Life Without Mother

Dear Mom,

Today was a good day. It was the year anniversary of the day you died—the day you went Home. Although we did visit your grave and I sang your song for the family (which they loved), we didn’t do much memory sharing. But that’s okay. At least for me. I don’t know about them, but I didn’t need to do that today. Just be around them. Just spend time with them and love on each other. However, tonight I did want to look back. Specifically to that twenty-four hours that changed my life forever. I typed it all out just now. It was hard to find a place to stop because I could go on and on about those days when God moved so obviously in our lives, yet I had to stop somewhere, so here is my account (accurate to the best of my memory) of the past two days a year ago:

Thursday, April 28th, 2016

It was my birthday. But also a school day. So that morning and afternoon were filled with the usual classes and encounters with classmates. That evening, I was to go see the musical, Wicked, with Hope. After my classes I rushed home to spend the hour and a half before the rest of the school let out to spruce myself up a bit for the evening. A quick “hi” and “I love you, bye” were the primary words with Mom (she had said, “happy birthday, love” that morning before I left for school). Meeting up with the rest of the group going to see Wicked (mostly my Choir peeps), we went to Dallas. It was amazing! I absolutely loved it! 
We got back to the school late; I had to drop off a friend and still had a couple of hours worth of homework to finish. It was about 11:30pm by the time I got home from dropping the friend off. Rushing in with the excitement of the evening’s delight and the thought of how long finishing my project would take me, something prompted me to spend more than a few seconds telling Mom how much I enjoyed it and goodnight. After all, she was the one who had requested that our Choir director arrange us to see it on my birthday if possible. 
I said loudly as I rushed up the stairs to put down my things, “I’ll be down in just a second to tell you all about it!”
Mom had had a surgery just that Monday. It wasn’t too major—though, every surgery has its risks. She was recovering at home, staying in Dad’s big chair in the living room because she couldn’t move much but had to be there for all of us still. She was going to be fine in a week or so and would be even more healthy when the whole process was over. She was fine.
I went back down and spent at least fifteen to twenty minutes telling her all about it and how much I loved it and how grateful I was that she had arranged that for me. I can still see the joyful gleam in her eyes to this day. She was so happy that I enjoyed it. That was always Mom—wanting to do things for us that we loved just so that she could share in that joy of our smiles and excited voices as we told her all about it.
We almost watched a Hallmark movie but then we both decided it would be better for me to go ahead and finish my homework seeing as how I also had to get up extra early the next morning to pay a visit to my fourth grade teacher. I finally went to sleep around two in the morning.

