I was ten when Mom died after several increasingly severe heart attacks. She refused to participate in her own care—chain-smoking, ignoring her diet, and continuously drinking Kahlua and coffee. The fatal attack seized her as she retrieved mail from our box. Clancy, the neighbor, found Mom lying on the shoulder of the road; the EMTs arrived an hour late. She was thirty-four and two months’ pregnant, which remains a mystery. I pictured Mom’s panic as she died alone: the lifelong wound this scene sliced in me clotted since she’s never suffered disappointment at the kind of man I became.
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"Classic"
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