Choose Your Own Ending

She was a bundle of juxtapositions.  Control top nude pantyhose, and no makeup.  $200 Fuchsia Silk Dress and Natural Nails.  Custom Built home 1/2 Mile from the Country Club, loathed those pretentious bitches.  She had everything to prove and didn’t give a shit.  She was who she was up until she the moment she took her last breath.  It was all premeditated and accidental simultaneously.

Christmas Eve, 2014 I was home with my children and husband in our tiny home in the middle of Nowheresville, SC.  I had tried to reach my Mama at least 15 times that day and the day previously, aka Christmas Eve-Eve.  It was not unusual for her not to answer a time or two, or even five, but literally 15 times?!  Something was wrong.  I had called Daddy every other time I called Mama to no avail.  Finally he picked up around 5PM on Christmas Eve.  He said Mama’s phone had died and that he was taking care of her as she wasn’t feeling well.  He said he was bringing her laptop to her, and that she had asked for Cottage Cheese and Tomatoes.

This was when I heard her in the background.  She was groaning.  Almost to the point of hollering.  I said “Daddy!  Call an ambulance!  It sounds like she’s having a stroke!” .  Goodness knows how long she had been in this state.  This realization is debilitating to me for many reasons.  The biggest of which is that my father is a very educated man.  He was a Pharmacist for decades.  He knows the signs of stroke.  And yet, because of his own hang ups about hospitals or maybe because he was scared, he did nothing for who knows how long.  It plagues me that this crucial time could have meant the difference between life and death for my Mama.  For this reason, I blame my sweet father for the death of my Mama.

She had a Carotid Endarterectomy the October before her death.  This was supposed to remove the blockage from her right carotid artery.  It was a day surgery essentially.  I came to the hospital the day of her surgery and sat with Daddy while it was happening.  We watched pre-election craziness, and he talked about how much he liked Trump.  I brought a book with me and pretended to read it.  The waiting room was weird.  It was almost like a classroom in a way.  There were people in one corner of the room sleeping on an inflatable mattress, and there were people near us that were behaving as though it were a family reunion.  I remember it being cold, the AC was on in October, and everyone was uncomfortable in these hard, plastic chairs.

Finally the doctor, evidently one of the best in the land, per my Daddy, came in and said Mama was out of surgery, and that we could see her soon.  We had been in this weird room for every bit of 8 hours now, and we easily had 2 to 3 more to go before we could go see her.  So we waited. Daddy called my sisters, and told them Mama was out of surgery and doing well.  He even called her best friend Lucky and told him that she was out of surgery as she had spoken to Lucky and his wife, Mama’s other childhood best friend, Sue beforehand.  They were happy and asked for updates.  I could be wrong, but I remember Daddy even calling Pastor Boyd, my childhood pastor and a dear friend to my parents.

All of this to say that this was a big deal.  This surgery was major surgery.  She had 75% blockage in this artery, and removing this was a huge deal.  She was petrified after learning just how dire the blockage was; it really brought her mortality to light.

I came back to visit her after the surgery about a month later with my children, Max and Macey.  Max was 8, and Macey was 5.  We were so happy to see her, and so pleased at how well she was doing.  Her wound was not healing the best.  It was inflamed at the incision site.  Daddy said he had put her on an antibiotic that their (worthless) GP had prescribed at the advice of his patient, my father, the pharmacist with a silver tongue.  She had also been using Mederma, as her vanity caused her to be worried about the scar.  They stopped the usage of the Mederma and attributed the inflammation to the topical ointment as she did have very sensitive skin.

Mama, Max, Macey and I went to Charlestowne Landing and walked the grounds and saw all the indigenous animals, and Mama only stopped a couple of times and corrected Max and Macey a few times.  They were little and there as lots of (boring) history for them to tolerate.  Towards the end of our trek, I noticed how gray she looked.  How tired she seemed.  We left and went home.

I neglected to mention that Mama and I completely missed all the signs to the visitor parking.  Somehow we ended up on roads that felt *just* big enough for my Volkswagen.  I was not focusing on just how close to slipping into the marsh we were because of all the  beautiful Live Oaks and their showy Spanish Moss.  Their whispering hypnotized me into a calmness I cannot describe.  This memory is so bright and white in my memory.  Mama and I laughed at how “bad” we were being.  We surely were off the beaten path, and perhaps breaking all the rules.  And for this, we laughed.  She was my co-conspirator.  She loved to shake shit up as much as I do.  She loved to laugh in the face of the “rules”.  She taught me how to break the rules in such a way no one ever knew they were broken.  And, if they did find out that you deviated from their prescribed normalcy, you smiled at them and made your eyes wide, and said “oh, I must have misunderstood.”

