The Long Goodbye:
An Affair of the Heart
By Amy Greenberg
April 15, 2023
April 15, 2023
I envy people with memories because, for the most part, I don’t have any. When I look back upon my childhood, young adult life, and life after youth, most of the images I’m able to retrieve are shadowy snippets that tell me I have lived. That’s it. My therapists theorize that this huge emptiness is a side effect of growing up in an emotionally violent home. But here’s the thing. I can remember, albeit with lots of gaps and blurry stuff, my mother’s experiences with Alzheimer’s and the role I played in her long goodbye. This is our story, an affair of the heart.
It was a sunny spring afternoon in New York City. I was calling my brother from a phone booth in lower Manhattan, having just seen my psychiatrist whose office was near the World Trade Center. When my brother answered, out popped words that had been trapped inside my brain for weeks, waiting for just the right moment to turn our lives upside down. “I think mom has Alzheimer’s.”
I’d been secretly making a list of her symptoms and it was getting longer. She’d stopped balancing the family check book and no longer paid the bills. She was confused about time. She had difficulty maintaining a conversation. A retired registered nurse, she aborted her search for volunteer work, which she’d been so excited about, practically before it began. My brother spoke to our father who took her to a neurologist. Diagnosis: Alzheimer’s disease. Life would become different and difficult. My mother would get sicker and sicker until she became a human statue, unresponsive to love, language, and the joys of living.
My mother and I had always had a weird relationship, poisoned by my father’s terrifying and lifelong habit of breaking into a screaming rage when crossed or frustrated. My mother was afraid of him and, when he had one of his sudden outbursts, she would hide in their bedroom, door closed, and cry. Then she would call out to me and I’d go in and hold her, feeling the intensity of her sobs in my own body. I was a good girl and felt compelled to comfort her, never voicing my own fear, the sense I had of being swallowed whole by my father’s insatiable need for attention and control. For most of my life, my father forced us into this dangerously symbiotic dynamic in which I was her rescuer, her shield. She was the victim. Unprotected from the damage my father’s chronic emotional violence spawned, I resented her for years and years – and yet always loved her.
When Alzheimer’s entered our lives when my mother was 77, it changed everything. In the midst of grief and shock and fear, I sensed that life was giving me an opportunity: to find something beautiful and life affirming inside the pain. To find blessings inside the long goodbye which we would face together. I knew I had a choice. I could be the person I wanted to be –steady, strong, free of resentment. Or I could punish my father – and her -- by walking away and leaving him to bear the brunt of my mother’s illness. I chose to be an integral part of her experience, calling on all of my years in therapy, my inborn resilience, and my desire to feel her love unfettered by past grievances. Alzheimer’s brought me to this place of selflessness and compassion.
(At about this time, my father was diagnosed with malignant narcissistic personality disorder characterized by extreme grandiosity, an intense need for admiration, an absence of empathy, an antisocial personality, and paranoia. It was untreatable.)
For the first three years after her diagnosis, my mother lived at home with my father and a part-time aide. At some point, he decided to take one weekend a month away, perhaps a road trip to snap landscape photos or visit his beloved older sister in Pennsylvania. My brother and I split these weekends to care for our mother. He came on Friday night and I relieved him on Saturday afternoon, staying overnight until my father returned.
This time with my mother was magical and, as it turns out, unforgettable. While we slept in separate rooms, I always slept with one eye open, alert to when she used the bathroom or got some water. In the morning, I’d get into bed with her and we’d cuddle. I’d ask for advice about my love life, and, while her responses were simple, she had a way of drilling down to the essence of things. “There are plenty of fish in the sea.” Wink. Wink. A lifelong Democrat, she loved when I’d say mean things about rich white Republicans, especially golfers in pink-and-green plaid pants who played in the golf tournaments. I could be quite snarky and the snarkier I was the more she laughed.
Then there were our neighborhood adventures. One of our favorites was a field trip to the Shop Rite supermarket a block away from my parents’ Brooklyn apartment. We never bought anything; the aide always kept the fridge well stocked. We were there to observe, explore, and discuss the colorful fruits and vegetables stocked in plentitude; ruby red grapes, rock hard peaches, curly dark green kale, and cheerfully yellow bananas. “What’s this,” I’d ask, holding up a grapefruit. “Um, a grapefruit.” “What’s this,” I’d ask, holding up an ear of corn. “Um, corn?” Yes! I was so relieved she could still come up with the right words and that she seemed happy. My mother especially loved cruising the canned food aisles, peering at the labels, pointing out things she liked to eat: canned apricots, canned peas, canned tuna. Canned this. Canned that. We’d laugh our heads off like two conspiratorial little girls behaving badly in public. Perhaps the long goodbye wouldn’t be so terrible after all.
