This is Chapter 5 in the Grief Memoir. Catch up with previous chapters here.
Barbara Ann (Perpich) Lubin died on February 6, 2021. She was 63 years old. A military brat, she was born in Germany before moving stateside and living in Virginia, Georgia, and Oklahoma. Her parents returned to her mother’s home state of Arizona after a long military career. Barbara loved Arizona deeply and became one of its biggest champions. She volunteered for political campaigns, worked tirelessly to better her community, served as PTA President, ran an arts education program, ran for public office, and helped others run for public office. Barbara was a proud mother and grandmother, a loving wife, and a devoted sister and friend.
In talking with others about the passing of their loved ones, they all say the person picked their time, and I have no doubt about mom’s choice to take her final breath with me. We were so close. To this day, I miss being able to call her when I have two minutes to just talk and say hi. I miss all the things she did that embarrassed me at some point during my life – from ensuring that I was overly prepared for college (who needs an ironing board in a dorm?) to bragging about the smallest of my accomplishments. I miss getting packages of cute clothes that my kids just had to have. I miss the cut-out articles she would send from the local newspaper or the greeting card to say hi.
I am lucky enough to have her cookbooks and photos she took hanging on my walls. I drink coffee from her favorite mugs. And I have boxes of her papers in my house that I just haven’t been able to get through yet. Her number is still saved in my phone, although removed from my favorites list because I can’t bear to see “Mom” on that screen. I have her jewelry safely stored, yet I haven’t been able to bring myself to wear any of it myself.
The hours and days following her death were busy. Minutes after she died, my dad and husband came home with dinner. We called family. We called hospice. We somehow ate dinner in between all of that. The kids spent the night with my in-laws. We told them the next morning that Grandma was gone.
Then, we had to make a million small decisions that felt incredibly big – what should mom wear in her coffin, what order the service was in, what to eat, and what to do next. Honestly, I have fleeting memories from the week that followed.
I turned 33 only three days after her death. My family, friends, and coworkers sent more cookies and cupcakes than we could possibly eat. I got takeout dinner from a favorite local restaurant. I took as much of the day off from funeral plans as I could.
We held a small but meaningful funeral. I read the prayer of St. Francis, my mom’s favorite saint. Friends and my dad shared what they loved about my mom. I couldn’t bring myself to say more about Mom at the time. Following the deaths of my grandparents, I found closure at their funerals. I can’t say that I felt that after my mom’s service.
I was angry that mom died far too young, with adventures to go on and grandkids to watch grow. I was sad that she was not a phone call away. I was depressed and depleted after the emotional roller coaster of caring for and losing her.
And while I felt the many stages of grief, I didn’t have time to fully process her death. I didn’t have time to really stop and feel those feelings. I not only had two small children to care for, but my focus had to shift to my dad. He turned 80 years old that year and while his health held up while mom got worse, I knew that would not last. In the back of my mind, I was already thinking about what we needed to do for him next.
The days following the funeral, I didn’t think that much about his health yet; we were focused on when to get home, when we’d go back to “normal.” We ended up flying back to Kentucky during one of the biggest ice and snowstorms that ended up shutting down Texas, fortunately for us that just meant a long day in the airport after a missed layover and landing in Louisville after midnight. We grabbed a hotel room nearby so we didn’t drive in the snow until it was light out.
Having a few days to play in the snow was a nice reprieve from the days sitting at Mom’s bedside. We all had fun sledding, building snowmen and making snow angels. We got back to daycare and work schedules, and we even celebrated our youngest’s second birthday. We were home but it felt like we were in a pause.
Weeks after my mom died, my dad’s health took a turn. He had Parkinson’s and a rare muscular degenerative disease that meant he always had a bit of pain. As I look back now on the weeks and months that followed my mom’s death, I think his grief manifested in more pain than usual, pain that was so debilitating that he was calling 911 in the middle of the night to get help. These calls resulted in ER visits that involved a lot of tests with no answers, just more questions for both him and me. Less than a month after returning to Kentucky, I was back on a flight to Phoenix, this time to help Dad with what was next for him.
Prayer of St. Francis
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace:
where there is hatred, let me sow love;
where there is injury, pardon;
where there is doubt, faith;
where there is despair, hope;
where there is darkness, light;
where there is sadness, joy.
O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek
to be consoled as to console,
to be understood as to understand,
to be loved as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive,
it is in pardoning that we are pardoned,
and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life.