‘Mom’s Nurse Called. It Was My Birthday. I Knew…’

“If my mother dies on my birthday, I’m going to kill her!”

That’s what I continually repeated aloud to myself, and quietly to a few select friends and relatives, as my mother’s life was coming to an end during the month of my 62nd birthday.

I had already lost my father seven months earlier, and my brother just four months before him—I was left barely standing at the precipice of an already painful year.

Lori Sokol’s mother on Valentiine’s Day, 2022

My mother had stopped eating and drinking for eight days, but her breathing continued, which confounded the hospice staff. “What’s keeping her alive?” they quizzically asked one another.

I knew the answer.

On the morning of July 20, 2022, just as I took the first bite of a raspberry cream birthday pastry that my daughter bought for me, my cell phone rang. Two fateful words, “Mom’s Nurse”, appeared on the home screen. I immediately showed it to my daughter while spitting out that barely-bitten piece of pastry.

Yes, I knew.

“Lori,” the nurse could barely get the words out. “Your mom, she….she…”

“She died,” I finished the sentence for her, “and on my birthday.”

“It’s your birthday?” the nurse replied, “Oh my god!”

To read more, click onto this link: Newsweek