After our field trip, we’d take a walk to Sheepshead Bay Road, the nexus of the neighborhood and inhabited by, among other retailers, an Army/Navy store, a Woolworth, and a coffee shop with a huge soda fountain upfront. Our destination: the Chinese restaurant where, upon entering, my mother would scope out the tables and head straight for the one with the most people, especially if there were children. She’d start talking about her work as a visiting nurse. She’d go on and on while patting the backs of diners with puzzled faces and petting the heads of the kids who looked up at her in awe. She did not know any of these people.
At first I was embarrassed for her and by her. The Alzheimer’s had removed my mother’s sense of common social norms: you don’t just barge in on people’s dinner, especially if you’re not acquainted. And you don’t tell your nursing career story to a captive audience too polite to send you on your way. But, after a month or so, I realized I could choose to be proud of her. My mother was loving, sweet, and friendly and, each time she embarked on her nursing monologue, I saw her audience move from confusion to realization to kindness, listening and smiling until I gently pried her away. Then we’d sit at our table, I’d explain the menu, and she’d flirt with the waiters. My mother’s true nature had emerged. Unplugged from the past, it was beautiful.
During this early time in her illness, I began to feel connected to my mother in ways that overcame the sick bond my father’s unhinged anger created between us. I was taking care of her; she was taking care of me. She was no longer the victim; I was no longer her protector. Laughing about our silly secrets passed back and forth on a cozy Saturday night, we created a safe place to be together. There was no fear, only an intimate sharing of ourselves, each in her own way.
There was, of course, a parallel process informing this new and unfettered relationship. A process that I couldn’t deny or change: the continuing decline in my mother’s cognitive and physical capabilities. She was increasingly limited in her thinking and language, dependent on others for nearly everything. Then there came a time when she stopped talking about her nursing career which she loved passionately and which allowed her to maintain a sense of identity and self-worth. Alzheimer’s was relentlessly eroding her innate personhood and she became dimmer, as if walking backwards into the mist of night and I couldn’t stop her. My mother was fading and I had to keep adjusting. Wow, she can’t brush her teeth. Oh, she doesn’t recognize the breakfast I offer her one morning in spring. And when, as we snuggled together, she turns to me and asks, “Are you Amy?” Our long goodbye was taking on a new dimension filled with more frequent reminders of loss.
As time passed it was harder for my father and the aide to care for her. (He couldn’t tolerate 24-hour help; that would invade his privacy, he told us.) It was time to think about a nursing home. (Now these places are called “memory care residences.”) I volunteered to arrange visits to several places in Brooklyn and on a beautiful fall weekend my father, brother, and I visited three of them. Although the one in Brooklyn Heights had a charming old-world elegance, it would be too far a drive for my father. We settled on the one five minutes from my parents’ apartment. My father could easily visit.
The home’s administrator told us that beds were vacated suddenly (that had a macabre feel to it) and, with demand high, we’d get a last-minute call when one was available. When that call came, we’d have to hop to it and get my mother there ASAP. “Or,” as the administrator said, rather sternly, “the bed will go to someone else.” My father packed my mother’s bag with everything she’d need but didn’t tell her what was coming. We waited for the call. My brother, my father, and me. We waited some more and then, on a Friday morning, it came. The administrator informed my father that a bed was available and, if he still wanted it, he’d have to bring her in first thing the next morning. The hoped for, but sudden, invitation felt shattering. We’d have little time to prepare ourselves for the Saturday hand off. Making things worse, my father refused to prepare my mother for what was coming. Was he planning a dump and run? Was this a form of cowardice? Or did he not understand that my mother would notice?
And then the worst day of my life happened. That Saturday morning my brother, his wife, my father, mother, and I got into my brother’s Cadillac My father announced that we were going for a drive and I can still remember how heartsick I felt as I observed my mother’s smiles and giggles. She felt safe with the people she loved. But she wasn’t safe. Because we were traitors and liars leading a lamb to slaughter. That’s exactly how I felt. And how I feel to this day.
Upon arrival, we put her bag in her room and met her roommate, a cheerful woman with a happy laugh and a hug for my mother. An aide then escorted her to the dining room for lunch. I told her that the rest of us were going to the diner across the street and would be back soon. And I will never, ever forget her saying, over and over, “I want to go home.” “I want to go home to 3025 Ocean Avenue.” “I want to go home. Please.”
