Mama

It’s 2am and I can’t sleep. I got up at 4:30 this morning and drove to Idaho with Pook & Boogie to be with my mom and (hopefully) relieve some of the pressure on my dad. Ye gads, what a mess.

It’s been nearly a month now since this began. Mom has been in the hospital twice and is still currently there. What we thought was a back injury has now been diagnosed as a stroke and tonight the cardiologist told me that he believes she needs open heart surgery to correct the issue that caused the stroke. I’ve gotta be back at the hospital in about four hours for the test that will determine what comes next. I can’t decide if I should keep pretending to sleep or just give it up and make a pot of coffee. I can’t think of anything else but the way she looked in that hospital bed and how so very unprepared I feel for any of this. The person in that hospital bed tonight was not my mom and I miss her already.

I hope I’m wrong, really I do. I hope this is not the beginning of a new and entirely unwelcome normal. I hope that my mom will be herself tomorrow. I hope that she can find the strength to push through the pain and keep trying. She can’t walk – she hasn’t even been able to sit up for nearly a month. I cannot fathom how one would recover from open heart surgery without any mobility. And I can’t see how she gets better without both.

I’m not publishing this to Facebook, so the only people who will read this are those who subscribe to the blog. My mom’s on that list and I would like nothing more than for her to be well enough to kick my butt for writing about her. Bring it on, mama. I need you too much to let you lose your fire.