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MY MOTHER’S DYINGwish was for me to take a vacation.
“Just do it, okay?” she’d said, tucking a lock of hair behind my ear. “Just book a trip and go. Like normal people do.”
I hadn’t taken a vacation in eight years.
But I’d said, “Okay,” the way you do when your sick mom asks for something. Then I’d added, as if we were negotiating, “I’ll take one vacation.”
Of course, I hadn’t realized it was her dying wish at the time. I thought we were just making middle-of-the-night hospital conversation.
But then, suddenly, it was the night after her funeral. I couldn’t sleep, and I kept thrashing around in my bed, and that moment kept coming back to me. The way she’d held my gaze and squeezed my hand to seal the deal—as if taking a vacation could be something that mattered.
Now it was three in the morning. My funeral clothes were draped over a chair. I’d been waiting to fall asleep since midnight.
“Fine. Fine,” I said, out loud in bed, to no one.
Then I belly-crawled across the covers to find my laptop on the floor, and, in the blue light of the screen, eyes half-closed, I did a quick search for “cheapest plane ticket to anywhere,” found a site that had a list of nonstop destinations for seventy-six dollars, scrolled like I was playing roulette, landed randomly on Toledo, Ohio—and clicked “purchase.”
Two tickets to Toledo. Nonrefundable, it would turn out. Some kind of Valentine’s Day lovebirds package.
Done.
Promise fulfilled.
The whole process took less than a minute.
Now all I had to do was force myself to go.
BUT I STILLcouldn’t sleep.
At five in the morning, just as the sky was starting to lighten, I gave up, dragged all my sheets and blankets off the bed, shuffled to the walk-in closet, curled up on my side in a makeshift nest on the floor, and conked out, at last, in the windowless darkness.
When I woke, it was four in the afternoon.
I jumped up in a panic and stumbled around my room—buttoning my shirt wrong and kicking my shin on the footboard—as if I were late for work.
I wasn’t late for work, though.
My boss, Glenn, had told me not to come in. Had forbidden me to come in, actually. For a week.
“Don’t even think about coming to work,” he’d said. “Just stay home and grieve.”
Stay home? And grieve?
No way was I doing that.
Especially since—now that I’d bought these tickets to Toledo—I needed to find my boyfriend, Robby, and force him to come with me.
Right?
Nobody goes to Toledo alone. Especially not for Valentine’s Day.
It all seemed very urgent in the moment.
In another state of mind, I could have simply texted Robby to stop by after work and just pleasantly invited him to come with me. Over dinner and drinks. Like a sane person.
Maybe that would have been a better plan.
