#4: A Big Loss

It has been said that the mother is the heart of the home.  When you think of 'home', so many of the special memories are the sights and smells of how it is decorated, or the special stuffing recipe that only mom makes.  However, if the mom is failing to function in her role or if she is sick/has passed away, the hole that is left is huge.  Massively huge.  Believe me.

My mom was a bit older (38) when I was born, and was also six years older than my dad.  She was always on the heavy side and had problems with painful warts on her feet that limited her activity.  She was on and off medication for depression and smoked from the age of 18 or so and drank pretty heavily, but otherwise was 'average' health-wise.  That all changed when she was 52.

It was in August of 1979, and I was 14 years old.  She had a wicked headache that started on a Wednesday or so; it was very bad, worse than she'd ever had - and she was not prone to headaches.  Well, that Sunday morning she got up, said "Oh my god, my head!!" and collapsed.  Dad and my sister called an ambulance, and that day our lives changed dramatically.  We soon found out that she had suffered an aneurysm in her brain, and she was taken to a major referral hospital 100 miles away where she stayed for six months.   We were told that if they had to operate right away, her chance of survival was 10%.  If they were able to wait - if the bleeding stopped and she stabilized somewhat - then her chance of survival went up to 40%.  They were able to wait, and she had her surgery in October.  We soon settled into a routine; we would make it through each week, trying to figure out how to cook and clean and manage without her and we would drive to see her every Saturday (and sometimes on Sunday too), and then Dad would spend all evening Sunday and Monday on the phone, updating friends and family on her condition.  While she was in the hospital she was hallucinating and extremely confused.  She reverted to childlike behaviour in a lot of ways, and had a lot of recovery to do.  She had a second surgery in January to replace the flap of bone they had removed in October - if you can imagine - and was discharged in early February.  That was a very difficult Christmas...

When she came home she was functioning on a fairly decent level physically, but really ceased to be the wife and mother of the home at that time.  This medical event seemed to kick off a chain of significant health issues over the next few years.  She had a heart attack the next year (1981), and I was home alone with her when we realized what was going on.  I was in bed sleeping in and she had called me to come downstairs a few times, but the last time she called was different.  She said that her arm hurt and she couldn't do anything - and there was fear in her voice.  I came down and started asking questions; I asked her to lie down on the couch to see if it helped the pain, and when she did, she couldn't catch her breath.  I called my sister, who called our doctor.  He told us to bring her in, so dad was called and he came home from work and took her to the hospital.  The next evening, they called us around 11:00 and told us we'd better get there as soon as possible as she wasn't doing well.  We rushed in to the hospital and Dad went into the room and all her monitors went crazy and they hustled him and the rest of us out.  Her heartbeat was very irregular; they had used the paddles to try to stabilize it but to no avail so they called us.  Finally around 2:00 in the morning the doctor came and said that she had settled down somewhat and we could probably go back home.  She pulled through, and was put on medication for her heart.  She developed a case of pneumonia at some point thereafter and was put on a medication for her lungs that I later discovered was very hard on the stomach.  That will become significant.

In late summer/fall of 1982 a sore had developed on her foot that she had been treating with the help of a neighbour who had been a nurse and who practiced reflexology.  Nothing was working and it developed into an abscess, so she finally went to the doctor who immediately had her admitted for a blockage in her femoral artery.  She very nearly lost her foot to gangrene.  They did a bypass, but she ended up back in the hospital just before Christmas as the skin graft in her thigh was not healing.  They soon got that under control, and all appeared to be well - but she refused to accept that she had had a bypass; she would always say that they had 'cleaned out' the artery and she was 'good as new'.  I will never forget what the doctor that discharged her told my dad.  "If she continues to smoke, you might as well take her out behind your wood shop and hit her over the head with a two-by-four and put her out of her misery now, because it will kill her sooner or later."  She did not quit smoking.  If anything, because of her brain damage and emotional unhappiness, she smoked even more.

