaks of the dead as if they went through life wearing a halo. People who are stubborn become, in death, strong-willed. The alive 'silent' are the 'thoughtful' dead, and the living 'rude' are simply 'unafraid to speak their minds' dead. Death retroactively transforms humans into their best version, at least to those who love them. Then there are those special people, the ones of which there is no need to embellish. My mom was one of the special ones. There was no need to embellish. She lived the type of life that involved adventure, laughter and a love that overflowed to the point of being wasteful.

The problem is that it was not her life story that was on my mind at the funeral home, as I stood there full of guilt – and, of course, Susan hadn't asked me about a special memory I had of her. Susan wanted some information she didn't yet have: the story of her death. The story of her death, those final gruesome moments I most unfortunately witnessed, is one that I remember like it was today.

I have relived the details so vividly, each and every passing day and many nights in dream form, that I feel as though I need to get the information in writing before my daydreams - what I wish I had done - creep into the story. I guess it's a bit ironic that my own actions were what I wished to embellish at my mother's funeral. I can't believe I'm publishing this difficult truth for the world to hear, but I have to admit it to myself: Susan did me a favor in asking her question, because she forced me to deal with my guilt over the death of my mom.

Even as an adolescent boy, she had always taught me to live my life to the fullest, making memories along the way. That frigid winter night, now a man in my thirties, I was out practicing this life motto with a friend who we will call Rick, a few joints, and a movie about two friends with a few joints trying to make it to White Castle. What, you don't think that's what she had in mind? You're probably right. It was a night, however, when I was crashing in the basement of the house I grew up in, visiting an old high school friend that I hadn't seen in years, and we wanted to feel like young teenagers again. We ate way too many fig newtons, our traditional serving of one box of mac n' cheese, some tacos, and we just laughed at a ridiculous movie. Looking back, it's hard to categorize this event as a regret, or as something to be cherished. I had a lot of fun, and that was a feeling that would take a considerable amount of time for me to allow myself to feel again. So, while I didn't enjoy waking up a few hours later, in a complete haze, to the most traumatic experience of my life, I guess it's good that I had my one last crazy night and went out with a bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. That's the sound I can't seem to get out of my head.

I had only been sleeping a few hours, but the sound of my mom's head hitting the hardwood kitchen floor propelled me to my feet. There were many sounds to follow, but there's no adequate way to put into words the punishing impact of that particular bang upon my life. That moment in time represents the ending of two lives, and the beginning of one new sad life without my mother.

In hopes that I had been awakened by one of dad's dropped hammers or tools, I paused for a very brief time, maybe four seconds, but the noise that followed had me sprinting up the stairs towards my mother's body that still had about ten minutes of excruciating life left in it. I can only describe that sound as something between a loud snore and a menacing hiss, a sound completely unnatural when coming forth from a woman whose very existence could define love.

I remember running up the stairs and pondering, for those few seconds, about how I always expected the worst, was probably just being paranoid, and I was halfway expecting to get up the stairs and begin laughing at some strange explanation for that grotesque noise. I did not laugh. For months.

Mom - who had been cleared of her cancer, was supposedly doing so much better, and had many plans for her life again - had one of those “just in case” doctor appointments that morning and she was preparing to leave. It occurred to her that I was sleeping in the basement, so she was composing a note so that I'd expect her to come home and visit later in the day. Those notes take me back to grade school, when she would write them on my lunch bag to remind me that I was loved. Even as an adult, she always left these notes when she knew I was coming to visit – they'd be on the back of a grocery list or a paycheck now instead of my lunch, but I'd been getting them since I was old enough to read. This one was on an oversized post-it pad, it read: “Gone to doct-,” and then a line that trailed off of the page, the trail marking the moment in time that her heart attacked her. The pen laid under her left leg, but the note stuck to the counter above where she laid in anguish.

Is it comforting to know that she was trying to communicate with me in her final moments? Not even a little bit. I would give anything to rewind time and spend that Wednesday night with mom and dad, instead of pretending to be a teenager and stumbling in the house like an idiot three hours before her death, my sleep prompting her to jot that note. I wish there was no note to write because I was wide awake and heading to the doctors office with my family. Such guilt.

Dad was in the bathroom. “Dad, come quick, something's wrong with mom!” I tried to wake her up. I have no idea why. Such guilt. I should have just called 9-1-1 and followed any instructions they gave. At least she was breathing at that point. I blame my panic on the noise. The whole scene was already so surreal, and then that horrible noise coming from her mouth – she was able to be slightly awakened every now and then, but her words were gibberish. As dad came running out of the bathroom, a six foot three inch tall and strong Vietnam Veteran, it finally occurred to me to call 9-1-1 as he grabbed her and wept like a child, saying her name over and over again.

