Disaster Strikes

I was almost ready to change from being a VISTA to go to a new opportunity when we received an invitation to visit Beth in Morarity for the Fourth of July. Heading out to her house, I looked at my reflection in the rear-view mirror. I can remember thinking to myself that I looked a lot like my mom. We toured Beth’s new house and Victor took me aside to say that there were a lot of missed calls from Reno. We went to his car and called my house. It was my brother telling me that my mom was in the morgue. At first I thought ‘what the hell was she doing there?’ Having been a nurse, I could not imagine her down there walking about. Then my brother said ‘she died’

I was glad we were in the car, because I screamed. We drove from Moriarity to San Jose where we were just in time. Father Garcia was headed out, but stopped when he saw the car. He sat with us as we prayed and figured out what our next steps would be

Victor and I made the plan to drive to Reno. It took us about 19 hours to make it and I didn’t remember any of it. When we got to my house, where just months earlier my mom had run out of the house saying “my baby’s here!”, I felt numb. We walked into the house and my dad was at the kitchen table crying. I had never seen him cry before.