Mom's Style (Part Five)
It's Wednesday morning, around 11:30am. After going to Wal-Mart and to Family Christian Stores (it's a chain of bookstores, by the way), I made it to the hospital. I parked, grabbed the bag and went in and up to the third floor... the Oncology Floor at Floirida Hospital - Altamonte... room 3714. It's almost our zip code (32714)... I don't think I'll ever forget that number. In twelve years, I will be 37 and Tate will be 14. I think that's gonna be a hard year. I don't think anything bad will happen that year or anything like that. I just think I'm going to remember the significance of 37 and 14 a whole lot.
I can't believe I almost forgot this part: Monday night, as I was sitting with mom, while she was crying and scared, the necklace I had on was brushing over our clasped hands. She took hold of it. She nearly clung to it. I took it off and put the charm in her hand, wrapping the necklace around her hand. It was a hand-made cross necklace. Aaron made it for me. A leather thong with a beaded cross. At first she didn't want me to take it off. She was concerned that if she was holding it as she was dying that I wouldn't want it back or take it back. I assured her it was the farthest thing from the truth, and encouraged her to hold it if that's what she wanted. After I placed it in her hand, she looked at me and said softly "I don't really need it though---I've already got one in here," as she brought her hand in and pointed to her heart. "But He's not on it anymore."
I'm sorry that I keep interrupting with things... I just forget to put them in or don't think of them 'til later. I'm really sorry, I know it's probably frustrating. Ok, so it's wednesday, nearing noon, I've purchased a few things we might need and gone to the hospital.
So I go up to mom's room. She's sleeping, sortof... mostly she was just really drugged up. I came in and set the bag down and sat beside her. I took her hand. I began to talk to her, to tell her I was there, to tell her how much I love her. She opened her eyes and made a few noises. The nurse told me that was good--she was trying to respond to me. I told her I brought the video, the one she wanted to see, and Heather and I began to set it up. Dad began to object and that's where I became "unreasonable" so to speak, for the first time. I set my jaw and turned on him, telling him "I am showing her this video. It's Hillsong's Hope, she told me she wanted to see it again, she told me Monday night, and I'm going to show it to her." My eyes began to burn as I spoke, my throat closed on me, and dad came tearing around the side of her bed to hold me as I completely lost it. He apologized again and again, and told me he didn't know what he was thinking. Of course I should show it to her. It's a great idea, I should show her.
And so I did. Once I sat down beside her again and began to play the video, she opened her eyes again, but she wasn't really seeing anything. We kept the screen in her line of "sight", just hoping that somewhere deep down, wherever she was, she'd recognize it... I knew it wasn't going to bring her out of it, or anything like that. I mostly just hoped it would comfort and soothe her, and maybe sustain her until she came out of this. She kept her eyes open through much of the video, but she only blinked a couple of times, so I urged her to close them, brushing my fingers down over her lids. I got a nurse to call over and have her doctor order some eyedrops for her, in case she opened them again. I'd put drops in for her if she was unable to blink.
Everyone came and went that day... I don't remember who came when and when they went, really. It was strange... Mom got more visitors than ever before that day. Mrs. Puik and her son Jonathan, Ben's friend. Sam and Debbie. Jeanine and Eric. Maureen. Mrs. Felsing. Chuck and Nancy. Christina. Dave and Michelle. Some other people too, I just don't remember. Mom's two favorite nurses were both working that day too. Michelle and... what was her name? I don't remember, but I'll find out. I'm half convinced she was not of earth. She had a strong love of the Lord, and she was so incredibly gentle... so sweet... her voice was so soothing, and she never changed. She never got aggravated or frustrated, she was always perfect loving kindness...
Anyway, I stayed all day. As the afternoon crept on, she responded less and less. One thing I'm grateful for, though, is that she didn't need any extra morphine for the most part. She got one extra push of it shortly after I arrived, at about 12:15pm. God has been very gracious through all of this, and that's just another way He has shown His love and concern... But I'll get more into that later.
