Today, the 27th of October 2025 marks the 11th anniversary of the death of my mother, Kathryn Stevenson Cooper Wright. It’s hard to imagine that she has been gone that long, because I’m sure, it was just yesterday, we were eating grilled salmon with broccoli and salad while watching Jeopardy. It was our thing after her husband, Lewie, had passed away two years before.

As her first born, I always felt bonded in a different way than my siblings, and the fact that we shared a birthday – I was her 22nd celebratory present – only strengthened that tie.

We never know exactly when someone we love is going to leave us, and the empty space in the aftermath proves to be a valley so deep we aren’t sure if we can ever climb back to the top. I didn’t know my mother was about to have a heart attack. Her cardiologist had told her three days before that she was in great shape – come back and see him in six months. We had dinner that night, and she confirmed that he said she had years to go on her bypass arteries. I guess we aren’t ever really sure.

We shared our dinner that night, she reminded me of the DNRs taped to her refrigerator – just in case – she said. She’d been focused on making sure all of her ‘death ducks’ were in order. She’d put me on her checking account as a signatory and gone over Trust documents, although even she didn’t suspect what was about to happen. She had just adopted a cat, which to me meant a commitment to a much longer life.

She kissed me goodbye that night, her pale blue eyes shimmering, the softness of her 87-year-old lips on mine, told me she loved me and off I went home. My step-sister was with her the next day, and said that she was slower than ususal, but nothing really abnormal. Mom complained of indigestion – something she thought was from eating maybe bad fish at a local restaurant. When I inquired if she were felling okay, she said she thought she’d just take an antacid and go to bed.

She did. She didn’t get up.

When I couldn’t reach her by phone or text, I knew. I didn’t want to believe, drove like a maniac to her house, screaming NO NO NO at the top of my lungs all the way. The piled up newspapers out front or her gate slammed the last door on any hope of a different outcome.

I wasn’t ready for her to go. I don’t think I ever would have been. She wasn’t either, and yet, had I arrived ‘in time’ .. well, that’s all supposition, and then there were those DNRs, her choice about end of life and end of life care.

Eleven years feels like a light breeze rustling through maple leaves, hardly anything, and yet .. eleven years. there are no days when I do not miss her. There are no days when I do not ask her what I should do, what does she think, and by the way, Mom, I now live in Mexico. I can hear her laughing … I can feel her warm arms around me.

Time stands not still, and we don’t get to get them back. Not her, not my dad, not my brother. We trudge forward without our loved ones, our human frailty a battle of its own.

My own hands and face now mirror hers, the travel of years, the breadth of experiences. The gift of life that a mother gives her child.