My Mom

Seventeen years ago today, the day before my thirty-ninth birthday, my mom suffered a massive heart attack in my arms, and thus began nine of the worst days of my life. It was a Saturday morning, and I had just helped Mom get her bath and get dressed for the day. We were walking from the bathroom to the living room when she paused, told me she was dizzy, then passed out.

The next few minutes are a blur because everything happened so fast, but I caught Mom as she was falling, laid her on the floor, and ran to the phone to call the EMS. We lived in a rural community that did not have a 911 emergency number at the time, so I had to remember a 10-digit 800 number…not an easy task when one is in the midst of a full-blown crisis. I finally got the emergency operator on the phone, requested an ambulance, and started CPR.

Within moments, two ambulances and paramedics had arrived, along with Harold & Patty, who lived (still do) within a stone’s throw of my parent’s house, and my brother Tom. To this day, I still don’t know how Tom got there so fast because they had to track him down at one of the Little League ball fields in Ironton…a good 10 – 12 miles away…and yet – there he was. Our dad was there, too, of course, but he was 78 and in failing health himself, so there wasn’t much he could do but stand around and watch…and hope…and pray…like the rest of us.

I kept telling the paramedics Mom did not want life support, but they didn’t listen to me and started her on a ventilator. So, for the next nine days, we all sat around the ICU waiting room…doing just that…waiting for the inevitable. Mom never regained consciousness. Tests had revealed the tiniest bit of brain stem activity, therefore, the hospital could not allow the doctors to turn off the life support for fear of a lawsuit. This is when we learned about “living wills.” We all have one now.

I do not mean to sound dispassionate about my mother’s situation; had there been any “hope” of a recovery, we would have fought just as hard for her. There is, however, a significant difference between “prolonging” and “preserving” life. Quite frankly, if I had it to do over again…knowing what I know now…I would have held my mother in my arms and let her slip peacefully away.

I knew in my heart she was “gone” when I laid her on the floor that morning anyway…I could see it in her eyes…literally watched the life slipping from them. In the five years that my mom had been in failing health, we had taken a few trips to the emergency room and had endured several prolonged hospital stays, but this time was different. Like I said…I knew in my heart she was gone, but you just don’t want to let go…you never want to let go…so you do what you have to do and implement life saving measures.

So, for the next nine days, various family members and friends gathered at the hospital ICU waiting room, reminiscing and telling stories about life and growing up with Mom & Dad. (Some of those stories will eventually find there way to this blog.) You know, it wasn’t a particularly “glamorous” life by any stretch of the imagination, but it was a good life…one of which I am not ashamed. Someone from the family was at the hospital round the clock, and the nurses were good about letting us go back to be with Mom whenever we wanted…as long as there was no emergency involving another ICU patient.

I remember late one night, I slipped into the ICU. Mom had always been a fighter and I just kept stroking her face, her hair, and her hands and telling her it was “okay.” She could let go now…she didn’t have to fight anymore. There were no chairs in her room, so I eventually sat down in a corner of the room, quietly weeping, just telling her over and over that it was okay to let go, listening to the sounds of the myriad machines breathing for her, monitoring various bodily functions...heart rate, blood pressure, etc. I still hate the sound of those machines.

Eventually, one of the nurses came in and found me. She gave me a hug and said she thought she heard someone crying, but couldn’t see me. She was getting ready to give Mom a sponge bath and make her more comfortable, so I had to leave. She said she would come and get me when it was okay to come back in, but when she came to find me, I was asleep on the floor of the waiting room. Only time in my life I have ever been able to sleep on a hard, linoleum floor, but I was exhausted. Today, it would take a crane to hoist me off that floor.

A couple of days before Mom passed away, they moved her to a private room. Doctors had told us the only way they could/would remove the ventilator is if Mom was breathing more for herself than was the machine. That is when the countdown began. I mean, I watched that sucker like a hawk…counting each and every breath that my mom breathed on her own vs. those supplied by the ventilator. And when my brother, Tom, arrived on Saturday afternoon to “relieve” me, I told him to tell the doctor when he did his rounds that they could take the “bleepin’” machine away. He did, they...of course...verified that Mom was in fact breathing on her own, and they took the bloody machine away.

That was late Saturday. Mom hung on through Sunday and finally took her last breath on this earth around 3:30a.m. Monday morning. Harold was with her. He called to let me know and to tell me that Tom was on his way to the hospital, so I got dressed and drove down to the house to tell Dad that it was…over. Mom was at peace. We buried her on Thursday, March 28th, the day before her 73rd birthday. So, March isn’t exactly a fun month for me.

One thing that "sort of" haunts me from that cool, March morning as I was driving down to the house to help Mom with her bath and do what other tasks she needed done that day was thinking…no, I actually said it out loud, “I’d like to have just one weekend to myself.” I don’t feel guilty about having the thought or even voicing it out loud because I did everything humanly possible for my parents when they were alive. I have no regrets and would gladly help take care of them again. It just turned out to be one of those “be careful what you wish for” kind of moments because…you see…I have all my weekends to myself these days.