My older brother (along with his wife) was not able to be there. The Daytona 500 was that weekend and pretty much every seat on every plane for the entire week was occupied. He would have had to go from Columbus, OH to Vegas to Texas to New York to Orlando, and he STILL wouldn't have gotten there that day. It was really hard on him...
As the day wore on, mom's breathing became much more labored. She began to take very long (and scary) pauses between breaths. Several times I had to shake her, even shout loudly to get her attention so that she would breathe again. This began while Dad was downstairs taking his turn to have a cigarette (we all just sort of rotated all day--my older sister started smoking again, even.). At that time, the inhabitants of the room consisted of Heather, Rachael, and myself.
I think Mrs. Robinson came up that day too...
Anyway, mom was really starting to slip away, so we called Dad on his cellphone, and I called Kathy and Rob back at the house to wake them up and put them on alert. I told her I'd call as soon as we talked to Dad. Dad came up and saw mom... he told me to call Kathy. And then I called Aaron... or maybe he called me, I don't know... No, I think I called him, because I remember getting his business card out of my black book... We got Ben up there pretty fast too--his friend Ashley brought him up. Dad called Buddy and told him. It was really neat, what happened next. Dad called Bud from mom's bedside. As soon as Dad said his name over the phone, Mom opened her eyes and began groaning... At first we thought she might be in a tremendous amount of pain, but I listened quietly and realized she was saying the words "I love"... she must have said it four times before she exhausted herself. It was very long and drawn out, and if you hadn't been there through all of this and known what condition she was in, it probably would have scared you, because you wouldn't have understood. But I understood... it was a phenomenal effort on her part, and that's just how mom was. All she cared about was making sure everyone else was ok.
Dad prayed over mom after that, because she had taken to breathing only about once every 20 - 40 seconds, and we knew for sure that we were losing her. I think commending his wife to the Lord was probably the hardest thing that my father has ever done. But on a lighter note, whenever he would say "Ginny, it's ok... you don't have to fight anymore, we'll be ok...", that woman would take the biggest breath imaginable, just as deliberate as she could be.
That makes everyone else in the family smile or laugh.... but it upsets me... it makes me think we forced her before it was time. But that's for another day.
Kathy and Rob showed up then, and Ben came in a few minutes after that. He was very upset, but he took it well. When mom heard his voice, she did the same thing she had done for Buddy. She told him 3 or 4 times. It scared him at first, but I told him to listen... she was saying "I love..." she wants you to know she loves you. He crawled up close to her face... mom's baby... and told her how much he loved her.
Ben noticed that the cross wasn't in mom's hand anymore. It had fallen out of her hand sometime during the night and someone had put it on the table, so I had just picked it back up and put it around my neck. Ben begged me to give it to him, so that he could give it to mom. Of course I complied. One of the last things mom ever did was clutch her hand around that cross... she clung to Jesus, and what He had done for her, and for all of us...
I sat up by mom's head through most of this, brushing her hair... she LOVED it when we brushed her hair, and of course I never did it enough. It's funny, and I guess cliched, how that works... there are always little things we wish we had done more. So I brushed her hair, and cooled her off with a damp rag, and ran my fingers through her hair as I set my head on her pillow, singing to her again... All I could think of was "Sing With The Angels"... So I sang softly, so only she could hear, as everyone gathered around her and loved her... Chuck and Nancy came in (our Pastor and his wife)... So in this tiny little hospital room, it was Mom, Dad, Heather, me, Rachael, Ben, Rob, Kathy, Chuck, and Nancy...
