it took me a while to write this, to come up with what to say...

One could say I still don't have the words, but here we are.

I sat here for a...while. Wondered, Where do I even start? and How do I even start?

Well. I guess from the beginning. Where I got the phone call from Bon Secours and the very bored sounding receptionist or whatever left a voicemail asking for me by my (dead) name saying to call him back at the number he rattled off. Which I didn't. Because I am not the medical affairs person, the emergency contact person for this woman I've cut out of my life 124 days ago. I even held the screen up to Theresa to show her. Why are these people calling me?

So I texted my brother. I got a response I didn't expect, and quite frankly who could've expected this anyway?

"She was in a fire. They don't expect her to make it."

A fire? Like, flames and smoke and singed objects? That kind of fire? I was thinking "house fire", especially since Egg had talked about wanting to set the house on fire on more than one occasion. I thought, Maybe she actually did it. There would be a news article or something on the Whatnots about it. So I had my wife check the Whatnots, and the different fire call FB pages for that area, like Orange County NY Fire Calls and Orange and Rockland Fire. And sure enough, written on Orange County NY Fire Calls was the following:

City of Port Jervis Fire | Person on Fire on the Sidewalk | New St
21:18
OCFC 1

I immediately said nothing as I stared at my phone.
Speechless.
What do you even say?
There were no tears, there was nothing.
I've already grieved for the mother I should've had and deserved. I've already grieved this woman and the fact that she could never find it in her to be those things to me.
But I'd be lying if I said I felt anything, because I don't. All I feel is a numbness with the teensiest tiniest bit of guilt. Guilt at leaving, at walking away from her.

Maybe part of me was expecting to get news like this. News that she's more or less dying. I especially expected it after I found out that she was now partially blind. But I wasn't expecting fire to ever be part of this equation. What I suspect is self-immolation. But I don't know. I wasn't there and who knows what they even suspect. She was on fire, I guess she wandered out of the house screaming because fire hurts and hurts bad, and one of the neighbours heard and called it in. That's just what I'm assuming.

I don't have any idea what to feel. Or even write. What do you, in this situation, jot down in the form of letters that eventually become words and those words become sentences? I don't know. I don't have it in me to cry. Like I said, I grieved this person before she was even dead, and that person wasn't even Egg.

Grief involves love that now has nowhere to go but I don't have love for her. It's indifference. And that might be why I don't have much to say and no tears to shed. How can you love someone who already abandoned you long ago in all the ways that you needed someone there? Whenever I needed a mom, I never had one. I had friends' moms, but I personally didn't have one, just this nasty, horrible woman who called herself by a title she didn't earn.

I have a missed call from Rob because my phone is on Do Not Disturb from midnight until 730a. But I did get a text that they're transferring her to a different hospital. Part of me wonders why but I guess they have to try and say they did everything they could. I just want this whole fucking thing over and done with. I hope she's disinherited me so I don't have to deal with anything. Because I don't want to deal with her fucking bullshit.

there is no point in doing further transcripts or listening to more audio

As of 17:48 today my mother is gone.

Whatever demons were in her head are now no more. Whatever fucked up reality she'd constructed is gone. I wish I could say that I didn't see this coming, because I did. I saw how it would happen coming like a freight train speeding down the tracks. A crash, a derailment, all inevitable.
I did not see the method by which she left this earth coming, and I am going to always have questions about that. I wouldn't wish this on my worst enemy.

How am I coping? Like I did when I lost my dad—lost in some kind of fog I can somehow still see through, like condensation on glass. Because as awful as she was towards me and my wife, especially towards the end, it's still a life lost and a life that didn't necessarily have to come to an end—especially the way it did. I never saw myself being an adult orphan before the age of 35 but here I am. I guess if we want to be really honest, one could say I never saw myself being fatherless at 10 either.

Because yes, I've seen the news articles. I've seen the social media group posts and shares. I've read the comments where people have put laughing with tears emojis in response to the news. Says a lot about you 😂ing about how someone's loved one was on fire. May you have the life you deserve!

I don't really know what to say. There aren't any answers as to how anything happened. Hopefully there will be answers when we go to the house.