I’ve always envied my female friends for the close relationship they have with their mothers.  My relationship with my mother had always been strained.  We bumped heads constantly from my teen years to adulthood and seldom saw eye to eye on anything.  I ached on the inside for acceptance from her, yet never seemed to get it.  From the way I dressed, to the way I wore my hair, to any decisions I made in my life, I never seemed to please her.

When we relocated from South Carolina to North Carolina, my daughter and I stayed with her for 6 months and things only got worse.

I had to listen to her tell me every few days how much she wanted to be alone in her house and how she felt burdened with our presence there.  Although I searched for a job everyday, I never found one that was stable.  That only added more pressure to our already strained relationship.  By the time the 6 months was over, I was only too happy to leave her house! Too happy to have my own 4 walls to dwell in; too happy to give her her space and freedom; too happy to say goodbye and put distance between us.

I was gone for 4 months and seldom spoke to her or visited.  Then one Friday morning while I was at work I got a text from my mother stating she didn’t feel well and wanted to go to the hospital.  Before I was able to leave work, my cousin was able to take her to urgent care.   Apparently she was diagnosed with food poisoning and was given fluids for her dehydration.

The next morning my mother called to see if I could pick some things up from the drug store for her.  When I got to her house she was in so much pain, it was unsettling.  I had never heard someone vomit so violently before.  Against my better judgment, after I made her as comfortable as possible, I went home.  I told her to call me if she needed me.  Although I felt guilty about leaving her, I kept thinking about all the times she told me how she just wanted to be alone and how happy she would be when my daughter and I finally moved out.

The next day I slept late.  When I awoke and saw she hadn’t called, I assumed she was feeling better.  It wasn’t until 6:30pm when I started calling her on her house and cell phone and got no answer.  An hour later,  I called my aunt to see if she had heard from her.  When my aunt told me she had been calling my mother all day and got no answer either, I got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

By 8:30pm my daughter and I were walking through her front door.  As soon as I got in and saw how the house was completely dark and quiet, my body started feeling cold.

As I walked through the house I started calling out to her as loud as I could.  ”MOTHER!!!!”.  I called out to her with each step I took until I was about     20 ft from her bedroom.  It was then I stopped frozen with fear.  For the first time in my life I experienced complete terror and what it means to be chilled to the bone.

My daughter, who was behind me, turned a light on and said, “Mom, what happened in here?”  I turned around to see the living room in complete disarray.  The end tables were turned over, the chairs were askew, and things were strewn all over.  The house didn’t look that way the day before and I knew something was terribly wrong.

I could see the darkness in her bedroom and was more aware that although I was yelling at the top of my lungs, she still had not answered me.  I was so in tune with how all the years of disagreeing and bumping heads went out the window.  I was scared.

It wasn’t until I started yelling out to her again, “Mother” and I heard a faint groan that I was able to enter her room.

I turned the light on and found her sitting on her bed in a state of delirium, but at least she was alive.  I called 911 and they were there in about 5 minutes.  I never saw food poisoning do this to somebody.

We got to the hospital a little after 9:30pm and it went downhill from there.  She had a fever of 104 and was in tremendous pain.

I watched her take a decline that scared the hell out of me.  Her lips were completely white and she looked like something out of a horror flick.

She made noises that sounded like she hurt like she never had before.  The emergency room staff couldn’t tell me what was wrong with her and it was pissing me off.

We didn’t leave the hospital until well after 5am and by then she was unconscious.

When I got back to the hospital around 8am, they were able to tell me my mother had pneumonia and bacterial meningitis.

When I asked if she was going to be alright they were honest and told me they didn’t know.  They said they’d seen people come out of it, end up with permanent brain damage, or die.

To that I said, “You don’t know my God, she’s not going to die”.  But I was scared.

Over the next 8 days I watched her everyday lay in that bed completely still with her eyes open; they never closed.  I reached out to all my friends to ask them to pray for full recovery for my mother.

On about the 5th day, I was alone in her room looking at her and wondering what was going on inside her mind and if she was aware of her condition.  I don’t know how long I’d been sitting like that but I went to her, sat on the bed, laid my head on her chest and just lost it.

Through my sobs I called out to the Creator, “Please, God, don’t take my mother from me”.  I don’t know how long I lie on her chest like that, but I started feeling guilty.  The last thing she needed was a crying sack of fear on her chest, I had to be stronger.

On the 7th night I left the hospital at around 8pm to do my laundry.  Before I left I asked the nurse if she could give my mother something for pain since she was hollering out from time to time.  When I returned around 11:30pm I could hear her screaming out as soon as I got off the staircase.  I was angry that she’d been hollering in pain since I left at 8pm.

I summoned the nurse and inquired why she hadn’t given her something sooner.  The nurse stated she hadn’t been hollering out for the entire time and gave her a shot of pain medication.

I was kneeling beside her as she quieted down and I said, really to myself, “look at me”.  She had had a fixed stare for 7 days and I really didn’t expect her to look.  I was about to stand, but before I did I saw her look me square in my eyes.  In my excitement I said, “You’re looking at me.”  Her eyes wandered off into a fixed stare again and I said, “No, I saw you.  You just looked at me, look at me again.”  I said it 3 more times and the 3rd time she did.  I got so excited I started crying.  “You’re looking at me.  I see you, you’re looking at me.”  She looked at me for about 2-3 minutes and I was the happiest I’d been in 7 days.

Her gaze wandered back into that stare again but I didn’t care.  I took this as a sign that she was going to be okay.  I left the hospital around 1am wondering what was yet to come.

The next morning my cousin called me around 9am when she got to the hospital and told me when she entered my mother’s room she was alert and said, “Hi, how are you.”  I rushed to the hospital to see for myself.

When I got there my mother was smiling and greeted me like she hadn’t seen me in a long time.  I couldn’t believe it, God is good all the time.

After another month in the hospital and going through rehab, she had had permanent effects from the meningitis.  She is completely deaf in her left ear and has very little hearing in the right ear.  She still has vertigo and she can’t drive yet, but all that will come in time.  We all prayed for full recovery and she comes closer to that with each passing day.

I believe God allows things to happen in our lives for a reason and although I don’t know the reason for my mother’s near death experience, I am grateful for what it has done for our relationship.

You see, when she was released from the hospital she required 24/7 care and that went on for a little over a month.  I was her dominant caregiver and I made sure all her needs were met.  As a result, she learned to depend on me and trust me as well.  We are now closer than we’ve ever been in my life and I finally got the mother-daughter relationship I always wanted.

Although she has come a long way from that first night she got sick, she is  still recovering from what the effects of the meningitis.  She had surgery to insert a cochlea implant to help her with the deafness and is still adjusting to learning to live with a hearing impediment.  She is still taking physical therapy to help her become more stable on her feet, but overall, she’s okay and that’s what matters most.

I’ve heard it said that God works in mysterious ways.  I’ve wondered if this happened to bring us closer, but then, God is not a cruel God so I really don’t know.  What do you think?

Hotep

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 27th, 2009 at 10:30 PM and is filed under Featured Writers!!, My Voice by Sallie Goode!!. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.