It's hard for me to wrap around my fingers just how long my mom has been gone...11 years. This is the story of what I experienced on that fateful day. It's okay if you don't want to read this... This is the first time I've openly displayed it.
It was early on a Tuesday morning. About 6AM to be exact. I awoke to the sound of some banging on the upstairs floor. Even then I was a morning person, but I just couldn't will myself to get up. More than anything, I was annoyed with Mom for waking me up, probably because she had to use the restroom, and since my room was in the basement, that was her way of waking me up to help her. You see, Mom was in a wheelchair, due to Scleroderma. By this point in time, it had taken over her body in its entirety. Not only were her legs immobile, but so was the rest of her body. She couldn't do anything physical, even the most minimal of tasks. I was her "live-in nurse" because we had no money to pay for actual nurses to come over. But I really took for granted just what it meant to have a “mom,” until that day.
So I ignored her stomping because I wanted to sleep in. She stopped. About five minutes later the stomping started up again. I became angry and went upstairs upset. But what I saw shocked me. Mom was in her wheelchair convulsing. Her eyes were sort of rolled toward the back of her head and she was making a disturbing clicking sound with her tongue between her teeth. I screamed for Dad at once. He came out of the bedroom and told me she must be having a seizure and proceeded to call 911. After a few minutes Mom stopped and started breathing normal, slowly coming back to reality. However, I soon found that she wasn’t fully with reality. She began talking with me, asking me why I was up so early on a weekend. I told her that it was a Tuesday and she just sort of blinked at me.
While Dad was on the phone with 911, Mom went into yet another seizure. From then on it’s a complete blur up until we ended up at the hospital emergency room. Psychologists say that when people experience something extremely traumatic and/or life-changing that the brain sometimes has a funny way of deleting parts of the memories.
I remember riding in the car behind Mom, still convulsing, and Dad in the ambulance. I know it my brother Jason driving the car, but that’s all I can remember, and vaguely at this point. The events at the hospital are pretty much little separate puzzle pieces in my mind. When we arrived at the Carle ER, Mom was in surgery. Apparently, the second and third seizures had hindered her ability to breathe. Doctors were performing a tracheotomy on her. I don’t remember how long it took, but I remember crying uncontrollably in the waiting room, not knowing if she’d make it through the surgery or not. After what seemed like hours, we were allowed to go back and see her.
She was awake, but there were so many tubes and wires on and in her, that she reminded me more of a robot than my mother. When she saw me, her eyes widened and she beckoned me to come to her side. As I stood near her head she mouthed something, but I could not hear her. Dad told me I had to bend down in order to hear her. I placed my ear as close as possible to her lips, careful not to touch any of the tubes, wires, and machines around her. Four little words she said made my heart skip a beat…
“I have to pee.” No one could hear her voice, barely a whisper, except for me. It made a huge smile form on my face. Through tear-filled eyes, I turned to Dad and my brothers and told them to get the nurse so that Mom could use the restroom.
We spent the rest of the day taking turns being in the room with her since only a few people were allowed in the room at one time. At one point my brothers and I headed home in the afternoon for a late lunch. On our way back to the hospital we stopped at County Market to get some balloons and flowers for Mom. I picked out a Disney balloon with a band-aid on Mickey Mouse, the caption reading a simple “Get well soon.” Mom loved Disney anything so I knew she’d like that balloon. We hung out some more at the hospital, finally leaving around 8PM.
I gave Mom a hug and kissed her on the cheek telling her that I’d see her first thing in the morning. She nodded and smiled at me, all she could manage after such a trying day.
I went home and fell asleep fairly quickly, due to it being a long day and knowing that Mom was okay.
A little after 11 that same night I heard someone coming down the stairs. My lights were turned on and I sat up, confused. My brother Jason’s girlfriend at the time came into my room. I asked her what she was doing at my house this late and she only shook her head at me. She sat down next to me on my bed and hugged me. After a few seconds I tried to pull away, but she didn’t release her grip. She then told me something, which made me realize why she was acting so strange…she was about the give me the worst news of my life.
“Sweetie, your mom passed away tonight.”
I was confused and I didn’t know what to think. The only thing I managed to blurt out, hoping it was a dream, was, “What?!” She then hugged me tighter and repeated that Mom had passed away. It was then that the truth of Mom actually being dead set in. I collapsed in her arms and cried and cried. She didn’t let go of me until my breathing had returned to normal, which was a very long time.
The ride back to Carle was very strange. No one said a thing the whole way there. All of our eyes were swollen, red, and sore from crying. I stared blankly out the window. It was as if I was an outsider in my own world. I felt alone. But even more than that, I felt detached from existence itself.
I don’t remember the walk into Carle, or to the intensive care unit on the seventh floor. I do remember refusing to go into the room with everyone else. I was not ready to part with Mom. Not only that, but I was not ready to see her recently deceased, lifeless body. I sat down on the floor and put my head between my legs. I closed my eyes tightly, hoping that when I opened them again, someone would tell me that I had a nightmare.
After a few minutes Dad came out of the room and told me that I needed to come inside to say goodbye to Mom for the last time. I looked at him like he was crazy. I tried to explain to him that I didn’t want to see her like that. I wanted my last memory of her to be when she was alive. He forced me to go into the room with everyone else.
What I saw still gives me nightmares to this day. Mostly everyone believes that lie that people look peaceful and at rest when they die in their sleep the way Mom did. Mom definitely didn’t fit that ridiculous notion. Her mouth was gaping open and her facial features told me that she was in a lot of pain before passing away that night. That horrible image will be forever engraved in my mind…
It only took a few seconds for the terror of her death to set in. I ran out of the hospital room as fast as I could to the restroom to vomit up what little I had eaten that day.
The truth had set in. Mom was dead. I was fourteen, only a few months away from graduating middle to high school, and I was left without a mom. What was I going to do?