How do you tell someone like Susan, especially at a funeral, that perhaps this event wouldn't be happening if you would have just listened to the 9-1-1 operator instead of panicking, or even shoveled the damn sidewalk? Such guilt. I made sure that the 9-1-1 operator had our address and knew that we desperately needed someone here immediately, but when they began to give instruction, I just froze. I couldn't perform CPR, despite the fact that I had a small card in my wallet saying I could. What if I screwed up? If ever there was a time to use that training, it was then. I called back 9-1-1 - “we live right across from the fire station, and the hospital isn't more than 15 minutes, when is someone getting here?” She placed me on hold to check, and came back with a baffling answer: “sir, they've been there knocking on your door for several minutes now.” I hung up and sprinted outside to see three individuals standing in front of the only door that didn't have three feet of snow in front of it: the garage door. I had told my parents that I would shovel for them while I was visiting, but I waited too long and instead chose to hang out with Rick. Such guilt. I remember one of the ambulance drivers complaining about the snow, and I made some sarcastic remark like “heaven forbid there be some snow in your way when trying to save someone's life”, but it was only because I felt like a moron.

My mom's last word was “hot.” I could make it out between gibberish, and dad almost tore her coat in two when he saw her sweating. The paramedics and I had tracked in so much snow that the juxtaposition between mom's sweat and the freezing cold snow became a 20 to 30-second focus as I tried to escape the moment in my mind. I wanted my inner dialogue. I wanted to just talk to me. I didn't want to be in that moment.

The paramedics were far too late, partially because they spent ten minutes at the wrong door, and we spent 45 eternal minutes watching them try to revive a lifeless body. Dad tried to keep hope, despite realizing that she was gone when he saw her eyes roll. I'm thankful to have missed that image, as it is one less internal picture to deal with at night.

You've never seen a truer love than that between my mother and father. I'd never heard them speak an ill word about one another – and they'd have a difficult time if they wanted to, since it would require surgery at their adjoining hips. People joked about them being joined at the hip all the time. They simply loved each others' company and found every event more enjoyable together. Before our eyes, however, that surgery was taking place - without warning and far too early - and dad cried out, “that's my entire life laying on that floor!” The love was so evident and real that nearly all of the paramedics were sobbing underneath their coats.

As much as I didn't care to deal with anyone, I knew it was appropriate to call my uncles. Mom had grown up with five brothers, perhaps that's where she got some of that strength. “I thought she was doing better,” one of them whimpered. “It was her heart, not the cancer.” I'm not sure how true that was because the cancer had worn her body down horribly, but it was listed as a heart attack on the autopsy report. Soon, it extended beyond the family, and mom's church friends began piling in. Among the faithful church crowd, there seemed to be a common theme that still enrages me to this very day if I give it more than a moment's thought. They would each show up and say something to the effect of “God had other plans for her. He didn't want her here anymore. He wanted her with Him.” Bullshit. I may sometimes struggle with what I believe, but I knew for certain, on that day, that I didn't believe THAT. It was the day before their forty year anniversary, and I'm pretty sure God, being personal and all-powerful as they imagine Him to be, could have given my parents that one day together. I'm sure that some of the evangelicals reading this have their theological answers ready to go, and that's fine. I'm not trying to change anyone's beliefs here, but there is a behavior that I'd love to change: just keep that noise to yourself. Seriously. When an individual loses their mother to cancer, suddenly and unexpectedly, after they thought she had just beaten it, they feel robbed. They find it unfair and unjust. Why am I saying “they”? I am the one who finds it unfair and unjust that I was robbed of my mother's love way too early. It doesn't matter whether or not I believe in “the great by and by.” There is no reason or logic to change that I have been robbed, nothing you say can minimize the sadness. Cancer is the robber, not God, so quit telling me that he needed a new angel. We will make a deal: I won't try to stop you from celebrating if you won't try to stop me from mourning.

The funeral was full of the celebration theme, and people like Susan frowned upon comments that didn't celebrate my mom's life and afterlife. Dad and I were in that sad zone that Susan frowned upon, but she could look past our sorrow because “oh, that's the son and husband,” but the others needed to be happy that she was “in a better place.” My dad made a comment about the best place for her being next to him, and I agreed with him.

I remember discussing these events later with dad, and I was surprised at his recollection of some of the events....something about being able to see warning signs and get her to a doctor sooner, being in the bathroom at the wrong time, forgetting his military training....seemed like he was feeling really guilty for a lot of things that weren't really his fault. I thought about how illogical it was for him to blame himself and, until recently, the irony of my own thought process would have been completely lost on me.

Meanwhile, back in the surreal world, Susan was still waiting, patiently allowing me to complete my inner dialogue. How to summarize all of this? “She died of a heart attack, in her kitchen, with the two men who love her most. That's how she died, Susan.” It was basically the truth, more omission than embellishment, and it's all I could say without vomiting loneliness and a sense of everything being unfair...and well, I didn't want to be that guy who dumps on the Christian “celebration,” so there's no room for all of the feelings that naturally happen with loss. The truth is that the world became a darker place when it lost the love of my mom. They said it would change over time, but that day never became a day of celebration for dad and I, and it never will be. Try gossiping about that, Susan.