Something that she was doing on her own (but with our family doctor's knowledge) was taking two regular Aspirin every night.  She did this to keep her blood thin, something she thought was a good idea because of the aneurysm.  The logic is flawed, because an aneurysm is a weak spot in the wall of a vessel that starts to balloon out.  This can happen anywhere in the body, with varying results.  If it ruptures, it is a critical event and depending on where it is, is often fatal.  Because hers was in her brain, it caused a hemorrhagic stroke.  Afterward, the one side of her face drooped and her right hand was mostly paralyzed, but it didn't affect her ability to walk to any significant degree.  But because she had suffered a stroke, she felt that keeping her blood thin was helpful, and the doctor didn't argue.  However, two regular uncoated Aspirin at bedtime (not with food), coupled with the previously mentioned medication for her lungs and the amount of beer that she was drinking on a regular basis all started to do a number on her stomach.  She started vomiting for no reason, and she had never drank milk ever but suddenly started to, saying it felt good in her tummy.  If I knew then what I know now, she was displaying classic symptoms of gastric ulcers.  But I didn't know then what I know now, and I was not living at home either to realize how bad it was becoming.  She also never discussed any of these symptoms with her doctor.  One day in late May of 1984 the ulcers ruptured, and she started vomiting blood.  She very nearly died in the ambulance; her blood pressure was dangerously low, and she required a transfusion.  While in the hospital this time, she had me type up her resignation letter for her job.  I think she knew what was coming.

She was in the hospital for around ten days during which she developed congestive heart failure.  On Saturday, June 9, 1984, the hospital was trying to get in touch with dad because she was not doing well.  This was before the era of cell phones, so it wasn't so easily done.  They finally got word to him when he went home from work for lunch, and I happened to call him right afterward.  He told me to get to the hospital, so my boyfriend and I went there as quickly as possible.  We arrived and found her, not in the ICU as I expected, but off in a private room... something I now realize they do when there is no hope, and when someone is going to die...  no heroic measures, no 'CODE BLUE - CRASH CART IN ROOM 103!!'... just a private room where they leave the patient and their family alone.  A nurse was was there, trying unsuccessfully to get mom to wear oxygen.  The nurse left us alone and mom turned away from me in the bed.  I wanted to see if she would like some water or something so I meant to ask her if I could GET her anything, but instead I asked her if I could GIVE her anything.  She answered, "You can give me life."  I said, "No I can't, mom - only God can."  My dad came into the room right at that moment, and I stopped talking.  My brother and his wife arrived shortly thereafter, and within about 20 minutes of my arriving in her room, my mother passed over into eternity.  She was 58 years old, and I was 19.

I have always regretted that I had no confirmation of her response to my statement.  If she asked God to give her life at that moment, I will see her again in heaven.  If she didn't, and she rejected him with her dying thoughts - I won't.  I have lived with the 'if only' of that moment ever since.  If only I'd said more.  If only she had vocalized her thoughts.  If only I wasn't afraid of my father and had told mom about God's love for her and His desire for her to be with Him in heaven...

During mom's illnesses my dad didn’t handle things very well.  He started having an affair with a neighbour lady, and they were not very discreet at all... we all knew it, probably half the town knew it, and Mom knew it too.  She was very hurt, and her drinking escalated to significant proportions.  A friend said that she died of a broken heart, not congestive heart failure.

After mom's death, my father was very angry.  It was mostly expressed about having to work all day and then fix his own meals, but it was obviously much deeper than that.  He also said he was angry at all the people who had come to mom's funeral and said they were there for us, but weren't there two/three/four months later, helping him out.  Mom and dad's relationship was very 'old-school'; he probably didn't even know where the tea towels were, let alone how to fend for himself.  My aunts expected that I would move home to take care of him, but I did not.  I knew that if I did, I would probably never get out of there again.  He was very soon pursuing a relationship (i.e., within four months) and within two years of mom's passing, Dad's new eventual wife asked me to move the rest of my things out of the house.  I was completely on my own, and my 'home' was now a place where I no longer felt welcome, nor comfortable.

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