I Dream of Eternal Life

Image: Amy Irene McClintock and Alyssa McClintock Via Alyssa McClintock

“When I lifted her urn / 

Divinity says, ‘Destiny can’t be earned or returned” 

On Sept. 29, 2022, my mom died. It was a Thursday, and I’d just come back to campus from dinner with a friend. Even though I wasn’t there when she died, I knew it was coming; the dinner was specifically meant to take my mind off things.  

She’d been sick for over a year, pulmonary fibrosis slowly turning her lungs into two solid masses of scar tissue. You can’t breathe through scar tissue. I watched her slowly suffocate to death for months, taking care of her constantly over the summer between my first and second years at West Chester while she was on hospice. She started coughing in the spring of 2021, and by that December, when I came home for my first winter break, there was an oxygen machine constantly thrumming in our living room. Her body ended up leaving our apartment before it did. 

For clarity’s sake: my mom is actually my biological grandmother, and I tend to alternate naturally between calling her my mom and calling her my grandma. My biological mother has always been in the picture, and I also address her as my mom, but my grandmother has always, always been my parent. She was from the moment I was born, and hers were the first arms I found my way into. The court documents solidifying her status as my legal guardian in loco parentis (“in place of a parent” in Latin) over both of my biological parents would come shortly thereafter. I don’t really care what anyone has to say about me calling her my mom; I know who raised me. I think my biological mother puts it best: “No one loves you like your mother loves you… & she was very much your mother too.” 

I was 18 when she died, barely a month into the first semester of my sophomore year. I’m 20 now, in my last year of college and writing this piece roughly a month after the two-year anniversary of her death. I don’t know how much progress I’ve really made in healing in all that time; I don’t know how much progress I’ll ever make; I don’t know if either of those things really matter to me right now. It’s just all too hard still. 

The one-year anniversary of her death wasn’t easy; I spent that day and the few before it miserable. This year was different. I honestly didn’t even think too much about it, but maybe that’s just because I wanted to forget. In the past couple weeks, everything has hit me all over again. I’m having a lot of trouble connecting with my loved ones, doing my coursework and studying in a timely manner, remaining positive and cheery when I’m at work and even just taking care of myself. I can’t stop crying.  

As I work on preparing everything for my graduation in the spring, I know it’s the reason why I can’t stop drowning in my own grief. I had wanted her so badly to watch me walk across the stage at commencement; I told her before she died that she had to hold on until then. She couldn’t. I would give anything to see her, to talk to her again. Sometimes I imagine my phone will ring, and I’ll hear her voice. Or I’ll walk into a room, and she’ll be there, and I can just hold her and tell her how much I’ve missed her. Or I’ll look out from the stage at commencement and spot her in the audience. But I know these things won’t happen. Now, the closest I can get to her is through my memories, looking at old pictures and watching old videos or holding her urn.  

Death and dying and grief make us act weird: a couple weeks before she died, I broke down sobbing and screaming that I didn’t want my mom to die in front of all of my classmates; after I found out she died, I went back into my room and told my roommate everything was fine when she asked how the phone call went; I couldn’t make myself close the little velvet box her urn is nestled in for about a year because it felt like I was making her be alone in the dark, closed off from me. I am permanently, fundamentally changed. She spent my whole life helping me develop into the person I was when she died, so I think it’s fitting her death and my grief over it would keep shaping who I am. She will always be with me. 

I’m not writing all of this to tell those of you with healthy, living parents to cherish them. I’m not even telling you to be more mindful about assuming someone you know hasn’t experienced this kind of loss. I’m actually not writing to tell you anything at all. People talk about loss all the time, and you can prepare for it if you know it’s coming, but you’ll never really understand what it’s like to lose a parent until it happens to you. This article is for everyone who really understands. We’ll never be the same as we were before, but I hope we can find some sort of peace eventually or at least take solace together in knowing we aren’t alone. 

In memory of Amy Irene McClintock (1948-2022). I love you, mom. You’re always with me. 

Alyssa McClintock is a fourth-year Political Science and History double-major with a minor in Holocaust Studies.