A Time of Miracles and Tender Mercies (Part 2)

(continued from yesterday's post)

Mom was ready to come home, but we knew she could not be alone. The plan was that Misty and Dan would live in her basement after the wedding. But in the meantime, she would stay at our house until Gary and Lynn came in for the wedding and she could go to her home with them

Even though it was stressful, this was a very sweet time for me. Because we live in Provo, as Mom and Dad had, there had never been a reason for her to spend the night like she did with Charlene and Richard in Salt Lake and Gary and Tom in California. While here, she seemed to thoroughly enjoy watching the wedding preparations and the comings and goings of a busy household. I can still picture her face and laughter on one occasion when we were sitting at the table talking. Gary came downstairs and held up a pair of his nice leather shoes. He didn’t say a word, but he didn’t have to. Mom and I exchanged glances and then started laughing. The shoes now had the tassels chewed halfway off. It wasn’t the first time, and it wouldn’t be the last, that our bunny had destroyed a pair of his shoes. Mom got such a kick out of that.

Mom had come home from the hospital on a Sunday. On Wednesday morning, just after Tiffany and Natalie left for school, she came downstairs to the kitchen and said, “I think the pain in my chest from the “paddles” has finally gotten better. She sat down at the table, almost instantly she collapsed with her head hitting the table, her glasses flying, and her body slumping over. I went over and put my arms around her from the back and held her saying, “Oh Mom, Mom.” I remember looking around wondering if Dad was there ready to take her with him.

What kept going through my mind was that I wasn’t supposed to revive her, but how could I just sit here? I yelled to Misty to call 911. She was downstairs, and did so. She said, “Mom, they said to start CPR.” My response was that I wasn’t supposed to. She said again, “Mom, you need to start CPR.” So we lowered her to the floor and I started the CPR. After going through a few of the sequences (still fresh on my mind from two weeks previously), I said, “Misty, she’s gone.” Misty again said, “Mom, you need to keep doing it.” As I did that, I’ll never forget seeing the shudder of breath come back into her and watching her chest rise when she started breathing again.

By the time the paramedics arrived she was breathing on her own, and by the time she was at the hospital she was asking where she was. In the emergency room the Dr, who after a cursory exam and chewing me out for resuscitating when the records said not to, sent her straight to a floor. That night before I went home, Mom was sitting up talking with us and visiting with her sisters.

Leaving her that night, my heart was full of such emotion, the strongest being the feeling of horror that I almost hadn’t tried to bring her back. Even if she hadn’t survived it, I would have still been grateful that I had done what I could. Thankfully, Misty was there to urge me on, or I’m sure I would have regrets today.

The miracle here besides the fact that she survived? One moment’s difference. Had she not come downstairs the moment she did, I would have gone upstairs a little later and found her in the bed already gone. Lucky that she happened to come down so we were able to do CPR? I don’t think so. It was more than luck.

After another day in the hospital, Mom came to our house again. It was now just a little over a week until the wedding. Again, I felt so blessed to have her here with us. Mom had never been one comfortable with thinking or talking about death, but there was a whole different feeling of peace and calm about her now. It gave me the feeling that, though she didn’t remember any of these episodes that on some level there was a new understanding or remembrance of an afterlife.

Mom had often related to us how she had missed her Dad much more after her Mom died than she had before. The explanation being, that as long as her Mom was alive, then a part of her Dad was also. I still remember her response during one of our conversations were I recalled and related that same feeling to her. I said, “You can’t go, Mom, because then we will have lost both of you.” She kind of shrugged her shoulders and said, “Well, if I die, I die.” Very accepting. Very at peace with it. We had not told Mom of the Doctor's dire diagnosis, because we did not want her to live in fear. I was horrified when I saw Mom looking at the emergency doctor's notes The ones that said she was not be resuscitated and “yet the daughter had anyway.” She looked at me and calmly said, “Well, what are you supposed to do, just sit there and watch me die?” I still feel that pain and anxiety in my heart when I remember those emotions.

Gary and Lynn came in a few days before the wedding and Mom went to her home with them. Words cannot express the love and appreciation I feel toward my sister and brothers. During both Dad and Moms lives, illnesses, and subsequent deaths they were right there with them. Never was there a feeling of aloneness, but always the knowledge that any and all of us would do whatever was needed to support Mom and Dad and each other. The flights in from California, vigils at the hospital with Dad, the unceasing support of Mom once Dad was gone. It never waned. I feel it even now, years after Mom and Dad are gone.

April 29, 1995, dawned bright and beautiful. It began early in Manti, Utah, at the LDS Temple. I had not seen Mom yet that morning, but I remember looking across the sealing room, making eye contact, and exchanging smiles. I felt so blessed to have her there.

We have some wonderful pictures of Mom on that day. They can tell the story much better than I can.

But, I’ll have to post those tomorrow. (I still need to scan them in).