She’s Gone

by Eric Burnham | Oct 20, 2025 | Eric Burnham, From the Inside

As soon as count cleared, I logged in to check my messages. “She’s gone… “ There it was, the message I was expecting and simultaneously hoping wouldn’t come.

She was found on August 25th and taken to the hospital where she was placed on life support. An infection that had gone septic, as well as a stroke, had left her unconscious and barely breathing. Her pacemaker was the only thing that was keeping her alive. Unfortunately, she would never regain consciousness. After waiting to see improvement for almost three days and speaking directly with her attending physician, I then spoke at length with my sister: She and I, together, made the decision to take her off of life support, and my mother passed away 8 minutes later, on August 28th, 2025.

Even now, months later, I sometimes check my messages to see if her thread lights up, as if I might hear from her. I know I won’t, but some part of me struggles mightily to accept that she’s gone. It feels as if some cruel prank has been played, creating a jarring dissonance that keeps me off balance.

My mom and I laughed together often; we had similar senses of humor. I made my mother laugh, and I always gleaned a deep satisfaction out of making her belly laugh. There are still times that I think of a joke, see something on television, or recall a memory that I’d like to share with her, and it takes a minute to remember… She’s gone. That is a tough reality to accept.

She is the only parent I have ever known, and I miss her profoundly. It hits me unexpectedly in waves, and I find myself fíghting back tears more often than I’d like. I knew she was growing old, but I always believed I would be able to have at least one Christmas dinner with her after my release. She loved the Christmas season, and I had looked forward to sharing a season with her.

I have been incarcerated for a very long time − over 24 years now − and of course, I am completely responsible for the fact that I am in prison. That goes without saying, but one of the disheartening realities of long-term incarceration is that, quite automatically, an involuntary, unconscious emotional barrier forms between what happens in the lives of our loved ones out in the free world and our emotional connection to them and the events of their day-to-day. It’s a lot like wearing rubber gloves − the ability to accurately receive and appropriately respond to sensory information is somewhat dulled, making it difficult to feel textures, contours, and temperatures. Incarceration does that to the emotional experience. It takes more time for the intensity and depth of it all to pierce that barrier, but when it does − and it always does − a new problem emerges.

In prison, vulnerability is viewed as weakness, which is fundamentally ludicrous, but much of prison culture resides on the lunatic fringe of unreality. The pervasive nature of toxic masculinity frames weakness as the object of ridicule at best and exploitation at worst − a guy’s gotta keep his vulnerabilities well-camouflaged just to be psychologically safe. In prison, it is not okay to not be okay; therefore, a mask of “You can’t break me” is on everyone’s face, even though no one in here is okay. For one reason or another, all of us have a hurting heart. The only time a guy can breakdown is late at night, under the covers, when the lights are out and no one is watching.

I think it is for this reason that the above-mentioned barrier exists in the first place. It’s a prophylactic, a protective layer between the harsh reality of prison life and the tender feelings of our humanity that makes it easier to shroud our pain in a smile.

I don’t want to smile today. I miss my mom, and it hurts knowing I will never hug her again. That will never change. Even though I know she was proud of me for the man I became despite the awful mistakes of my youth, I remain deeply ashamed of the fact that I could not be there for her during her final years when she needed me the most. My drunken violence took the life of another man, negatively impacted the community, and sent me to prison. But it hurt my mom, too, and kept me out of the immediate experiences of her life for the last two-and-a-half decades. And it kept her out of mine.

How did I not fail her as a son? I don’t think she thought that, but I’m not sure that I don’t. That question may haunt me for the remainder of my life.

Today, my mother is 8.37 lbs. of ash in a container, waiting for me to come home. That is such a perplexing notion to me − my last moments with my mother will be as I scatter her over her final destination. It really boggles the mind.

As an extrovert, I very much enjoy the connective experience of remembering past moments with another person who was present in those moments and shares the possession of those memories as well. There are so many moments I shared with my mom that exist now only in my mind, and there is a stinging emptiness knowing that no one else will ever again remember those moments with me.

I take some comfort in the fact my mom knew I loved her very much, and I know she loved me. Perhaps that is all anyone can ask for, but I’m not sure I’ll ever be okay with the fact that … She’s gone.

Image by Ted Erski from Pixabay