Gone Wild Chapter 43: Alone.

Thirteen days.

That’s how long it takes, but none of us know this yet.

My parents burned their snow shovel and retired in the Southwest with a cactus and a set of golf clubs shortly after I got married. I, of course, was busy all these years with my “calling”, and never got around to considering the fact that they might be gone someday. We had done what we thought was the right thing to do, not really worrying too much about money, how much more important is it to save a soul? So, we just shoestringed along, trusting the teaching that God will magically take care of us.

What could possibly go wrong?

My poor Mom, my beloved Mom, the Mom I have only seen a handful of times because I was too damn busy saving the world, has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. And she has little time, she is given 8 months with treatment, 3 months without. She was a nurse for 60 years, and knows exactly what the macabre side effects of drastic cancer treatment look like, it’s a big NOPE, and she has little time.

All of us kids are scrambling to book emergency flights. I call the airlines, and schedule the soonest trip possible. This is how I discover that airlines don’t really give a fuck about your dying loved one. I am going to Arizona to spend as much time as I can with Mom. I’m still afraid to tell her what’s going on. I’ve had such negative reactions, and I carefully rehearse what I will say, how I will explain to her and my dad that I have failed at my calling, that I left it burning in the trashbin, that I just divorced the family Pastor they respected so much. That I’m a Bad Girl now.

You would think that it would dawn on me that this is the least of my Mom’s worries, but the desire to not let down my parents, especially at a time I felt my Mom would want to feel proud of the children she’s leaving behind, is a strong one. Guilt Monkey, smugly perched on my shoulder, whispers in my ear that I shouldn’t have done it. I am a disappointment and a failure. My parents were absolutely sure I would be a scientist, or a neurosurgeon, or a forensic pathologist, all options I was solidly aiming for before I went into ministry, and now even the calling I had given up my scientific career to pursue is lying in ruins, buried under a Pompeiian heap of ash, only this is no act of God. This disaster is my own creation.

A call from Arizona, just days after diagnosis.

Mom is dying.

NOW.

This memory is etched permanently on a rock wall in my brain…a moment of regret so staggering I will never, ever forget it.

My brother is already in Arizona, he is crying. I am in the passenger seat of my sister’s car. I have been determined to get across the country to see Mom…but I won’t. He says he will hold up the phone for her.

I can hear her voice, but she is beyond repair. She can only make a kind of grunting, whining noise. Still her voice comforts me. I hate this so much. I make my last minute confession, and I can hear the absolution in her voice, though I can’t understand her exact words, she still loves me. And I love her, very, very much. And I hate myself for having been so distant.

And I wonder how I ever allowed the church to keep us apart.

I had thought the church to be the highest calling, and the church body to be my family, and I was wrong. They are gone.

This is how I finally discovered how important, how precious family and close relationships are. I had poured my time and energy into the wrong people (except, of course, the handful of amazing friends who stayed by my side through the whole mess) and now, my precious mom, matriarch of 8 children, the woman who patiently set my hair on those pink foam rollers for picture day, and put up with my ADHD craziness from birth, who drove us to school and regularly choked us to death by applying her heavy Azuree perfume in the car, windows rolled up, was gone.

So fast.

I remember a woman I met in the church who became a client of mine, a very kind lady. Problem… her daughter shacked up with her boyfriend and had a child. My client’s beliefs were strong enough and strict enough, that she did what they call “giving them over to Satan for a season” i.e. she kinda sorta disowned her daughter, in hopes that this strict treatment would make her come back to the ways of the Lord.

It didn’t work.

As the mother tearfully shared the story with me, my heart broke for her. And I knew she would never win, that they were probably never going to reconcile. Oh, the absolute futility of trying to keep lovers apart, if you think you’re gonna win that battle, I have Shakespeare, a dagger and a bottle of poison to prove you wrong. And so, every six weeks my beautiful hearted yet ill-informed client would come in sobbing over a granddaughter she had never seen, and likely never will.

Life is too short for this bullshit.

This story is for entertainment, but if there is someone who comes to mind as you read this, bury the fucking hatchet and move on. Stay close. You never know when they’ll be gone.

Sometimes, you don’t get a second chance.

I finally make it out to Arizona, just in time to go through personal effects. My sisters are here, and we go through a mountain of memories, and set up my grieving Dad in assisted living. He lasts a month and hates it, my mother was his soulmate. He never really recovers from her absence. He returns, choosing hired assistance in the house they shared. My time there is too short and before I know it, I have to leave and go figure out my mess of a life back in Tiny Town.

My time at the cottage expired, I move into a temporary winter rental, a furnished condo in an idyllic setting with a balcony overlooking a lake. It’s all frozen, rendering it very affordable, and buys me a few months time. And I am alone.

Alone.

ALONE.

Not being able to talk to my Mom, I realize how alone I really am.

I’m going to have to make this work, all by myself.

Eric Carmen pathetically wheezes out “All By Myself”

I chain smoke out on the balcony. I contemplate all of the lost opportunity, about the way I have lived, fearing reactions and responses, letting others determine my fate.

And I realize how finite it all is.

The kids are going to be off to college soon. I have vast freedom. My mind floats away, I have visions of travel. I can finally get out of Tiny Town. I could live in Dubai. I could go to Mexico. I could start a different business. I could start a business in Dubai and Mexico. So many ideas are coming to me, I’m discovering a hidden goldmine in my situation. The possibilities are endless.

The beauty of losing everything is, I have nothing left to lose.

To this day, I don’t fear losing it all, I’ve already done it. Bought the T-shirt. Writing the damn book! I see people hung up in their fears, so afraid of what they will lose by pursuing what they really want, by ending a bad job or a negative relationship, and they are trapped like I was. It’s very sad for me to see, watching prisoners starving behind bars while I’m out lying in the sun sipping some exotic pink cocktail with a little paper umbrella. And I view them through my sunglassed eyes as I bake to a toasty brown on my lounge chair, and they have the goddam keys RIGHT THERE… It’s in your hands!! But they stay…

I…choose to run straight into my fears, funny thing being, the closer I get to them, the tinier they become, until I am at war with a ridiculous tiny army of Barbies and Kens who can merely nip at my ankles with their angry plastic teeth. I tear their legs apart. I rip their heads off. I’m simply not listening to them anymore. I resolve to take opportunities I never have allowed myself. I am going to become the Jim Carrey Yes Man to everything. I am going to try it all. I am free, I can go anywhere. I can do anything. I’m going to make the cliched bucket list a lazy alternative. I’m going to make Red Bull commercials look boring. You got wings, Mr. Red Bull? Well, I just got myself a goddam rocket. I strap my jet pack firmly on my back and light the fuse.

I am flipping this fucking script. I have nothing left to stop me, nothing left to lose. The zealots are gone, the town hates me anyway, I already disappointed everyone I could, why not live out my wildest dreams and fantasies??

Teenage phoenix Monica recklessly takes flight, careening through the air and marvelling at the possibilities. Amazing what you can see when you’re above it all.

And I’m ready to do some crazy shit.

It all begins the night I was Wonder Woman.