And it fell upon me to say this terrible thing. “Mommy, this is your home now.” I left to have a meal with my family and, once again, I’m able to remember the details. The revolting Chef’s Salad. The ham, cheese, and tomatoes tasted rotten and, as I tried to eat, it was too easy to see the nursing home across the street. I couldn’t take it. Not one minute more. Being separated from her. Knowing how frightened she must be. Knowing what a horrible thing we had conspired to do.
Running across Nostrand Avenue and into the building, I bumped into the home’s social worker. I threw myself into her arms and, sobbing, told her we were making an awful, awful mistake. She comforted me and did the only thing she could: brought me to see my mother. Another searing memory: my mother, a little old lady, staring down at her plate, surrounded by the other residents, lost in space. Alone. Abandoned. Calling her name, I saw her look up at me and her smile, oh, how her smile burned me with grief and regret. I sat with her, petted her, and kissed her hand. I said, “I love you, mommy.” And I clearly recall her saying, “You are my precious one.”
And so began the final and hardest steps of the long goodbye: watching my mother’s decline; fighting to be the person I wanted to be; fighting to accept the inevitable. Constantly seeking the bright spots, I tried to fool myself into thinking, “it’s not as bad as it seems.” But, of course, it was. In consultation with my brother, I decided to visit my mother every other Sunday, taking time off only if I was ill or on vacation. No excuses., I told my brother to tell our father, in no uncertain terms, that he was not to show up on my Sundays. Unless it was Mother’s Day. For seven years, I visited my mother faithfully and, except for seven Mother’s Days, never once ran into him. My father’s absence was a beautiful thing. I had agency in our relationship and I felt powerful.
It still amazes me that I remember so many tidbits from those nursing home years. How, during my visits, my mother rarely took her eyes off me. If she was sitting in her wheelchair, she’d gaze up at me and I’d feel that she loved me and adored me. I felt this deep in my body, warming me, melting those places in my heart where I felt frozen. Yes, she’d failed to protect me from my father’s terrifying rages, but she’d been unequipped to do so. And through the awful journey that is Alzheimer’s, we were connected heart to heart. Mother and daughter. We were in love with each other.
Every Sunday I took my mother for a wheelchair walk around the neighborhood. We’d go to a nearby park, situated on the grounds of a housing project, and I’d call to the children playing nearby, “come say hello to my mother. She wants to meet you!” And the little kids would gather around her wheelchair, likely mystified by the many deep wrinkles in her cheeks and forehead. By how old she looked. By her smile. By her blue-eyed, blonde whiteness. By how tiny she was: old age had knocked off a couple of inches and she was less than five feet tall. And by how she looked at them. Adoringly. They were getting a little bit of what she’d been giving me. Unconditional love.
One day, I parked her wheelchair at a bench in the park, away from the kids so we could have some quiet time together. I remember her taking my hand, holding it to her lips, kissing it, and whispering, “We are together as one.” An elderly gentleman had been observing us and, as he passed, he leaned over and said to me, “there’s a special place in heaven for you.” I never forgot his words and, in that moment, I knew that I had become the person I’d wanted to be.
My mother died peacefully in her sleep one cold December morning. She was 87. I got the call at 5:30 am from the nursing home’s administrator. “Miss Greenberg, I am sorry to inform you that your mother has expired.” For a few moments I didn’t grasp what she was saying. Expired? My driver’s license expired? My subscription to New York Magazine expired? No, my mother expired. She’d died and I had to get to her as soon as I could.
“Don’t move her. Don’t let anybody from the funeral home take her. I’m coming. I’m coming.” Calling a car service – no Ubers back then – and I was back in Brooklyn in 30 minutes. A nurse took me to the room where she was laid out, naked under a sheet. The room was air conditioned in winter, which confused me. And then I understood why. I’m sure I don’t have to explain. I remember wanting desperately to kiss her and touch her skin, but I was afraid that, if I did, I’d break her. Imagine that. So I sat with her for as long as it took for the funeral home to send a guy with a gurney to take her away. When he arrived, I told him that, “no, I will not take a cab to the funeral home. I’ll ride up front in your truck with you.” I would not let her be alone.
Our remarkable time together had come to an end and I cried. To this day, I cry when I remember how she had seen me, loved me, was proud of me. But I am all right because I carry her with me forever. The long goodbye changed my life and gave me memories. I have lived and I am grateful.