She was, I think in control of her passing without even knowing it.  That Christmas Eve, I raced down back roads at speeds far over the speed limit.  I left the house with my precious children in their matching Christmas Eve PJ’s, and my loving husband totally bewildered, but understanding.  It was, and still is, ridiculously surreal.  I packed a bag at light speed, and had nothing in it that made sense.  This might be gross, but I wore the same pants for 3 days.

I arrived in Charleston before midnight.  I called Daddy as soon as I found a parking space.  He walked out and met me and I hugged him so hard I thought I would break him in two.  He said the usual stereotypical dad things like “You didn’t have to come” and “You made good time”.  I nodded and we proceeded into the ER waiting room.  We weren’t there for long before they moved us to another part of the hospital.  They moved Mama to ICU, and we followed.  Daddy told me how the Medics in the Ambulance got there so quick and that he told them repeatedly not to take her to the hospital in Summerville (his reasons for hating this hospital are innumerable, the biggest of which is because he was treated like a druggie when he was in actuality Septic), and to take her to MUSC, which they did.  He complimented them on just how quick and apologetic they were for having to rearrange things in the kitchen to get to her in the bedroom just down the hall.  He went into great detail about how they had to roll up the Oriental runner in the kitchen and how much they apologized for doing so.

He also told me again, that he had tried to give her water, but she could not drink it.  That she had fallen on the floor and could not get up.  That the entire left side of her face and body had gone limp.  That it all happened so quickly.  It was at this time I saw tears in his eyes.  He watched the love of his life crumble before his eyes.  Watched her go from being a bit groggy and ill feeling to limp and groaning.  My heart hurt for him, but I was still angry and repressing it all because what good would my anger do either of us at this time?

We were able to go back and see her around midnight.  She was asleep and the left corner of her mouth sagged.  All color was gone from her.  The person in that bed was not my Mama.  In my mind, she left us that night.  We were fighting to keep her shell functioning.  Her soul was someplace else.  Daddy commented repeatedly how she was squeezing his hand.  My sisters were calling the nurses and me and asking for a play-by-play.  I wasn’t sure what more they wanted to know other than; “Mama had a major stroke.  She is non verbal.  She has paralysis.  She needed 7 bags of fluid because she was so dehydrated.”

That last part still sticks in my craw.  7 BAGS.  How did she get that dehydrated?  How sick had she been and for how long?  Because my father cannot answer anything about this directly I will never know.  He doesn’t even acknowledge the fact that I called countless times, to both of them, over a 24 hour period leading up to her stroke. There was a male internist that told us that the number of bags of fluid given to Mama were upwards of that given to a homeless person they had brought in not too long ago.  My heart was breaking.

I will forever think that if I had tried harder to intervene during that time, she may still be here.

After a day of being in that room in ICU, we fell in love with her male nurse.  He was Hispanic and very good.  He helped us understand and gave us hope.  We watched the Speech Pathologist try to give her a swallow test, and listened as she talked about how the noises she was making were “good”.  They sounded nothing like my Mama, how on Earth was that good?  We listened to a well-meaning internist tell us that “She was afraid Carol had cancer.”  I’m sorry WHAT?  I’m pretty sure for 24 hours now we are very certain she had a stroke.  She wanted to point out the fact that there was a malformation on Mama’s breast.  This malformation was something we all joked about since I was a girl.  When most women get a chill, their nipples stick out, Mama’s left one would retreat.  It was hilarious, and a benign sort of deformity that she thought was hilarious.  Daddy and I told this intern in  no uncertain terms to STFU.

Fast forward to the 27th.  I had been in the hospital with Daddy for 2 days.  Not much had changed.  My eldest sister Kristen came to relieve me, as I had missed Christmas with my family and my birthday is on the 28th.  Why in the hell I thought I should go back home and work a day to relieve my coworker is beyond me.  But I did, and I cried all day.  Every person I came in contact with I cried.  They innocently would ask me; “How was your Christmas” and I would tear up and tell them just how it was.  One resident (I was in Property Management at the time) got this reaction from me and without skipping a beat said “WHY THE HELL ARE YOU HERE?”  I told him I didn’t know.  Then went home and had the saddest Birthday Sushi Dinner ever had.

I then went back to Charleston on the 29th to find both of my sisters there.  Mind you they had been keeping me in the loop while I was gone.  Mama had been moved down the hall for some kind of scan, and while they were moving her, she stroked again.  It was a very violent, scary thing.  They almost lost her right then and there.  I can’t remember the play-by-play but suffice it to say it was bad.

