GREAT BEND, Kan. - It was supposed to be a quiet Memorial Day, going to the Great Bend Cemetery to decorate graves, maybe a cookout in the evening. But May 27, 2002 started with an ominous call from my sister, a few blocks away at my parents' house: "Something is wrong with mom. She is at the hospital. It may be a heart attack."
My mom? Why she was just 72, in perfect health, to my knowledge. And her Mennonite parents both lived into their 90's. I was worried, but as I headed to the hospital I just knew they would figure out what was wrong and fix it. I probably could have gone into the emergency room and talked to her, but I didn't. I guess I didn't want to interfere with her treatment. When the Great Bend hospital decided to Lifewatch her to Wichita by helicopter, I was really scared, but I still thought---well, I guess I was in denial.
We had no heart attack history on my mom's side of the family at all. I still believed they would fix her, and things might be different, but we could all work to regain her to health.
It turned out that the problem was with the sac that surrounds the heart. The heart is contained in a "water balloon" type of sac, and it contains fluid, just enough to keep the heart beating regular. But my mom had too much fluid in that sac, and it was causing an irregular heart beat, and mental disorientation. At the Wichita hospital, I stayed out of the way and let the doctors do their work. I didn't try to get in the room.
In Wichita, the doctors inserted a needle into the sac to remove some of the excess fluid, and had some success. I was nervous, but optimistic. Life without mom was unthinkable. So I didn't even think about it---I blocked it out.
Then I saw my sister, who has a Masters in Nursing, walking down a long hospital corridor, and I could see she was crying. As she approached me, she said the three words I would never forget: "They coded mom."
The doctors and nurses fought like crazy to revive her. Meanwhile, my siblings and my Dad were in a room close by, saying "The Lord's Prayer," several times. When we saw exhausted nurses and doctors leaving the ER, pulling their masks off, and hauling their carts away, we knew it was over. The doctor appeared in the "family room" where we had been praying, and said: "I'm sorry. We did everything we could." And they did.
And the thing that bothers me today, every day, is that I never got to say goodbye. Eight years later, I would give anything just to talk to mom for five minutes, just to tell her how much I loved her.
Mother's Day is a lot different after your mom is gone. Every day of the year is different. Your life is different. There is such a huge void, and you don't realize how much space your mom took up in your heart until it's too late.
This is the first time I've ever wrote about my mom's death. My brother, Matt, has wrote many vignettes and tributes, but I have never read one word of his writings on Mom, because it's too painful.
If your mom is still alive, tell her today, on Mother's Day, what you would tell her if it was the last time you will ever talk to her. She will like it! It might be clumsy and uncomfortable, but I missed out on my chance. And it will bother me until the day I die. But then again, the day I die, I expect to see Mom again. And then I'll have an eternity to tell her how much I loved her. Not just five minutes.
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