It was a sunny spring afternoon in New York City. I was calling my brother from a phone booth in lower Manhattan, having just seen my psychiatrist whose office was near the World Trade Center. When my brother answered, out popped words that had been trapped inside my brain for weeks, waiting for just the right moment to turn our lives upside down. “I think mom has Alzheimer’s.”
I’d been secretly making a list of her symptoms and it was getting longer. She’d stopped balancing the family check book and no longer paid the bills. She was confused about time. She had difficulty maintaining a conversation. A retired registered nurse, she aborted her search for volunteer work, which she’d been so excited about, practically before it began. My brother spoke to our father who took her to a neurologist. Diagnosis: Alzheimer’s disease. Life would become different and difficult. My mother would get sicker and sicker until she became a human statue, unresponsive to love, language, and the joys of living.
My mother and I had always had a weird relationship, poisoned by my father’s terrifying and lifelong habit of breaking into a screaming rage when crossed or frustrated. My mother was afraid of him and, when he had one of his sudden outbursts, she would hide in their bedroom, door closed, and cry. Then she would call out to me and I’d go in and hold her, feeling the intensity of her sobs in my own body. I was a good girl and felt compelled to comfort her, never voicing my own fear, the sense I had of being swallowed whole by my father’s insatiable need for attention and control. For most of my life, my father forced us into this dangerously symbiotic dynamic in which I was her rescuer, her shield. She was the victim. Unprotected from the damage my father’s chronic emotional violence spawned, I resented her for years and years – and yet always loved her.
When Alzheimer’s entered our lives when my mother was 77, it changed everything. In the midst of grief and shock and fear, I sensed that life was giving me an opportunity: to find something beautiful and life affirming inside the pain. To find blessings inside the long goodbye which we would face together. I knew I had a choice. I could be the person I wanted to be –steady, strong, free of resentment. Or I could punish my father – and her -- by walking away and leaving him to bear the brunt of my mother’s illness. I chose to be an integral part of her experience, calling on all of my years in therapy, my inborn resilience, and my desire to feel her love unfettered by past grievances. Alzheimer’s brought me to this place of selflessness and compassion.
(At about this time, my father was diagnosed with malignant narcissistic personality disorder characterized by extreme grandiosity, an intense need for admiration, an absence of empathy, an antisocial personality, and paranoia. It was untreatable.)
For the first three years after her diagnosis, my mother lived at home with my father and a part-time aide. At some point, he decided to take one weekend a month away, perhaps a road trip to snap landscape photos or visit his beloved older sister in Pennsylvania. My brother and I split these weekends to care for our mother. He came on Friday night and I relieved him on Saturday afternoon, staying overnight until my father returned.
This time with my mother was magical and, as it turns out, unforgettable. While we slept in separate rooms, I always slept with one eye open, alert to when she used the bathroom or got some water. In the morning, I’d get into bed with her and we’d cuddle. I’d ask for advice about my love life, and, while her responses were simple, she had a way of drilling down to the essence of things. “There are plenty of fish in the sea.” Wink. Wink. A lifelong Democrat, she loved when I’d say mean things about rich white Republicans, especially golfers in pink-and-green plaid pants who played in the golf tournaments. I could be quite snarky and the snarkier I was the more she laughed.
Then there were our neighborhood adventures. One of our favorites was a field trip to the Shop Rite supermarket a block away from my parents’ Brooklyn apartment. We never bought anything; the aide always kept the fridge well stocked. We were there to observe, explore, and discuss the colorful fruits and vegetables stocked in plentitude; ruby red grapes, rock hard peaches, curly dark green kale, and cheerfully yellow bananas. “What’s this,” I’d ask, holding up a grapefruit. “Um, a grapefruit.” “What’s this,” I’d ask, holding up an ear of corn. “Um, corn?” Yes! I was so relieved she could still come up with the right words and that she seemed happy. My mother especially loved cruising the canned food aisles, peering at the labels, pointing out things she liked to eat: canned apricots, canned peas, canned tuna. Canned this. Canned that. We’d laugh our heads off like two conspiratorial little girls behaving badly in public. Perhaps the long goodbye wouldn’t be so terrible after all.
