This is a post about loss. We all have people and things in our lives that have meaning, and unfortunately – those things will all go away at some point.
Tonight my computer crashed. Luckily, I have only had this laptop since August, and had not yet gotten around to transfering anything over from the old computer, so I did not lose as much as I could. I did, however, lose an entire years worth of photo documentation from my travels throughout New England and the mid-west.
I did not just cry when I realized my loss, I wept. I wept. I know it seem silly to cry and grieve over something like data on a computer, but for me – I lost my memories. I lost proof of my hard work. I lost pictures of people I connected with, that I will probably never see again.
This entire post is not about the loss of my hard drive. What happened this evening made me reflect upon the massive amount of loss I have endured over the last 5 years of my life. Starting with the death of my mother.
My mother died October 5th 2006 at age 55. She was admitted into the hospital on August 9th, her 55th birthday. She had been fighting lymphoma for a couple of years – and honestly I don’t even know how long she had been struggling with that, because when she died, I was a bratty 18 year old who had ignored my mother the majority of my life, until she was admitted into the hospital.
You see, I lost my mother for the first time when I was 13 years old. I had gone to the bank with my father to deposit the cumulative $150 dollars of birthday money I had received from relatives far and wide, when I was told that my bank account had been closed. I had saved over $1400 dollars through birthday and christmas money, allowance, lawn mowing, and babysitting – and my mother had stolen this money from me. At this point in time, I shut my mother out of my life. Growing up beyond this point, I was my own independent individual. My father was only home weekends, as he is a career truck driver and has been my whole life. I busied myself with schoolwork, extracurricular activities, sports, friends, and when I turned 16 and was granted working papers, my father signed a release so that I could work full-time. I was a productive member of society, attended school on a semi-regular basis (I skipped when I could, to go drink at the lake or get high with my friends) but I pulled an honors gpa through high-school. During this time of my life, however, I ignored my mother. I made my own rules, did what I wanted, and we stayed out of each others ways. When we did come into contact and huge fight would always erupt, so we both did our best to just not let them happen. In the last 5 years of my mother’s life, I think that she had more conversations with my friends than with me. And that is both of our faults.
When she was admitted into the hospital, it was a wake-up call. I never had the slightest idea that she would never leave the germ-free room they had to put her in since she no longer had an immune system, but I was bound and determined to be there for my mother when she needed me, even though she had never fought to be there for me throughout my adolescence. I commuted 160 miles daily to attend college, work at my full time retail job, and spend every evening asleep on the floor of her hotel room. I was there day in, day out, even when I had to stop on the side of the interstate to nap on my way to work because I was falling asleep at the wheel. And every day when I walked in her room I could see in her eyes that she was happy I was there.
After 6 weeks this started to grow harder and harder to accomplish. I was a first semester college student, struggling to complete homework assignments. I was an 18 year old girl who had always had a very fulfilling social life, suddenly reading novels in a hospital recliner while my friends were visiting each other at campuses across state. My mother could see this. She knew that I would always resent her for taking away my money, and I think she didnt want me to also resent her for taking away my teen years – so one weekend she told me to stay home and go out with my friends. My alma mater was playing our rival in football that weekend, so I took her up on it and said that I would be up on sunday to spend the day with her. When I arrived sunday afternoon I was quite rundown from trying to pack 2 months worth of socialization into 36 hours, and after greeting my mother and sitting with her for about an hour, I went to the family room on her floor to take a nap on the fold out couch. I woke up a couple of hours later when my dad came in to tell me to go home, I had been coughing and sneezing the entire time I was sleeping, and if I was sick I was not allowed to visit my mother – her immune system was non existent.I obliged, and drove the hour and a half home to sleep it off in my own bed. I took a sick day the next day and emailed my professors that I would not be in class, requested that they email me my assignments, and slept in a nyquil haze until my shift that afternoon at the local grocery store. I got off work at 8pm that evening, and when I pulled into my driveway my sister’s best friend was parked in the driveway. When I walked up to her car I knew something was wrong – there was a bag packed for me on her backseat, and her face was red and tear-streaked.
My mother had gotten an infection in her lungs, and they had to put her into a medically induced coma so that that could put her on a respirator. She was drowning in her own fluids. I called the mother of my best friend of 11 years and told her the news. She and my former youth group leader were at my house within 3 minutes, hugging me so tightly you’d think they were trying to keep me from floating away. It was time to go back to the hospital, my sister was already there with another friend, and her friend Amanda had been enlisted to drive me to the hospital so that I didnt get in an accident or something. I bid my 2 adoptive mothers farewell and told them I would call them when we figured out exactly what was going on.
When I arrived at the hospital I found out that my dad had abandoned his big rig, rented a car, and was on his way home. Upon his arrival we were notified that there was only a 50% chance that my mother would be able to come out of the induced coma, and from there only a 10% chance that she would not have to go back into one. My mother was going to die. We came to the decision as a family that we were going to give her family time to travel north from Florida, and in 3 days we were going to take her off the life support. My mother had signed a DNR with exception, and this was what she wanted.
The next 72 hours were the longest and shortest of my life. I called my best friend’s mother upon making the decision, and she informed me that she had left from my house the night before to drive to NYC where my best friend was enrolled in college and bring her home to be with me. Julie may have saved my life by deciding that Chelsea could forgo midterms to be with me in my time of need. 5 minutes after I got off the phone with her, my former youth group leader Tina walked in the room. My adoptive mommies came to help me tell my real mom goodbye. Julie and Tina were both well aware of the poor relationship I had with my mother prior to her hospitalization – they were there through it all. My mother had great respect for them, and was never taken aback by the fact that I called 2 unrelated women mom – she knew that they could give me the mothering that she never could during my adolescence.
The day came that we were to take my mother off of the respirators, and it was a dark, rainy, dismal day. My father told everyone involved (at this point there had been an upward of 15 people camped out in the ICU waiting room with us for 2 days – mostly friends, as well as my mother’s brother, sister, and father) that anyone who wanted to be in the room with her when she went was more than welcome. My sister wanted to be there, and I knew that couldn’t. It was okay though, because we had our 2 adoptive mommies with us. Tina went into the room with my sister, and Julie and Chelsea stayed in the waiting room with me and a few of my sisters friends. The doctor told my dad that once the machines were turned off, it would be between 5 and 10 minutes before my mother passed – but he forgot that my mother had been fighting to stay alive for years, and it took 53 minutes for my mother to breath her last breath.
Immediately afterward, I knew that I could no longer stand to be in this hospital that brought my mother in through the front doors knowing she would leave through the morgue. Chelsea and I got into my vehicle, pulled out of the parking garage with music blaring, tears streaming down our faces, holding hands, and drove out into the most beautiful, sunny day that god had ever given us. My mother entered the afterlife with a smile on her face, knowing that her children would be taken care of in her absence – and she sent that sunshine down upon us to tell us that everything was going to be alright.
Angry Owls 