Because You Loved Me

I've wanted to write about this experience on this blog for a while now, but every time I had a spare moment or two, I put it off. Believe me, I have a million stories to share. It's just something about this one that is driving me to tell it yet I'm resisting. I recognize why...it's so painful. When your heart is slashed open, the grieving process is long and difficult. The tiny stitches of healing work their way across the wound ever so surely but ever so slowly. In the back closet of my mind, a part of me fears picking at those stitches. God must need me to share in order to help someone else because he will not let me off the hook.

It is good, Lord!

If my tears dry another person's tears,
If my pain mends another's heart,
If my hand that was turned away comforts someone down the road,
If the words of MY story bring others to you, Lord,
Then it is good.*

*I wrote this poem in my journal in July 2007 after reading a devotion my cousin sent me.

Well, here  it is...

The team of doctors treating my mom back in 1996 threw in the towel. They could do nothing more for her. The hospital administrators and her team decided she should be moved to the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston. Her health was rapidly deteriorating. This move gave us hope. Maybe a specialist there could help her. I pulled behind the ambulance as they readied her for transport. Struggling to breathe even with oxygen, she lifted herself up on the stretcher and scanned frantically for my familiar face. "I'm here, Mama. I won't leave you" are the words I spoke to the air. My dad and sister rushed home to pack a bag. I was to follow the ambulance since I lived nearby. Relief washed over her face when she saw me. Our eyes locked and she reclined on the stretcher.  Having been told we could not ride in the ambulance with her because of the liability, I waited numbly for my next instructions. After locking the back door tight, the ambulance driver leaned into my window and said, "We'll be traveling pretty fast with the lights on and we're supposed to tell you, we're not responsible for your traffic tickets."

And we were off. Like Scout Finch said in To Kill a Mockingbird..."Thus began our longest journey together."

(If you ever want to know what "helpless" and "fear" feel like, follow an ambulance with someone you love in it for two hours.)

After days and days of tests, my mom's new team of doctors still were unable to figure out what was causing her lungs to harden so quickly. The chronic illness she was diagnosed with a few months prior was suspect, but they were dumbfounded as to why. They needed to do a lung biopsy in order to find out but this was risky. She would be put on a ventilator during the procedure and the doctors told us it was a huge chance she wouldn't be able to be taken off  after the procedure because of the condition of her lungs. We held a family meeting in her hospital room. We all agreed this was her last hope and her only option. Little did we know then, there was no hope.

The doctors tried to prepare us for "the worst" and "the worst" indeed happened. She never breathed again without the ventilator. Our days became all about waiting for ten minutes until the next hour when the ICU allowed us to sit by her bed, stroke her hair and talk to her even though she was no longer able to talk to us. Or so we thought.

During one afternoon visit, my sister and I noticed tears streaming from her eyes as we talked to her. When we asked her nurse about this, she assured us that Mama was too drugged to be coherent and the water coming from her closed eyes must be a reaction to some eye lubricant they had administered. As the door shut behind her, Daf and I questioned her theory. The "water" coming out of her eyes would stop and start as we talked to her. Finally one of us...I don't remember who...asked her, "Mama, can you hear us?" Upon hearing this question, she raised her eyebrows furiously up and down.

"Are you in pain?"   No response.
"Are you sad?"  Eyebrows up and down
My sister and I shook our heads in disbelief. Then I knew what it was. Something just told me.
"Are you worried about us?" Eyebrows up and down over and over and over.
My precious mama was hooked up to a million tubes with a machine breathing for her yet she was worried about us. Now that I'm a mother, I GET IT!

Red, I understand now.

We kept asking her questions until our visit was over. Our hearts were breaking but we were so thankful for that time spent communicating with her. She seemed so far away even then.

The next day the doctors gave us "the talk." There was nothing more they could do. There was no cure. There was no hope. They would make her comfortable. To make matters worse, they still didn't really know what was happening. The only thing they DID know was she was dying. After hearing this, my dad looked at one of the doctors and asked, "When can we take her home?" I remember looking at him like he was an idiot. Take her home? Had he NOT heard what the doctors said? Now I know about the denial he was going through but at the time, it made me angry. He was supposed to take care of "things" and lead us on this path. At that moment, I knew I would have to take charge. Mama and I had briefly talked about this before her procedure but I hadn't wanted to deal with it so I hushed her. She told me that I was a "Steel Magnolia" and I would have to be the strong one. She also told me she wanted me to have, as a wedding present, the painting she had just finished a few months earlier of a magnolia. Oh, to go back to those precious moments. I would give anything.

That same afternoon after her grim prognosis during one of our visits, I noticed the TV in Mama's room being on. It had never been on before. Celine Dion's hit song/video, "Because You Loved Me," was playing. The significant nature of this song was NOT lost on me nor on my sister. (It took us at least a year before we could even talk about it together.) Sitting there on either side of Red, we cried buckets of tears while listening to this song.

You were my strength when I was weak
You were my voice when I couldn't speak
You were my eyes when I couldn't see
You saw the best there was in me

Lifted me up when I couldn't reach
You gave me faith 'cause you believed
I'm everything I am
Because you loved me.

How prophetic and true. I AM EVERYTHING I AM because she loved me.