After our field trip, we’d take a walk to Sheepshead Bay Road, the nexus of the neighborhood and inhabited by, among other retailers, an Army/Navy store, a Woolworth, and a coffee shop with a huge soda fountain upfront. Our destination: the Chinese restaurant where, upon entering, my mother would scope out the tables and head straight for the one with the most people, especially if there were children. She’d start talking about her work as a visiting nurse. She’d go on and on while patting the backs of diners with puzzled faces and petting the heads of the kids who looked up at her in awe. She did not know any of these people.
At first I was embarrassed for her and by her. The Alzheimer’s had removed my mother’s sense of common social norms: you don’t just barge in on people’s dinner, especially if you’re not acquainted. And you don’t tell your nursing career story to a captive audience too polite to send you on your way. But, after a month or so, I realized I could choose to be proud of her. My mother was loving, sweet, and friendly and, each time she embarked on her nursing monologue, I saw her audience move from confusion to realization to kindness, listening and smiling until I gently pried her away. Then we’d sit at our table, I’d explain the menu, and she’d flirt with the waiters. My mother’s true nature had emerged. Unplugged from the past, it was beautiful.
During this early time in her illness, I began to feel connected to my mother in ways that overcame the sick bond my father’s unhinged anger created between us. I was taking care of her; she was taking care of me. She was no longer the victim; I was no longer her protector. Laughing about our silly secrets passed back and forth on a cozy Saturday night, we created a safe place to be together. There was no fear, only an intimate sharing of ourselves, each in her own way.
There was, of course, a parallel process informing this new and unfettered relationship. A process that I couldn’t deny or change: the continuing decline in my mother’s cognitive and physical capabilities. She was increasingly limited in her thinking and language, dependent on others for nearly everything. Then there came a time when she stopped talking about her nursing career which she loved passionately and which allowed her to maintain a sense of identity and self-worth. Alzheimer’s was relentlessly eroding her innate personhood and she became dimmer, as if walking backwards into the mist of night and I couldn’t stop her. My mother was fading and I had to keep adjusting. Wow, she can’t brush her teeth. Oh, she doesn’t recognize the breakfast I offer her one morning in spring. And when, as we snuggled together, she turns to me and asks, “Are you Amy?” Our long goodbye was taking on a new dimension filled with more frequent reminders of loss.
As time passed it was harder for my father and the aide to care for her. (He couldn’t tolerate 24-hour help; that would invade his privacy, he told us.) It was time to think about a nursing home. (Now these places are called “memory care residences.”) I volunteered to arrange visits to several places in Brooklyn and on a beautiful fall weekend my father, brother, and I visited three of them. Although the one in Brooklyn Heights had a charming old-world elegance, it would be too far a drive for my father. We settled on the one five minutes from my parents’ apartment. My father could easily visit.
The home’s administrator told us that beds were vacated suddenly (that had a macabre feel to it) and, with demand high, we’d get a last-minute call when one was available. When that call came, we’d have to hop to it and get my mother there ASAP. “Or,” as the administrator said, rather sternly, “the bed will go to someone else.” My father packed my mother’s bag with everything she’d need but didn’t tell her what was coming. We waited for the call. My brother, my father, and me. We waited some more and then, on a Friday morning, it came. The administrator informed my father that a bed was available and, if he still wanted it, he’d have to bring her in first thing the next morning. The hoped for, but sudden, invitation felt shattering. We’d have little time to prepare ourselves for the Saturday hand off. Making things worse, my father refused to prepare my mother for what was coming. Was he planning a dump and run? Was this a form of cowardice? Or did he not understand that my mother would notice?
And then the worst day of my life happened. That Saturday morning my brother, his wife, my father, mother, and I got into my brother’s Cadillac My father announced that we were going for a drive and I can still remember how heartsick I felt as I observed my mother’s smiles and giggles. She felt safe with the people she loved. But she wasn’t safe. Because we were traitors and liars leading a lamb to slaughter. That’s exactly how I felt. And how I feel to this day.
Upon arrival, we put her bag in her room and met her roommate, a cheerful woman with a happy laugh and a hug for my mother. An aide then escorted her to the dining room for lunch. I told her that the rest of us were going to the diner across the street and would be back soon. And I will never, ever forget her saying, over and over, “I want to go home.” “I want to go home to 3025 Ocean Avenue.” “I want to go home. Please.”
And it fell upon me to say this terrible thing. “Mommy, this is your home now.” I left to have a meal with my family and, once again, I’m able to remember the details. The revolting Chef’s Salad. The ham, cheese, and tomatoes tasted rotten and, as I tried to eat, it was too easy to see the nursing home across the street. I couldn’t take it. Not one minute more. Being separated from her. Knowing how frightened she must be. Knowing what a horrible thing we had conspired to do.
