Thirty-seven days after her child’s death, Pam Cohen opens her computer and clicks through pictures of Lindsey. She leans forward and frowns. Posing for a photo of her own, Pam holds the computer in front of her and looks down.
“You always see pictures like this when there’s a tragedy,” she says.
Then, she sighs. It’s as if she is realizing, yes, this is really happening to me. The 53-year-old is living in her child’s college apartment in Clifton, in a complex that smells like marijuana, picking up the pieces of a life cut short.
In the corner of the room, Lindsey’s parakeet chirps at a passing ambulance. And when Pam lifts up her computer, a Duke Energy bill falls to the floor. It is not the only bill she has. There are hospital bills and insurance bills and car payments. Most are in Lindsey’s name, making everything that much more difficult.
“This is my life now,” Pam says. “Some days I get things done. Some days I just cry.”
Pam has been in this apartment since the beginning of February. It’s still decorated, a reminder of the young adult Lindsey had become. Pam can’t begin to think about packing everything up yet.
The Kurt Vonnegut doll on the bookshelf, Lindsey’s favorite author, sitting below a Ruth Bader Ginsburg figurine. The “Breakfast Club” poster above the couch. A Walk the Moon concert poster framed near wobbly theatre chairs from the University of Cincinnati’s College-Conservatory of Music, where Lindsey studied sound design.
Pam’s husband and son are back in their Maryland home. But Pam doesn’t want to leave Cincinnati, because she doesn’t want to say goodbye. Not again.
Next to the front door, paper ornaments are taped to the wall. Together, they form a makeshift Christmas tree. One of the ornaments is pink with a ribbon in the middle. Below the ribbon are two words:
“Fuck cancer.”
…
Lindsey was going to beat it. That’s what everyone thought.
Because this was a fierce adventurer who dreamed of winning a Tony award and taking Pam on stage. After a difficult battle with breast cancer last year, including chemotherapy and double mastectomy, 2021 was going to be different.
Life, which was on hold for so many of us during the pandemic, was returning to normal. The recent college grad bought an orange Chevrolet Aveo in January, learned to drive stick shift and took in a parakeet named Breezy. This summer, after a full recovery, Lindsey planned to tell family that the girl they knew growing up had come to identify as nonbinary and preferred the pronouns they or them.
Lindsey Cohen never got to do that. Instead, their mom did it at their funeral.
Lindsey was 23.
…
Pam Cohen moved to Cincinnati in April last year, when Lindsey was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer. Lindsey had surgery the day other students received their diplomas.
When hair started falling out in patches, in bed and in the bathroom, a friend shaved Lindsey’s head. In one video Pam took, Lindsey was on the couch. Lindsey moved their hands around their face like it was a foreign object.
“How you feeling?” Pam asked.
“Gross.”
“Can you feel your face?” Pam asked.
“No.”
“It’s still there,” Pam said.
In the last year, Lindsey and their mom went to the zoo and the art museum and Union Terminal and put together puzzles and gardened and ate ice cream on the porch and spent time with one another like they hadn't for years.
Lindsey’s favorite time was Halloween, because no one looked at them like they had cancer.
…
Pam left Cincinnati in December, thinking her child might make it home for Christmas. The worst seemed over. At the very least, Lindsey would visit for their birthday. But their condition worsened so fast no one other than their parents and brother could make it to the hospital.
For weeks, Lindsey told Pam not to come back. Until Lindsey coughed up blood, went to the ER, vomited and passed out. Lindsey later sent their mom a reassuring picture, but Pam had been fighting this fight for a year, and she knew the numbers on the hospital screen behind Lindsey weren’t good.
This time, when Pam told her child she was coming, Lindsey didn’t fight it. That’s when Pam got scared.
It wasn’t much longer before doctors stopped performing X-rays.
“Can you operate?” Pam asked.
“No,” a doctor said. “It’s everywhere.”
Cancer had taken over their lungs. At one point, Pam communicated with Lindsey by text because they couldn’t hear. And near the end, Pam always kept a hand on Lindsey, because Lindsey didn’t want to slip away.
“How’s it going to end?” Lindsey asked.
“Is it going to hurt?” Lindsey asked.
…
When Pam got to the apartment after Lindsey died, she realized her child was worse off than they told anyone. Lindsey was a neat freak, but the dishes were piled up – about a month’s worth. And all their clothes were dirty.
The day before this interview, Pam met with a lawyer and signed probate court papers. She cried at the lawyer’s 15th-floor office overlooking the city. She cries every time she talks about Lindsey. At the bureau of motor vehicles, at the bank, in the apartment.
She wonders if this pain will ever go away. She wonders if her other child, who is behind on his schoolwork, will be OK. She wonders if she’ll break when she gets back to Maryland, as her sister fears.
But she does know this: She will keep talking about Lindsey, no matter what, because it’s the only thing that makes her feel whole. Even if that means more tears. Even if that means more pain.
Even if that means talking about the questions Lindsey asked before they died.
Because these days, Pam is just trying to keep up with the dishes. She says Lindsey would be mad at all the clutter she’s brought to the apartment.
And she tries not to cry.
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If you would like to support the Cohen family, a GoFundMe page has been created to help with expenses. It can be found by clicking the link above or searching for Lindsey Cohen on the fundraising site.
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