Leaving on a jet plane...

Today my mother boards a plane to beautiful, sunny, vacation-esque Puerto Rico. I wait for her call tonight with a heavy heart, knowing that while many years ago we used to board that plane with beaches and coconut drinks on our minds, my mother is going to watch her sister die.

My fingers sit on this keyboard and I can't even think of any words to say…

Her flight will be seven hours long, a trip that usually takes three hours from here, but there are two layovers. One is in Newark, where another one of my aunts will be joining my mother on the plane.

They are the last two to join the bunch already there…except of course for the one aunt that LEFT the island on a vacation…

 

I went to my mother's house last night so she could see the babies before she left, and I wanted to cry because I saw the way she hugged them a little longer. She too knows that someday everyone will have to make this trip for her…"when you get older it's what you think about." She said to me. I think about it now…I wanted to say to her. But I just nodded.

 

She will be back in two weeks. By then I imagine that they would have already cremated my aunt (her wishes) and my mother will return to her normal routine, minus the daily phone calls to her dear sister. The phone calls actually stopped once they put her into the coma…but now there won't even be the 'checking in' phone calls to the hospital…

 

My mother says it would be better for her to pass on already instead of be in this pain, she says it's better for her to watch us from the sky instead of through the haze she sees everyone through now. What a great way to see things…but who wants to let anyone go, really?