Somehow, whenever we gather, for whatever reason, we always reminisce over the funny things that have happened in our lives... Funny stories... we're always telling funny stories... And this time was no exception... Somehow we got to reminiscing, and it was in that moment that mom began to slip away... I could feel it, the way I feel hot or cold, the way I feel fur against my skin, the way I feel love in my heart... all of those ways, I felt it--I knew... I also knew it was precisely the window she was looking for... Every one else noticed after a time that she was breathing less and less, and they stopped, trailed off... turned their attention back to her... But mom wasn't going anywhere in the spotlight. She'd always hated to be the center of attention. So she began to struggle and fight again, and I knew she was tired... So I looked up... And I said "No... please don't stop. She wants you to keep going, to keep remembering... Please don't stop."
So Heather, in a rare moment of strength, started The Houseboat Story, about a family vacation we took once that was nothing short of a ridiculously funny nightmare... and I began to sing softly again, running my fingers through her hair...
And so it was that she left... slipping quietly out the back... just like that... quiet as a whisper... she just wasn't there anymore...
Being the closest to her face, I knew it first, but didn't say anything... I just kept my head on the pillow beside her, crying softly into her hair, still running my fingers through it... I knew the second she was gone... the struggle was gone... it's just one of those intuitive things... As the others in the room began to notice as well, things got very quiet, even our crying was quiet... I couldn't stop running my fingers through her hair... Chuck prayed for us, asking for strength and understanding... he thanked God for mom, and the impact she had had... I just couldn't stop my hand from pulling through the short brown curls... they were so soft...
I kissed my mother goodbye for the last time... She wasn't there anymore. I stepped out of the low light of her room, into the harsh light of the hallway, and there... standing there quietly, almost pensively... crowded into the hallway... Mrs. Felsing... Mrs. Robinson... Dave and Michelle... Jeanine and Eric... Mark and Dianne... Sam and Debbie (well, they had come into mom's room just before she died, and kissed mom and said they were going, but I begged them not to leave, so they waited outside)... Nurisa and Leslie... and more faces that were just a blur. It was one of the most astonishing things I've ever seen... No one called these people... I mean NO ONE. Chuck may have called Mark (associate pastor), but Mark didn't call anyone... When I asked some of them later, they just said that mom was on their hearts... or they just felt like they needed to come visit, right then... Jeanine was planning to come up earlier, but she just felt this pressing need to wait for Eric to get home so that they could come together. It was amazing, to walk out into a sea of faces, people who loved us, and loved mom... and none of them were summoned by human means.
I stumbled through them, my mind still reeling, half in sorrow for mom and half in joy to see all those people... I went down to smoke a cigarette... we all did... I smoked 2 though... At the end of my second, Rachael called my cellphone and told me Dad needed me, right away, he needs my help. I hurried back upstairs to find Dad almost manically cleaning out mom's room... Room 3714... He looked at me and said "Help me get this stuff out of here, we need to go, she's not here anymore... it's time to go, she's not here anymore..." and he spun back around to get back to work. Rachael and Heather couldn't handle it, and were waiting out in the hall with Ben and everyone else. I helped dad... his little pillar... his little protege... Mrs. Felsing--bless that woman, she was so wonderful--came in too, to help. We got out all our belongings, all of mom's things... there was quite a lot, since she'd been there for about a month...
But we gathered it all up, everyone out in the hall grabbed a handful or two, and we left... I felt like I was in a fog... I had someone on the phone... I don't remember who... and everyone was trying to take my keys away. I needed to drive though, I needed to do something real like drive my car. So Nancy got in my car with me and we went to pick Tate up from daycare. Then we went home, to dad's house. It was a regular reunion of sorts... somehow there was all this food, and there was laughter and love... lots of that. And I can say with relative certainty that God could not have taken better care of us in those moments than He did that night, by surrounding us with people we love, who love us... they distracted us from the worst of the grief and heartache for a while, and I couldn't have asked for more.
And so it ends... Mom is gone. It's been 2 and a half weeks now. I'm sure I'll probably record some impressions from the memorial services and things like that... but this was most important. I needed to do this. Thank you so much for bearing with me, for walking with me...
-jack-
