The Deal

Fall used to be my favorite time of the year. I always loved the slight nip in the air, digging out my sweaters and buying mums for the front of the house. I have always been in complete awe of autumn leaves. The beautiful colors that fill the landscape, watching them gracefully float from their perch in the trees to the chilly sidewalk below. I loved hayrides, pumpkin patches, corn mazes and hot apple cider. There was nothing I didn't love about this time of the year. Until two years ago.
My mother was sick for the last fifteen years of her life. She did pretty well for most of it, despite being on dialysis and her occasional hospital stays. Two years ago, though, that all changed. In August 2008, my mother was taken to the hospital with difficulty breathing. Not a new problem, after all she had been on oxygen for several months already. It was only now that they discovered her breathing difficulties were not tied to her pulmonary system at all but to her heart and she needed surgery immediately. She spent a week waiting for surgery because of an infection they had to get under control first. Mom and I spent a lot of time talking during that week and some of those conversations have forever changed who I am.
It was during that same week that Nicholas was first diagnosed with brain cancer. I was visiting my mother in the hospital when Brian called me to tell me the doctors had just told him about the baseball sized tumor in his youngest child's brain. He too, would need surgery immediately.  I was stunned. Able to read my face like a book, when I hung up Mom asked what was wrong. I told her and she was silent. Neither of us knew exactly what to say.
I visited Mom several more times that week and we talked about this and that while watching the Little League World Series. One night we we talking and she said, "Kathleen, I have been doing a lot of thinking and I want you to know I have made a deal with God." "A deal?" I asked. She continued, "I have lived a good life. I have raised my children and gotten to see my grandchildren. I have traveled to places I always wanted to see. I've done most of the things I wanted to do." I was becoming uncomfortable with where this conversation was going. I could feel tears beginning to sting my eyes. "I want you to know that if only one of us is meant to survive, I have asked God to please take me. Nicholas is just a child. He hasn't lived his life yet and there is so much more for him to do."
The thing that has always stayed with me about that moment more than even the words my mother said, is how unusually calm she was when she was talking about her "deal". She wasn't sad or fearful at all. In fact, it was the most peaceful I had seen my mother in quite some time.
The morning of August 25, 2008 my mother had open heart surgery at St. Josephs Hospital in Towson.  My sister, Mary and I were there with her before they took her in. We hugged her and told her we loved her. She told us how much she loved us, too. That was the last time I ever heard my mothers voice. After surgery, she was in a coma for two gut wrenching weeks. On September 10, 2008 Nicholas had brain surgery at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. For several weeks, Mom and Nicholas would be at medical odds. One would do better while the other was doing worse. I spent my evenings driving between the two hospitals. After the coma, my mother came around a bit, though still on a ventilator. She was improving. Nicholas was not. Three days after his operation, he had to be rushed back to PICU because his brain was swelling at a dangerous rate.
For weeks, Mom and Nick went back and forth until one day the scales began to tip. Nicholas began to steadily improve while thirty miles away my mother began to slip away from us. I was emotionally split in two. The joy and relief I felt that Nicholas was finally improving was forgotten each time I saw my mother. I knew in my heart we were losing her. Each time I saw her, there was less recognition in her eyes. I would sit with her and tell her about my day, never sure if she knew who I was. While she slept, I held her hand and fixed her blankets. I didn't know what else to do.
After my mother suffered several massive strokes, infections and what the doctors felt was now the beginning of lymphoma, my sisters and I made the painful decision to do as our mother had asked; we signed the papers to move her to hospice. On September 28, 2008 we met the ambulance at the hospice center. As the ambulance workers wheeled her inside the building, it occurred to us that this would be the last time mom would ever feel the sun on her face. After hours by her bed, my sisters gathered up their kids and headed home. It wasn't ten minutes after they left that mom drew her last breath. It was a quiet, peaceful and dignified death. It was exactly what she had asked for.
I called for the nurse and she listened to my mothers heart. She quietly looked at me. "I'm so sorry, dear. Your mother has passed.". I felt dizzy, lightheaded and nauseous all at once. I felt like someone had violently twisted all my internal organs into a painful knot. I heard someone cry out as if they had been punched and realized later it was me.  I knelt next to the bed and sobbed into my mothers shoulder for the last time. I cried for my loss. I cried for my family's loss.  I cried for the injustice of her life cut short. I cried for all the things I never said and for all the things I forgot to apologize for. I cried for not thanking her enough for the sacrifices she made for us. I cried for the deal she had made with God.
Since my mom passed away I have healed a lot. I no longer have the twisting pain in my stomach that lasted for months. I no longer cry every time I talk about or think about her, though to be honest, I have cried almost the entire time I have been writing this. I just miss her. I miss her in the way you miss your best friend that has been away too long. I want to talk to her. I want to hear her voice. I want her to hug me and tell me everything will be okay. There is an aching hole in my heart that will never be filled in. If there is anything that has given me even a small measure of comfort, though, that has helped to soften some of the jagged edges of the hole left behind it is the deal mom made with God. In true mom style, she wanted to give of herself to a child, no matter the sacrifice - and she did just that.