Processing the Trauma of My Mother’s Death

Everybody dies.

We are born, we live, we age, and eventually we die.

I don’t know exactly why I am writing this. Perhaps it is a need to rinse my soul—to push the images and feelings out of my mind and onto the page, to loosen the knot that has been tightening in my throat.

I cannot quite believe what I endured this week, or how I managed to endure it at all. Sobbing convulsively became a repeated event—many times a day, for several days in a row.

The heat, to which I have a severe hypersensitivity, caused me to collapse three times. I became dehydrated, my kidneys took a beating, my eyes swelled, and my legs ballooned until they looked like tree trunks.

Everybody dies.

My mother died.

I say the words, but they still do not feel real.

Just last week I was telling a friend how strong she was—healthy, energetic, dynamic. Then, the next day, everything changed. She had an accident, fell, fractured her femur, and was taken to the hospital.

I called the emergency department from Canada and spoke with her before her operation.

Afterward, I followed up with the doctors.

She is strong, they said.

But she was not.

From Canada, I continued to follow her case every day through video conferences with the medical team. I demanded to know everything—every procedure, every lab value, every change in her condition.

Then came the call.

She has spiraled down, they said.

“If there is a time for you to come down, the time is now.”

The urgency in his voice was unmistakable.

She had suffered a bronchospasm and had to be intubated. Then came infection, sepsis, metabolic dysfunction, hypernatremia, falling blood pressure. Her kidneys failed.

By then she had been unconscious for fourteen days.

They began dialysis as I boarded an emergency flight to Brazil.

She died while I was in the air, flying toward her, hoping I might still hold her hand in her final moments.

What came next was brutal.

The hospital required me to register the accident—the motorbike that struck her—at a  police department, immediately after she died. Communication here is often fragmented, and instructions are frequently contradictory, which ended up sending me to different police stations in town, and horrible environments. 

After hours spent at the police station, being grilled with endless interview questions about the accident — which I knew nothing about — I had to report to the coroner’s office—the Instituto Médico Legal—the next morning at 7:30 a.m.

I remained there for nearly six hours.

The place had a terrible energy.

Strange people arrived after me. Some were visibly ill, coughing and hacking. The gray concrete floors felt harsh and unwelcoming. The long wooden benches were worn and old. Sitting there, I had the eerie sensation that the sorrow of countless grieving families had seeped into the wood itself. 

Their ghostly energy leaned against me uncomfortably. It touched my soul without permission.

As the morning passed, the waiting room filled. People screamed openly about the brutal loss of their loved ones. At one point, I tried to console a mother who was wailing for the death of her teenage son.

There were forms to fill out, documents to present. Everything was handled with the cold efficiency of bureaucracy. Some of the employees behaved with a striking lack of sensitivity.

Finally, when the autopsy was completed, they called me to identify the body.

I expected something different. Something dignified.  Like in the movies: viewing through glass, a steel table, the body carefully prepared, covered with a white sheet, the face peaceful and composed.

How naive I was.

It was nothing like that. Not even close.

She was in the back of the building, in the parking area for the funerary vans. A few men stood nearby smoking and chatting casually.

My mother lay in a box.

Her body was wrapped in a black garbage bag, her face exposed. Her lips and chin were bloodied from the invasive necropsy. Her face was swollen. Purple bruising surrounded her eyes. Flies buzzed around her.

It’s not her. It can’t be.

My heart began racing, pounding so hard it seemed to strike the inside of my throat.

My hands started shaking.

I began to cry, speaking to her in English as Portuguese suddenly vanished from my mind.

Sorry, Mommy.

She had wanted to be cremated. But when the coroner becomes involved, cremation is forbidden. The body must be buried.

I fought desperately to change that, to obtain permission to honor her wish.

I was denied.

Sorry, Mommy.

In that moment I felt as if my soul were shattering into a million fragments.

Yet I had to keep moving forward.

But at that point, I was blindly following instructions from the funerary — get the death certificate, book the funeral immediately after, pay the costs.

Her funeral was scheduled for the following day. Funeral costs were extraordinarily high, and no one offered help with the expenses. I was forced to make difficult decisions quickly: keep it simple, keep it quiet—just the two of us.

A budget to live.

A budget to die.

At the cemetery office everything was strictly transactional. Contracts were placed in front of me to sign, payments to authorize.

As the minutes passed, my behavior became erratic—something I only recognized afterward. One moment I was grieving, the next angry. Then suddenly sarcastic. Then crying again, overwhelmed with sadness.

I believe I was in shock.

When they finally brought her coffin, I stepped outside. It was raining heavily, and there was no shelter.

I placed my hand on the coffin and spoke to her one last time.

Then something happened that stunned me.

The workers had to tow the coffin up a hill to reach her burial plot. Because of my disability, I was physically unable to walk uphill.

I stood there, leaning on my cane, watching.

The rain struck my face like cold shards as the realization sank in: I would not be able to accompany my mother to her final resting place.

I called out to them, asking if they had a golf cart that could take me up the hill.

They did not.

There were no accessibility options.

The rain soaked the cobblestones of the path, mirroring the tears streaming uncontrollably down my face. My sobs came in stuttering bursts as the rain and tears mingled, drenching my shaking body.

Pain surged through me, threatening to bring me to the ground. Still, I forced myself to remain standing, leaning heavily on my cane.

I watched the men who were carrying my mother’s coffin slowly climb the hill.

The guilt of not being able to accompany her pressed against my chest like a suffocating weight.

As they disappeared farther into the distance, my body finally began to collapse.

Some may say this sounds dramatic. I don’t care.

I am emotionally compromised. I am broken.

Yes, everybody dies. I knew that before.

I just didn’t know how broken the living could get witnessing that.