In the event that I am not paranoid.....

It’s quarter of one on a Thursday night. This headache woke me up. Naturally, I am afraid I’m having a stroke.

My mom died of a stroke. May, 1977. She and my dad were at a wedding rehearsal. They were attending because they were the assigned hosts for the wedding reception the following day. She came home with a headache, which, according to my dad (when you can coax the story out of him), became quite intense. She started vomiting and told Dad that she thought she was having a stroke. Appropriately, he thought she was drunk and told her to come to bed. She kept vomiting. He drove her to the hospital and she threw up in the car which, according to my dad, really upset her. I am sure she wasn’t exactly rational at that moment.

My dad says the last thing she said to him was “take care of the kids”. Then she arrested in the ER. Charlie Comstock, the doctor, did not know what was going on so he revived her with those shock paddles.

“Clear”.

Her heart started beating again. But she was gone.


This is my secret nightmare that occasionally keeps me up at night. I haven’t worried about it for a long, long time. I passed the age she had the stroke (33), and then the age when my dad stopped intubating her and she died (34). I don’t smoke (my mom loved her Tarryington 100’s). I exercise (she did not exercise; she ate poorly (and little of it); she sat in the sun, smoking cigarettes).


But tonight, I am sitting in my kitchen, convinced that this is the last train from Terrapin Station. My head hurts so much that my entire skull is throbbing. I am remembering earlier tonight when I was sitting on my knees in the kitchen and got up and nearly passed out. I thought it was my husband’s bad cooking. Now I am convinced that it was a blood clot in my leg that has now passed to my brain. I am actually breaking out in a sweat from the pain.


If I am dead in the morning, please tell my children that I lived for them. I loved them more than my life and it is they who I am obsessively thinking about right now. Please help them when they are sad, and confused and depressed and taking their life in their own hands because they have lost themselves. Please hug them a lot like they were your own children.


Please help my husband. He doesn’t know how to balance the checkbook. He will drink too much. He will sweat the small stuff. Remind him to be gentle with himself and with the kids. Remind him gently to make the kids his top priority. Don’t let him get married until the children are in college. Remind him to stay away from insecure Catholic girls who are not yet parents - at all costs. His children will be healthier for it. Please, trust me on this.


I love you bubs.