Running across Nostrand Avenue and into the building, I bumped into the home’s social worker. I threw myself into her arms and, sobbing, told her we were making an awful, awful mistake. She comforted me and did the only thing she could: brought me to see my mother. Another searing memory: my mother, a little old lady, staring down at her plate, surrounded by the other residents, lost in space. Alone. Abandoned. Calling her name, I saw her look up at me and her smile, oh, how her smile burned me with grief and regret. I sat with her, petted her, and kissed her hand. I said, “I love you, mommy.” And I clearly recall her saying, “You are my precious one.”
And so began the final and hardest steps of the long goodbye: watching my mother’s decline; fighting to be the person I wanted to be; fighting to accept the inevitable. Constantly seeking the bright spots, I tried to fool myself into thinking, “it’s not as bad as it seems.” But, of course, it was. In consultation with my brother, I decided to visit my mother every other Sunday, taking time off only if I was ill or on vacation. No excuses., I told my brother to tell our father, in no uncertain terms, that he was not to show up on my Sundays. Unless it was Mother’s Day. For seven years, I visited my mother faithfully and, except for seven Mother’s Days, never once ran into him. My father’s absence was a beautiful thing. I had agency in our relationship and I felt powerful.
It still amazes me that I remember so many tidbits from those nursing home years. How, during my visits, my mother rarely took her eyes off me. If she was sitting in her wheelchair, she’d gaze up at me and I’d feel that she loved me and adored me. I felt this deep in my body, warming me, melting those places in my heart where I felt frozen. Yes, she’d failed to protect me from my father’s terrifying rages, but she’d been unequipped to do so. And through the awful journey that is Alzheimer’s, we were connected heart to heart. Mother and daughter. We were in love with each other.
Every Sunday I took my mother for a wheelchair walk around the neighborhood. We’d go to a nearby park, situated on the grounds of a housing project, and I’d call to the children playing nearby, “come say hello to my mother. She wants to meet you!” And the little kids would gather around her wheelchair, likely mystified by the many deep wrinkles in her cheeks and forehead. By how old she looked. By her smile. By her blue-eyed, blonde whiteness. By how tiny she was: old age had knocked off a couple of inches and she was less than five feet tall. And by how she looked at them. Adoringly. They were getting a little bit of what she’d been giving me. Unconditional love.
One day, I parked her wheelchair at a bench in the park, away from the kids so we could have some quiet time together. I remember her taking my hand, holding it to her lips, kissing it, and whispering, “We are together as one.” An elderly gentleman had been observing us and, as he passed, he leaned over and said to me, “there’s a special place in heaven for you.” I never forgot his words and, in that moment, I knew that I had become the person I’d wanted to be.
My mother died peacefully in her sleep one cold December morning. She was 87. I got the call at 5:30 am from the nursing home’s administrator. “Miss Greenberg, I am sorry to inform you that your mother has expired.” For a few moments I didn’t grasp what she was saying. Expired? My driver’s license expired? My subscription to New York Magazine expired? No, my mother expired. She’d died and I had to get to her as soon as I could.
“Don’t move her. Don’t let anybody from the funeral home take her. I’m coming. I’m coming.” Calling a car service – no Ubers back then – and I was back in Brooklyn in 30 minutes. A nurse took me to the room where she was laid out, naked under a sheet. The room was air conditioned in winter, which confused me. And then I understood why. I’m sure I don’t have to explain. I remember wanting desperately to kiss her and touch her skin, but I was afraid that, if I did, I’d break her. Imagine that. So I sat with her for as long as it took for the funeral home to send a guy with a gurney to take her away. When he arrived, I told him that, “no, I will not take a cab to the funeral home. I’ll ride up front in your truck with you.” I would not let her be alone.
Our remarkable time together had come to an end and I cried. To this day, I cry when I remember how she had seen me, loved me, was proud of me. But I am all right because I carry her with me forever. The long goodbye changed my life and gave me memories. I have lived and I am grateful.
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Amy Greenberg is an educator working with young special needs children as well as a humor and inspiration blogger. She has also earned her living as an actor, acting teacher, and public relations expert. A mental illness survivor, Amy writes about her experiences with a difficult diagnosis, often using dark humor and parody to lighten the mood. A native New Yorker transplanted to suburbia for love, Amy is married to artist Don Perley and the proud mother of Fluffypuss and Peekaboo.
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