September 24, 2008....the day my life changed, again.

It’s amazing the amount of recall that one can have after three years. The ordeal itself started on a Monday afternoon while I was at work. I received a call from my Mother’s nursing home that she was in sort of a down mood and lonely. So I called her and talked to her for a bit, reminded her that I would be up to see her on Wednesday that week before work and would bring her lunch. She reminded me she wanted a strawberry shake, she was particular about her ice cream.

By Tuesday afternoon I had received another phone call from the nursing home. The nurse who took care of my Mom was asking if I had planned to come to see her that night and I told her no, I was coming the next day. She said that was good because my Mother was very agitated throughout the day, very combative and very out of character for her, so they prescribed a sedative and she was sleeping. For some reason I didn’t think anything of it at the time, but by the next morning I would start to put things together.

Which brings us to Wednesday morning; I get a call from the nursing home. This time they are informing me that they have called in the “critical care” nurse from the Hospice center as things were not looking good. I told them I would stop up on my way to work and would be there shortly. And from the minute I walked into the room, I knew that sadly, today was the day I would say good bye to my Mother. And that was when I put it together, the comment the nurse made about my Mother’s strange behavior from the previous day, that was how she acted years earlier after she suffered her stroke. And I think that she ultimately had a massive one sometime on Tuesday, which then lead us to the events of Wednesday afternoon.

I had only witnessed death once before, when my Father died in 1989, which is already one time too many in my opinion. I was only 14 years old and was terrified to even go near him, afraid to hold his hand, afraid to even be in the room. You always hear people describe death as a “peaceful” thing, and I can tell you, that’s really a bunch of bullshit. It was terrifying to watch when I was 14, and still just as horrible to watch when I was 33.

When the person who raised you, took care of you, comforted you in your times of fear and panic is suddenly reduced to a barely conscious being that is gasping for breath every few seconds, it’s not the most comforting sight in the world. The only thing that gave me some amount of comfort was that she was not alone. I was there to say goodbye, my brother was there, my fiancé (now husband) was there, her older sister was there and her best friend from the age of five was there, everyone was able to say goodbye and she was surrounded by the people who loved her.

My Mother was a remarkable person. Any lesser person would have been insufferable to be around. For everything that was wrong with her life, she saw the best in the situation. When my Father was diagnosed with cancer, she took it in stride, when he died four years later, she held it together, even though years later she would admit to me how hard it was to know that she would never feel his arms around her again, she wouldn’t trade the 30 years that she had with him for anything.

When she was struck down by a massive brain aneurism that should have killed her at the age of 50, not only did she manage to survive, but despite being left paralyzed on the left side of her body, she managed to become the most capable handicapped person I knew. (Trust me, I had a cat with a broken tail, she broke a few of my toes and I saw her mow down countless people while Christmas shopping over the years…none of it was intentional of course, well maybe the Christmas shoppers, but in her defense, she did say “excuse me” several times.)

She always laughed and had a smile on her face; she always looked on the bright side of things, always put her faith in God and never complained about the hand that had been dealt to her. She always told me that “God never closed a door without opening a window”, and I think that she truly believed that.

But then again, this is the same Mom, who with a great sense of humor also taught me that “it’s always darkest right before you get hit by a bus.”

Not ready for the Football....

Here in Nebraska you can tell when football season is approaching. You start to see red everywhere you go, you start hearing people changing the ringtones on their phone to the Husker fight song, and for me you start to see me get a little depressed.
See my Mother was the biggest and loudest Husker fan on the planet. I mean hell hath no fury like my Mom and her best friend of forty some years watching the game every Saturday and screaming at the screen, and crying when they made the National Championships. Seriously, my Mother was hard core when it came to the Huskers.
There’s an awesome picture of my Mother and I, taken in the fall of 1975, a few months after I was born. Now keep in mind that back in the 70’s, the University was a little behind the times and not quite the marketing machine that it is these days. So long story short, kids clothing in a Husker line didn’t exist. So being the crafty lady with a sewing machine that she was, she MADE me my first Husker sweatshirt.
Through all that my Mother went through in her life, with her stroke, losing her husband to cancer, and so many other little things that would have gotten the rest of the down, she persevered. She never let things get to her and once Fall came around, no matter how bad a week could be….she always had Saturday to look forward to. And she always knew what was going on, from listening to the games on the radio, to watching them on TV, getting pay per views, and my favorite, using her only daughter as a source for information while I was at my first game.
It’s true, they were the dark years in Lincoln, or as some call them the “Callahan years” and when Tim’s family found out that I had never been to a game. Long story short, we had tickets to the Nebraska vs. Texas A&M game. I think it was A& M, anyway…when you listen on the radio you have about a 20 second delay with the Pinnacle Sports Network, knowing that and listening to the radio my cell phone wouldn’t stop ringing. I answered, “Hello?” Mom’s response? “Is it as bad as it sounds? My response “No, Mom, it’s worse…they just ran the option and scored a touchdown.” Mom starting to yell, “They ran the OPTION? THIS IS NEBRASKA, WE INVENTED THE OPTION!” It kept going like this for the rest of the game.
That was the season of 2007, Callahan’s final season as head coach and then the Pellini era began in Nebraska in 2008. Sadly, she didn’t get to see a game on TV that season, but she did listen to a few. When I spoke at her memorial service I made the comment about how both my Mother and her friend Jeanette (who passed away five years prior to my Mother) always said, that if heaven didn’t have Husker Vision, they were coming back. Seeing as I haven’t seen either of them, the view must be spectacular
Three years have passed since I lost my mother. And I guess it’s still a little too hard for me to utter the words, “Go Big Red”.