LORRAINE VINCENT-CACIOPPO (May 12, 1947 - February 15, 2026) (8/24/26 ADDENDUMS)

SIX MONTHS LATER:

Normal things are very upsetting when the new context is never again.

- Patrick Kindlon (“Lecture Me”, Do Not Siege Walled Cities. 6/25/26)

In February, my mother Lorraine went in for surgery to clean out her carotid artery; an elective procedure intended to prevent a stroke, as she was something like ninety-percent clogged. Hours later, a rush of blood surged through the newly cleaned artery to sit on half of her brain, causing a stroke.

This was a pattern in the last twenty years of my mother's life. She underwent a triple bypass in mid-2012, in order to minimize the potential for a heart attack. Six months later? Heart attack. 

She pulls through, though. 

2020. Covid hits. Mom goes through the precautions, as she is in the high risk demographic. Vaccinates in triplicate. 

In 2024, she catches a "breakthrough" case of Covid. She's hospitalized for nearly two weeks. 

She pulls through, though... again. 

It's 2025, while undergoing an operation on a cataract (the same operation that took my best friend/bandmate Lee from us back in 2010), when she's told about the blockage in her carotid artery. She's penciled in for surgery in March of 2026. They bump her up to February of 2026. 

The morning she went in, I remember my mother getting hit with a sudden wave of nausea. She went to the kitchen sink to double over, and my dad and I rubbed her back until she felt better. We hugged. I went to work. 

My dad texted me at work to let me know the surgery went well, and he'd be home in the early evening. A few hours after he got home, the hospital notified him about my mother having a stroke. For the rest of the week, my dad visited my mom in the ICU, as doctors and nurses fed him platitudes and plans for the long road to rehabilitation (the doctors being a bit more pie-in-the-sky than the nurses, but I digress). 

The stroke happened on a Tuesday night. Wednesday and Thursday seemed like Mom was getting better; talking, eating, even walking a little. Early Friday evening, I'm closing out the cash register at work when I get a text from my Dad. Mom's breathing isn't very good. They're "making her comfortable" (which hit my ears as "they're assisting suicide"). I leave work early. I come home to my brother on the phone with my Mom's brother, who is screaming at us to "do something" (as if we were killing our mother [more on him never]). I was in no place whatsoever to indulge his bubblegum-brain bullshit so I instead raided my dad's liquor stash like some dirtbag teenager, aiming to erase this black tar night from my memories. 

It didn't work. 

Holes were put in walls. Vicious insults were hurled in the heat of the moment, made all the more caustic from having been submerged in the acids of my guts for so long (but again... I digress). These tantrums went as fast as they came. The holes in the wall were patched up that afternoon. The apologies were profuse, and summarily accepted. 

For the next eight days, there were glimmers that Mom might actually come out of this. She talked, she ate, even walked. But she remained in the ICU. The doctors started talking to my dad about recovery options, as she wasn't "far gone" enough to utilize hospice care on the grounds of the hospital. The options were a rest home (which would wipe out Dad's savings), or we set up a room in our house. The choice was clear. 

This was Thursday.

On Friday, my dad went back to the ICU to see Mom. She was catatonic. Completely unresponsive, but still alive. 

"She qualifies for the in-hospital comfort care now", said the doctors. 

They set her up in her own room. We go to see her. I know it's likely the last time. 

This was Friday.

Saturday, no change. 

Sunday, Dad says something is telling him to stay with Mom at the hospital through the night (that "something" being the snow forecast... or maybe not). 

We get the call from Dad.

On February 15th at 8:47 pm, Mom passes away, after twelve days in the hospital. 

Mom always said she didn't want a funeral. We respect that. Her side of the family will likely never forgive us for denying them a "final goodbye". Don't really give a fuck. Mom wouldn't give a fuck, either. 

It's a few weeks later before I'm able to return to writing. The decision is made for me (as it often is regarding this vocation). Floodgates open. I return to book no. 15 (CAROTID OCTOPUS [i know]), its title serving now as a premonition that I can't deny. I get an idea for a film script (FIEND LEPER), so I develop that to relative completion. I get an idea for a poetry collection (EYECHECK). I begin that in earnest. An opportunity to pen a straight-up horror novel presents itself (SLICES). I get to it. That one falls through, its material absorbed by the CAROTID OCTOPUS. Oh well. We've been through worse.

I never showed any of my books to Mom, and she was always respectful and understanding of my reluctance to let her have a peak. As she did love to read, a long-term goal was to craft something Mom would enjoy (or at least something that would net me some kind of advance worth bragging about). Well as you can see, I'm not doing so hot on either of those fronts. We are what we are. 

I'm at this very moment right here feeling depleted, so I'll leave you with this poem I wrote for Mom soon after she passed;

You should be home now sans machinery. The truth is I’m never prepared. Not even with hereditary vexation can I brace this cold tonnage. You were briefly nauseous before you left that morning, doubled over the sink where we could rub your back until the wave crested. You spared me from the mortality rates of blood poisoning when I was seven, but you couldn’t hide your terror the following year when I got lost at the beach for two hours after my brother and his friend ditched me for a laugh. Making you cry like that was my introduction to self-hatred, but also made me understand how much you loved me. I’m now the age you were then, or at least pretty close. I’m now crying as hard as you were then, or at least pretty close. If not as close,  then at least for way longer… like maybe thirty-five more years. 

The joys you brought into my life are innumerable, your affection for us as infinite as ours for you. 

I will never forget how lucky I am that you are my mother. You could’ve lived into your 100s, with us spending every day together, and it still would feel like there was more time to be had. 

The things I’ll miss about having you here, big and little, hit hard all the same. 

You will continue to be the healing light in every warm memory I have. 

Love you forever, Mom.