I always thought I would be there when my mom died. I imagined that she would be on a hospital bed, her body giving into age but with a smile still on her gaunt face. I pictured her whispering in my ear how she was secretly afraid of death even though she had accepted its coming a long time ago. She would close her eyes and I would close mine, too, but she wouldn't open hers again and I would, only emphasizing the permanence of her departure.

So it was a surprise when I got a call from the city hospital.

Death is sudden. I didn't realize this until I stumbled out of the bus, which was on the verge of breaking down just as I was. I was greeted by the sight of a wailing ambulance zipping past the entrance, its flashing siren all the more prominent against the black sky.

She had been dead for two hours when the hospital called me. She had been dead before they could even begin to operate on her.

I didn't know she was going to die of heart failure. I didn't know that the last time I would ever see her alive was her leaving in the morning and smiling at me, telling me she was going grocery shopping and promising to bring home rice cakes. I didn't know that while she was dying, I would be home watching TV eating dry cereal. If I had known, I would have told her not to go, to stay home, even though she would have died anyway because heart failure doesn't just not happen because you decide to stay home instead of go grocery shopping.

But I wasn't there. The point is, I always thought I would be.

(This is a work of fiction. My mother is not dead. But if you thought this was about me, I guess, April Fools'?)