My mother lost her battle with drug addiction 5 years ago today when she learned the hard way that pneumonia, COPD, and an eight ball of cocaine don't play nicely together.  She died the same way she lived her life; hard and brutal, and her death was a sentence I would not pass on my worst enemy.

I remember sitting in the hospital unable to do a thing as she panicked while every organ in her body failed.  She couldn't breathe because her lungs were filled with fluid; her heart was beating so fast and her blood pressure was so high that every blood vessel in her eyes ruptured.  She had turned this sickly yellow and she was foaming at the mouth; she was in such a panic that they had physically restrained her, and all the skin over her wrists was torn and bruised.  She was begging my uncle and me to either kill her or save her; she wasn't even coherent enough to make sense from one minute to the other.  It was absolutely the most horrible thing I have ever watched happen in my entire life.

When the doctor came, he took me aside and told me point blank: your mother is going to die, and she either dies like this, or you give me permission to force her into a coma so she can die in peace.  I didn't even have to think about signing the form, and I stood there while they administered the narcotics; her drug tolerance was so high that the amount they gave her would have killed a 200 pound man in less than 15 minutes, and even then it still took nearly two hours and two more doses before she finally slipped into the coma from which she would never wake up.

My mother was an enigma; there was no rhyme or reason as to why she was the way she was, other than she was just born that way.  She had never been a warm or loving person, and I was often told that even as a child, she could be cold and manipulative.  Addiction, depression and psychopathic behavior runs rampant in my family history, and these traits culminated in her...it was just one of those things.

Truth be known, my mother did have her better moments; she was an incredibly gifted artist, and something about my oldest daughter triggered a certain instinct in her that no one else did.  Furthermore, she was good for an entertaining instant or two.  I will never forget her and a big old tom turkey that I had; that thing just hated her, and he would wait for any opportunity to chase her.  One day she pulled up in my driveway, and I saw her looking for that turkey.  I knew right where he was; he liked to hide on the other side of the hedge by the side of my house.  But she didn't see him, so she figured it was safe to make it through the front door.  I just watched her out my kitchen window, because I knew...

Sure as shit, here he came.  My mother's eyes got wide as could be when she saw him, and she started flying up the ramp to my deck with that damn turkey right behind her, his head bright red, wings outstretched and flapping and tail feathers straight up in the air.  He's gobbling up a storm, and she's yelling, "Heather!  Get your goddamn turkey!!" 

And I'm of no help, because I was in my kitchen absolutely rolling. 

She finally made it in the house; she yelled at me and cussed at me, and the more she yelled and the more she cussed, the harder I laughed.  After about the 20th threat to turn him into Thanksgiving dinner, she finally calmed down, but it took her a good three days to get over being mad at me.  (Meanwhile, that crotchety thing paced up and down the deck in front of the door for the next hour, still all puffed up and gobbling every so often just to let her know he was waiting for her.  I was nice, though, and penned him before she left.)

She was also the one who helped me recover from a near fatal illness after my first child was born.  Eva was barely three weeks old when I collapsed one day from a massive E. coli infection which had settled in my kidneys and a staph infection in the c-section incision; either one on its own could have landed me in the hospital, but combined they were almost lethal, and I had been suffering from both since my daughter had been born (I had also had preeclampsia and had to undergo an emergency cesarean after 29 hours of labor, which left my immune system compromised).  She sat by my side in the hospital for three days helping care for my newborn daughter while they pumped me full of antibiotics, trying to save what was left of my kidneys.  (Glad to report that my kidneys are now fine.)

When she went into the hospital for the last time, we knew she was never going to be the same.  My uncle and I had spent the morning making arrangements for hospice and nursing care, as well as for her impending death (although we weren't expecting it to happen as quickly as it did; we thought a month, two at most).   My family has always died at home, and my mother was going to be no different - I was fully ready to take care of her for however long necessary.

Maybe this was her way of making sure I didn't have to.

I honestly think my mother knew she was close to the end of her life even before this last bout; about three weeks before she died, my youngest daughter, who had just barely turned a year, was trying to climb on her lap.  My mom picked her up and held her, then she said to me, "Do you think Isella will remember me when I'm gone?"  She then looked at my daughter and just smiled.  After a moment, she said, "No.  She will have no memory of me."  I didn't give those words much thought then, but have never forgotten them since.

So now, five years down the road, I still catch myself thinking about her, and, in a weird sort of way, missing her.  She had always considered herself a free spirit (although she also said she never figured out quite how to land), and there was nothing more fitting of that sentiment than when we released her ashes above the canyon, and the coldest wind I swear I have ever felt in my life caught them and sent them swirling through the air.  It was at that moment when I realized that all the demons who had tormented her all of her life were gone, and she was finally and truly free.