Friday, April 29th, 2016

I was ready to walk out the door around seven in the morning, wide awake and excited to see my childhood teacher again. The day was bright and sunny, matching my attitude (compared to the normal out the door running late rush I tended to be in for most of my senior year). I hugged Mom and she told me to give a hug to my teacher for her and I said I would.
“Have a good day. I love you,” she said with a warm smile.
I grinned back. “I love you too. I’ll see you later!” I walked out the front door.
My visit was great—lots of catching up and even interacting with the students, playing games I used to when I was in the fourth grade.
Then school as per usual.
Then off to work at my church’s extended care program for the teacher’s children and the children of those who had work until 5:30 or 6. I got there around three o’clock. I was the only usual worker, although the sub for my boss had worked there before as well as the other teacher who helped out in place of my co-worker. Around 3:30 my pastor’s wife came to get her kids from us. She left but then came back on the phone. Signaling to me, she gave me her phone saying that it was her husband. I thought perhaps he wanted to talk about me babysitting their kids—although I did think it odd because normally his wife did that. But it was a good day, beautiful outside, and the kids weren’t too rowdy—a great day.
“Your mom passed out and your dad called for an ambulance.”
Dad called for an ambulance? Dad never calls for an ambulance. Was something wrong? But Mom was fine that morning. My face dropped at his words. Panic set in my heart—but I never get panicked—I panicked even more. “Do I need to go home?” There were still so many kids left to be picked up.
“Maybe you should if you can.” We finished speaking and I hung up, bewildered. But I couldn’t leave—not with so many kids there and not knowing what was going on. Surely nothing major was wrong. Mom was fine. I tried calling Dad but he didn’t answer. Probably on the ambulance still. I called Grannette. She said not to worry about coming home. “Everything’s fine. Mommy just felt sick and Daddy took her to the doctor.” Okay, sure, Grannette. I know there’s more to it. But— “Okay, if you’re sure I don’t need to come home,” I said and went back to work, saying little prayers to myself. My co-workers told me that if I needed to go, just go. But I felt bad leaving them with so many kids. A few minutes passed and then Dad called.
He told me to go home.
Between the moment my pastor called and Dad told me to go home, five or six kids were picked up, bringing the number of kids to a much more manageable ten to twelve or so.
I immediately left and dialed up my best friend on the way home. Telling her what I knew, I asked for prayer because of my unusual panic. The panic was beginning to take over—worry setting in, even as my optimistic side strained to give me the worst case scenario to prepare for so that the result would be higher than the lowest expectation. The panic merely panicked me more. We stayed on the phone the entire fifteen minute drive to my house, talking though the panic and possible situations that Mom could be in.
Arriving home around four o’clock, I found Grannette home with a friend. She seemed a little shaken, though she tried once more to reassure me that all was well. A minute or so later, Mary Faith arrived home from school. She asked what was going on. I told her that Dad had called an ambulance for Mom but that everything was going to be alright and Dad would call with an update soon. Hope wasn’t home yet. Dad called.
“Where are you?”
“Home—that’s what you told me to do right? Do I need to come there?”
“You need to come to Centennial. Right now. But don’t rush—take your time.”
“Okay, I’ll be there in ten.”
I packed a small overnight bag, thinking it might be like the previous time she’d been in the hospital a few months prior for the pre-surgery to this one when I slept at the hospital to keep her company.
I told Mary Faith I was leaving, and if I wasn’t back in time to take her to her play that she was a part of that evening (playing the Grandmother in Mulan), ask our next door neighbor who just so happened to walk in just as I was leaving. Hope was walking up the front steps as I went to my car. I gave her a brief update.
I got in my car and drove to Centennial Medical Center (about a ten minute drive), mulling over what Dad had said. Come now, but don’t rush. What could that mean? Something within me calmed the panic from before almost as soon as I began the drive. Something within me told me that my life had changed forever. An odd assurance that something had happened, although I still couldn’t believe that my worst possible scenario had happened. But with that assurance came the equally strong—if not stronger—assurance that everything is going to be okay. Peace settled over my heart in a mysterious juxtaposition to the panic of my earlier drive.
I arrived at the hospital and walked over to Dad in the Emergency Room waiting area. He hugged me.
“Your mom passed away.” What? I couldn’t believe it, and yet a large part of me knew it was true. The shock distracted me from his words for a moment.
“I’m sorry. I should’ve called sooner. I should’ve just called the ambulance.”
“No Dad, I know you did all you could. It’s not your fault.”
I hugged him and he cried. I was still in too much shock to cry. It felt like a movie. It just didn’t seem real. This couldn’t be my family. It couldn’t be my mom that had died.
“Do you want to see her?”
“Yes,” I said immediately.
Back when Pop (Mom’s dad) died, I didn’t want to see him after he’d died because I wanted to remember him as he was alive, not dead.
This was different. I had to see her. To make it real.
We walked through double doors to an area with only curtains as partitions between the beds. She was in the first one. Small tubes were hooked up to her arms with IVs and such, and breathing tubes were hooked around her chin and into her mouth which gaped open. Her face had that pale look with a purplish hue in some areas. She looked asleep, peaceful but for the tubes in her face. It was like any second her beautiful brown and hazel and gold eyes would pop open with that look of love and she’d smile around the tubes. Her body was still though. Nothing moved. I asked if I could touch her. Dad said I could.
I stroked her forehead, unsure of my touch against the foreign state she was in. It was cold against my fingertips. Not just the chilled feeling of skin too long in cold air, but a distinct difference resonated in my fingers. It was a dead cold. Not an alive one that could be warmed again. I touched her hand. Took her fingers in mine. The lifeless limb did not squeeze back as it had ever since the day I was born. Those fingers that had stroked my own face and could put me to sleep even until that day.
That was the moment I cried.
Tears fell down my face. It was the moment of my first real heart break.

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That is what I remember. Maybe things said were a little off, but the thought processes were the same. It’s crazy to think that a year ago right now I was falling asleep on the phone with my best friend after she prayed the best prayer I’d ever heard over me because I felt so alone.
It just doesn’t feel like a year has gone by. Yet this year has been filled to the brim of God revealing Himself to me over and over again. Later that day just a year ago, each special miracle of those two days (that “something” that prompted me to spend a few minutes with her the night before, that “something” that told me that everything was going to be okay,  the little moments that leave me without regret) was God preparing me for what was to come, and since then He has been molding me from this experience into the person He has called to share my testimony with others who struggle with grief, anger, bitterness, loneliness, and many other painful feelings I’ve experienced this year.
My only token of grief in today is that I don’t get to see the way your beautiful eyes (I always loved the different colors within them) would light up in my sharing with you all of the amazing things God has been teaching me.
I think my letter writing is coming to a close. If anything, there might be a couple of letters to you sporadically. I’ve been writing to God much more and I simply don’t have the time for both. I’m sure you understand.
To use the words you wrote in your letter to me my senior year, I love you so and always will no matter what!

Your daughter,
Hannah