In 2009, my mom died from the swine flu. She was only 47 years old. I was only 23. Too young to understand myself, the gravity of the loss I endured and the larger implications of her death.
I was self-involved, naive and confused about virtually all facets of my life. Or basically I was every 20-something-year-old trying to balance the harsh realities of adulthood with the desire to avoid responsibility and the shifting evolution of my identity. To lose my mom in that moment, during that time, felt especially painful because I hadn’t even found myself yet.
2020 forced me to re-live the trauma of that experience over and over. The swine flu was equally confounding but of course not nearly as devastating as Covid-19. At least for the rest of the world. But there are many similarities. The masked paranoia. The rapid onset of symptoms. The inability to breathe. The inexplicable nature of it all.
My mom died at home from her pandemic virus, as many others in this city have and continue to with this one. And much of that can be attributed to socioeconomics that make me question my very existence. My mom’s life wasn’t important enough for an ER doctor at Wyckoff Hospital to admit her, leading to her inability to breathe, nearly 24 hours later. Was it because she had a mental illness, because she was poor, because she was overweight? I’ll never know.
And because she died so needlessly and so suddenly, does that mean I will too? It felt like a real possibility when I contracted covid myself twice, both times in its mildest form. The wheels in my brain started turning. What’s my life really worth anyway? In times like these, you start to feel as though your life is worth only as much as your bank account. My mom’s, and mine, never had much in it anyway.
Navigating the absence of someone whose existence had defined my life was of course a challenge. All moms are important. And if it’s not a mom, it’s that central parental figure who guides your life. The one who teaches you how to be in the world. Losing that person fundamentally changes you, whether you realize it or not.
My relationship with my mom was always complicated by her schizophrenia. Even when she was ok. I always worried about her. Which caused angst for us both. But I understood mental illness. Swine flu? A pandemic? I didn’t know what that was or what to do with it. So, making sense of her loss from an illness I knew nothing about felt like walking through a dark room.
She stopped breathing in the middle of the night at home in her bed, a few hours after we had last spoken. During that phone call, she told me not to come home because she didn’t want me to get sick with whatever she had too. So I didn’t. She wanted to save me. And god, had she. Had I lived through the unimaginable nightmare of that night, of her boyfriend and EMT workers trying to revive her, I may never have recovered mentally or emotionally. Even in death, my mother remained selfless.
After it happened, I called the Medical Examiner’s office daily at first, then weekly, until the results of my mom’s autopsy were complete. I knew there were answers that they’d provide, if not closure.
“So no one told you?” The person on the other end started.
“No, I haven’t heard anything.” My heart pounded in my chest as I waited for her to continue.
“She died of the Swine Flu, H1n1. I’m so sorry”. Her voice apologetic and comforting.
I hung up and sobbed. It was the confirmation I needed but didn’t want. A random virus I knew nothing about had taken my mom’s life in a matter of days. I wasn’t sure what to do with that information and why I had been so insistent on calling anyway. But I was left more confused. My mom’s death felt so meaningless. No one would remember or care about the swine flu days or weeks from now, I figured. They’d make jokes about its name, its origins, the ridiculous panic over a stupid sickness no one would probably ever catch again anyway. There’d probably be a cure, I thought. And that made me angrier. Why my mom? Why not someone else? Why now?
I didn’t get those answers then and over a decade later and I still don’t have them now. The meaning behind it all is as elusive as ever. But anyway, isn’t any death? We attribute meaning to it. But maybe there is none. My mom didn’t have to die then. Just like the hundreds of thousands have died during Covid. But she, and they, did. So now what? What can I make of it all? What can any of us?
The loss of my mom to swine flu showed me how inefficient and underprepared our healthcare system was. But I didn’t and don’t blame the workers. They’re doing the best they can for the most part. I blame the system that values some people’s lives over others. My mom could have lived had she been admitted but she wasn’t.
Since she’s been gone, all I have besides lingering questions, are my memories of those final days. Many of which flash in my head like vignettes:
The walk we took to get pedicures a few weeks earlier. The last thing we did together.
The way she looked over at me while I stood in the kitchen, telling me she wasn’t feeling well. A couple days before she died.
My phone ringing at 3:15 am on the night it happened. It said ‘Mom’. I answered thinking it was her. It wasn’t.
Sitting in my hallway on the floor outside my apartment waiting for people to come get her body.
Making the call to my brother. The hardest one I’ve ever made in my life.
Me asking my friend Karen if this was all a dream as they carried her body out of my building. Her telling me no, in between tears.
In the months after, I attended a grief counseling group in the city. I was out of my element as the youngest person there, the only one who wasn’t white and who hadn’t lost their parent to cancer or another prolonged illness. I could tell that the rest of the group wasn’t sure what to make of my loss because it was so different from theirs. A part of me thought they were lucky. They had months and years to prepare for their parents’ deaths . I had no time at all. But a loss is a loss is a loss. Who was I to judge?
I’ve worked hard in the years since her death to move beyond my mom’s demise and the endless heartbreak I endured in the months and years after. I’ll never get over it, is what I’ve realized. Because I felt robbed of a life with her. We didn’t have much time together to grow our relationship as mother and daughter. And that hurts. But it also hurts that she died from something so stupid. Some dumb virus. A pandemic.
Before she died, my mom was getting ready to move to Long Island. She had boxes organized everywhere. After she died, I had to unpack them. Removing the new white plates she had bought, from those boxes, hurt. The plates felt like a symbol of all that she and I had lost. I still use those plates. If only to let my mom know that I carry her hopes and dreams inside of me. And nothing, not some stupid virus or anything else, will take that from me.
Madonna Writes 
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