By the time I got to Mama, they had moved her again to another part of the hospital with the Neuro specialists and whatnot.  There was one tiny man who was evidently the Brain Guy to end all Brain Guys who told us that Mama had over the years a number of mini strokes.  These we chalked up to all the times she got “head rushes” or “felt dizzy” upon standing.  Something her mother and grandmother would call “swimmy headed”.  He showed us a scan of her brain in which there was so much black.  So much black.  These were evidently the dead zones in her brain.  It was at this point I knew we didn’t have much time left.  But, we never gave up hope.

My sister Ashley, Kristen, Daddy and I on New Year’s Eve day realized at about 2PM that none of us had eaten.  We all decided to go for a late lunch to Fleet Landing and have seafood and all the Bloody Mary’s we could force down our gullets.  We sat at a table near the water and watched the waves and gulls.  We shared silly stories and ate until we were full, and drank until we had a bit of a balm on our ragged nerves.  At which point we drove back to the hospital after having been gone for all of an hour.  Evidently Mama had a bit of an “episode” because they were cleaning up in her room.  The nurse pulled Ashley to the side and told her that she vomited blood and that the end was drawing near.  It was later that Ashley said that she had prayed to God for a sign.  A sign because we were told earlier that we would have to make a decision soon to take her off the ventilator.

The staff we had been dealing with sent us into a room to speak with the Palliative Care Councilor.  She was lovely.  Very kind and patient without being condescending.  She asked Daddy a few times to open up and talk about what was going on and every time he diverted the discussion to stories about his pharmacy.  This was a common tactic.  Every member of the staff there knew at this point that Daddy owned a Pharmacy for the better part of 20 years, and then sold it and moved to Charleston and ran the outpatient pharmacy at MUSC and Roper.

I called my other sister Dana and explained in no uncertain terms that she needed to get to Charleston immediately.  She arrived around 6PM on New Year’s Eve.  She came into Mama’s room, saw her and began to cry.  I directly asked one of the nurses to please come explain to Dana what was going on.  Dana has learning disabilities.  She is one of the most devoted, caring people you will ever meet.  But, she does have issues understanding anything above that of something geared towards a third grader.  The male doctor that came in was amazing.  He went above and beyond and showed Dana the images of Mama’s brain where the clotting/dead matter was.  This still is so very vivid to me.  After he was finished explaining, he asked Dana if she had any questions.  She said; “Yes.  Can I hug you?”  To which he said “Uh, sure?”  We watched to make sure she did not break him, and he blushed.  Dana then said “You’re so handsome.”  Which made him blush even brighter.  The doctor left, and Daddy, Dana and her husband Scott shortly went home as well.  I had this overwhelming feeling that Mama had been waiting for Dana.  At this point we watched her “let go”.

Kristen, Ashley and I sat around Mama almost as a vigil it seems now looking back.  I up until this point had never seen someone go through the stages of death.  The brackish water in the collection bag.  The brown ooze in the container on the wall that was evidently everything in her just letting go.  The steady drop of blood pressure, followed by heartbeat.  It was at about midnight that the attending nurse came in and told us more about what to anticipate.  That Mama was leaving us.  She also brought us sparkling grape juice as it was time to ring in the New Year.  So there the three of us sat.  Mama in the middle of us.  Grounding us for one last hurrah.

As sisters we never lack for funny stories to swap.  This night was no different.  It was very light in some respects.  Almost weirdly so.  We laughed and cried and laughed and cried and waited.  At about 3AM, her heart rate seemed to plummet.  We rose to our feet.  Ashley at her right shoulder, Kristen about mid way down the arm rail on the same side, and I holding her feet.  I will never forget the face Mama made just moments before her final breath.  She looked at the three of us, wide-eyed and almost childlike.  She looked scared.  Through tears I told her that it was okay.  That she had been so brave and fought so hard, that it was okay to let go.  I told her it was okay to go into the white light.  That we loved her so much and that she was the best Mama and friend a girl could ever have.  Kristen thanked God for her, and just like that she was gone.  I remember wailing and pulling Kristen and Ashley to me.  I cannot imagine going through that without them.

The nurses came in and shut off all the monitors.  And in a very slow, hollow movement, we sat down.  I called Daddy.  I told him she was gone.  He asked if we needed him to come up to the hospital, I said no, the nurses are handling getting her to the funeral home.  He said OK and asked where we were going.  I was going with Ashley, as I could not imagine going back to their home, and Kristen was coming back to Summerville, to be with him and Dana and Scott.  We picked up our jackets and purses and left the room.  There was no special way of leaving.  We just got up and left.  Left our Mama there on a hospital bed.  Got up and left like I have so many other things.  Concerts, movies, dinners, work days.  The end was just that.

