The Day That Wasn't Normal

It started like a normal day.

I wonder how many stories begin that way? Adventure stories. Love stories. 

Horror stories. 

This story.

I knew she was sick. She'd been sick for a long time. We'd been to the doctor, tried different medications. But I had been out of town all week for work, and my husband had been texting me. 

She isn't looking good. 

She needs to go to the doctor again. 

This might be the end. 

So when I got home, I knew I had to go. It was Saturday. He went with me.

The doctor said we had done everything we could. The doctor said it was clear that we loved her. The doctor said it was time to end her suffering. I put my hands on her as she drifted away. It was quiet, except for my sobbing. And she was gone. She wasn't even six years old.

We buried her in her basket with her name on the liner. We buried my sweet Cricket cat next to the roses a year ago on a Saturday. 

But that's not what made the day abnormal.

After I buried my cat, I went to the hospital - the people hospital. My mom was sick again. She had battled breast cancer for nine years, and it was back for the third time. She had gone to the emergency room via ambulance on Thursday, only a couple of days after the diagnosis, and now she was in the cardiac intensive care unit because of episodes of tachycardia. Even though we told them the mass in her chest was cancer and not pneumonia, the staff doctors believed it was pneumonia and would not let her eat or drink for fear of aspiration. We tried to keep her distracted with TV and conversation. 

For a while, we focused on the weather. There was a severe thunderstorm. The hospital alarms sounded. We had to draw the blinds. It was a microburst that caused severe damage, tearing part of the roof off of the high school in my small hometown. Mom was worried about a tree falling on the garage. We assured her everything was fine. We showed her pictures my cousin took of the damage. Still, she was fighting. Her prognosis was good. The ICU doctor said she could move to a regular unit in the next day or two. 

My husband called. Having lost his mother unexpectedly only two weeks before, he decided to go out of town for a few days. Everything would be back to normal soon. I kissed Mom good night, and told her I'd see her tomorrow.

The next day was Sunday, but it wasn't normal. It was Mother's Day. I called Dad, and he said she had gotten worse.  I contacted her cancer doctor and asked him to come to the hospital - he was not aware she'd been admitted. By the time I got there, she was frustrated but coherent. Dad was pacing the floor. I brought pictures from her recent trip across the country to the Grand Canyon, but I never got to show them to her. It all happened so quickly. Her breathing became labored. My sister came with her kids and flowers and presents for Mother's Day. Then the doctor came. He was puzzled by her heart condition. "You've thrown us a curve with this one," he told her, and they laughed. Then it got serious. Mom asked the doctor if this was it. She asked the doctor, was she dying. And the doctor said, "None of us can ever know the time, Judy." My other sister came and talked to the doctor in the hall. We didn't know what to do. Mom kept asking for Pepsi. I sneaked her a sip at a time from a medicine cup. 

She was restless, uncomfortable. Her breathing became ragged. She couldn't speak; everything was a whisper. Everything required so much effort. And suddenly, she was dying ... but how could that be?

Suddenly, they approved of Pepsi. The nurse said, "You give your mom anything she wants. The end is hard enough." I didn't understand. The end of what? They gave her medication for the pain. She gasped for breath. She became incoherent. And then, they pulled the curtains for privacy. And then I understood.

The three of us understood. Dad understood. There was nothing left to do. I called my husband. "Mom is dying," I sobbed into the phone. He was hours away; I felt so alone.

We three sisters held hands. We sang. First, religious songs and hymns. Then pop songs. Shania Twain. I don't know. Cher? We may have worked in "Row, Row, Row Your Boat". We were stunned. We were desperate. We told her it would be okay. We told her to go, that we would be okay. She wouldn't; she fought. She tried to get out of bed. She removed her oxygen mask. The nurse asked if we understood what would happen without oxygen. She turned off the alarms. 

Dad huddled on the couch or paced the tiny room, already grieving. I embraced him, "Well, we didn't expect this today." He could only shake his head, tears streaming. 

I prayed. I prayed for peace, our peace, her peace. I closed my eyes, and I prayed for something I could tell her, something I could do. And then I saw, like a dream in my mind, I saw Isaiah. My son Isaiah died at the age of two weeks in 1998, and when I let him go, I saw him meet Jesus. I saw him in his new body, just like I saw him now. And he was waiting for his Nana.

I held her. I held her head in my lap, and I told her she could go. I told her Isaiah was waiting. I told her he was the tall, strong, blond boy waiting at the gates of Heaven. He would take her to Grandma. He would take her to Jesus. And I told her to let go.

And, finally, she did.

It was quiet. The monitors showed her heart rate slowly decreasing. 

Then it stopped.

The Saturday that started as a normal day blurred into a Sunday, a Mother's Day, that wasn't. 

And now nothing's normal. Even a year later. 

Nothing.