hard times

Perhaps our eyes need to be washed by our tears once in a while, so that we can see Life with a clearer view again.”

Alex Tan

The last two weeks of my life have been interesting…both beautiful and devastating. The Saturday before Easter, at 1:30 in the morning, I got a phone call that my mom was having difficulty breathing and was being taken to the hospital. I rushed to get dressed and my husband and I drove the 5 minutes to the hospital. They had stabilized her in the emergency department and we sat with her until about 4 am. They decided to move her to the transitional unit until they could get her into a room. I drove Jeff back home, grabbed a shower and went right back. Around 7am, she began to breathe heavily again. I told the nurse and within minutes we went from having a conversation to her being surrounded by four nurses and me in the bathroom calling Jeff to ask him to come back to the hospital. I was afraid she was going die.

I considered for one moment, not coming out of the bathroom. It felt safe in there. I could cry with no one seeing me. I could be safe from making any decisions. You see….just weeks before, my mom asked me to be her Power of Attorney. That means I can make decisions for her….not just financial or legal decisions but life and death decisions. The weight of that responsibility fell heavily on my shoulders. At one point, they had entered the room and asked her if she would consent to a procedure. As she gasped for breath, gripped her chest because of the pressure, she asked me, through her tears, what she should do. Part of her wants this whole life journey to just be over and part of her wants to live. Those types of decisions are nearly impossible to make. I don’t want to see her suffer but I don’t want to lose her either. What trust to put in another human being to allow them to make these serious choices on your behalf.

I remember thinking “I want to be somewhere else…I want to be somewhere else…anywhere but here, doing anything but this.” Then I remembered that one of my longings, one of the aspects of my spiritual life I have been working on is being present – being present to what is….not to what has been or what will be but to what is. And what God was asking me to be present to in this moment was the reality that my mom was struggling to breathe…that she was scared and that I was the one who was with her. I found myself praying asking God to help me be completely open to my mom, to her struggle and to what He was doing within me and within her.
She agreed to the procedure and she began to stabilize. By early afternoon, she was in her room upstairs. It was a grueling week. Three blood transfusions, a heart cath, a colonoscopy and an endoscopy, blood tests too numerous to count, sky high blood sugars complicated by steroids to help her breathe, high blood pressure, blood loss…you get the picture. For three days and nights, I was with her. When you are the one responsible for making such important decisions, you better know everything that is going on. It was an exhausting time filled with emotional roller coaster moments. But – it wasn’t all bad. And that is a story for another day….perhaps tomorrow.

May you find yourself present today to all God has for you, be it good or be it difficult. He wastes nothing. Live in the moment.

Grace and peace,
Deb