Somehow we made it to my car, and Ashley and I drove down Calhoun to the Ansonborough Inn on East Bay.  It was close to 3AM at this point.  I remember feeling completely numb.  Feeling cavernous and empty.  Absolutely gutted I think they say in the UK.  The street lights were pulsing and fuzzy as were the traffic lights.  I felt as though I had never driven a car before.  Thankfully the hotel was not even 10 minutes from the hospital where we parked, got out, and walked in as though it was just another day.

We walked up the stairs to the room and immediately got a beer out of the fridge.  For some reason we thought we might be hungry, so we ordered a pizza.  It was New Years in Charleston after all.  This was not unheard of by any stretch of the imagination.  The pizza came, I took a shower, and ate a bite or two.  We went to bed watching some reality TV show.  I don’t think I slept.  I did get up about an hour later and vomit quite a bit.  I sat on the bathroom floor and cried.  Then, I took another shower and cried.  I put on my same clothes and got back into bed.

Ashley and I woke up about 2 hours later to a phone call from Daddy.  He said for us to be to the Funeral Home at 11.  Mind you, Mama had just passed not even 12 hours prior.  We agreed and of course met him there.  This was where we learned that Daddy only wanted us at the church service.  Only me, my sisters, their husbands and children.  Not Mama’s brother or friends, just us.  He wasn’t even going to call my Uncle Charlie to tell him, but we made sure he was aware.  He was at my cousin Chuck’s wedding in Peru, and was not able to make it, but at least he knew.

My husband Matthew came to the funeral home and picked me up.  We drove back home with the understanding that we would be coming back for the service in a couple of days.  And that was just what we did. We came home, called my boss and let him know I would be back to work in about a week or so, picked up the kids from the in-laws and laid low for a day.

We then made the trek back to Summerville for the service.  It was at a church Mama and Daddy had only been to once before.  None of us had met the pastor.  He was very nice, but luckily our childhood pastor Boyd came to give the eulogy.  I have never sobbed so hard and so quietly in all my life.  I also sang my heart out.  I knew Mama loved the hymnals being used.  She loved the Lutheran church and everything therein.  She was so much fun to philosophize with.  God I missed her, and man was I so sorry for failing her.

At the end of the service my nephew Perrin came around the end of the pew to retrieve Daddy and help him stand upright.  He was a shell of a man that day.  We all left the church and in true Southern form we went back to Mama and Daddy’s house to eat.  Kurt and Ashley went to pick up chicken and all the fixings so that we could eat and be together.  There was so much beer.   Thank goodness my brother-in-law and sister always come through.

Shortly thereafter my sister Ashley and her husband Kurt said their goodbyes.  Then my sister Kristen, her husband Gene and her boys.  Followed by Scott and Dana.  My family was the last to leave.  Not because I wanted to stay, but because I couldn’t leave.  My heart was so torn thinking about Daddy being all alone in that house mourning the death of his bride of almost 50 years.  But ultimately, we left.  We drove home, and I cried the entire way.

I don’t think I did much other than drink and sleep and eat for the week after.  In fact, that’s about all I did for at least a year after Mama’s death.  I only recently can speak about her without crying.  You see, not only was it sudden and violent, I feel it was preventable.  I feel that she and Daddy and her doctors were negligent.  She did not care enough about her health to make sure all the after care and follow ups were done.  I have asked Daddy about this multiple times.  I know for a fact that she never went to a follow-up appointment after her Carotid Endarterectomy.

Typing that out helps my brain understand that there was nothing else I could have done 3 hours away to make her take care of herself.  Daddy was there.  He should have taken her.  He should have shown the doctor the inflammation that ultimately was the clot reforming as that carotid was again over 75% blocked when she had the stroke.  And the other side was 90% blocked.

We were told at the hospital that the risk of stroke after that procedure is very high.  If this is the case, why weren’t they more proactive?!  I have beat myself up over this time and time again to no avail.  It will not bring my Mama back, nor will it help me heal.

I write this so that those of you out there that have experienced loss will understand that you are not alone.  The depth of depression you are experiencing is not something you have to experience alone.  I have never felt that level of sorrow in my life.  I felt as thought a piece of my heart was ripped out and squished in someones mighty hand.  I was lost and alone and empty.  I had nightmares and was convinced there was more I could have done.  I vacillated about the final moments of her life.  I had to ask my sisters if we removed a breathing apparatus.  We did not.  She quit breathing even with the ventilator.  There was nothing else to be done.  Except move on.