Truthfully, I’d love for you to read all my blog posts, because usually I am blogging for someone else, but today I am just writing to get some things said.
I really hope you will come back tomorrow for the blog post I have scheduled.
Tomorrow is my RubberMoon post and it is a tribute to my mom who would have been 70 tomorrow.
She was born April 14, 1944.
She passed away in September of 2008. When I think I have my mom, I still have so much grief and I was comparing it to how I feel about my grandma who passed away in 2002.
My grandma’s death doesn’t have the sting and deep ache like my mom’s does and I wondered why? With my grandma, we all had ample time to prepare for her death.
She was on hospice care and died at home, my mom’s home, which is where my grandma lived from the time I was about 14 and on.
I wouldn’t say her death was peaceful, but she was ready and it was a relief to have her be at rest.
Fast Forward 6 years, my mom had been hospitalized and was in the ICU. She wasn’t a healthy person by any means. She was very overweight, diabetic and had complications from both diseases.
She was in the hospital for something to do with her heart and her breathing. They were having a hard time getting her to keep her oxygen levels normal and she was having a lot of trouble breathing.
I had visited her on a Friday night. We lived about an hour away from where she was in the hospital. I had 7 kids, ranging from 15 years to 1-year-old at home. Getting to see my mom wasn’t an easy task.
But I wanted to see her every day. I couldn’t be there on Saturday and Sunday proved to be futile also. I called in and spoke to the nurses but she was always sleeping and promised they’d let her know I couldn’t make it to see her but that I’d called to check on her.
Monday morning I got a call from the hospital letting me know that I needed to get to the hospital immediately, my mom had slipped into a coma and was unresponsive and was on life support.
They told me they could not get a hold of my dad and I needed to contact him as well. Imaging having this stress on you, lining up child care and then being in control enough to make the hour’s drive alone.
I got to the hospital and met my dad there. They were just wheeling her away to have a CT scan done. They brought her back and we waited. She was just a shell in that hospital bed.
The doctor came in with the bad news, she had suffered a brain aneurysm and was not going to come out of the coma. The brain had been to badly damaged to ever recover.
We had 2 options, let her live on life support, or follow her wishes and take her off of life support and allow her to pass on. This wasn’t even a thing to discuss.
There was no way we could keep her in the vegetative state she was in.
Another doctor came in, a sort of 2nd opinion, and did all the tests they do to confirm that a person is “brain-dead.”
Here is where my heartache begins and never ends. He checked her eyes, mouth, nose and different nerves, etc.
He lifted the sheet covering her feet and I caught a glimpse of the state her feet were in. How badly she needed something so simple as a pedicure.
Diabetics tend to have unhealthy feet and hers had gone so long without being cared for, the image will never, ever leave me.
I have big ol’ crocodile tears running down my face, even typing these words.
But, there is a reason I share this. I don’t think anyone can ever hear enough that you have to live today like it could be your last.
You do not know when you say goodbye to someone, when you will see them again.
With my mom, I would do anything to have a better memory than the one I have when I close my eyes and I see her poor little feet.
I’d give anything to bathe those feet, clip those toenails, smooth those calluses and paint those toes a shiny bright pink for her. She so deserved it and couldn’t do it for herself.
So, learn from this…look around you, who do you love? Is there someone you meant to show kindness to?
Don’t put off tomorrow what you can do today, because, tomorrow they could be gone.
Thank you for reading, if nothing else, I needed to get this out.
Please take the time to watch this beautiful video that makes me think of my mom, every time I hear it.
The Polka Cabana 