When The Ground Shakes
“Something has happened that will change our lives forever”
My older sister's voice said evenly over the phone, I held my breath. She wasn’t supposed to be calling me, she and her family were meant to be out of cell phone range camping in the North Cascades this weekend. I had just woken up, the morning after a quiet Fourth of July, taking the moments slowly, in her home as I began my first weekend as a new Seattle resident. More than a decade long coming - I looked out towards the water as she said “Mom had a very bad stroke yesterday, Mary has been with her the whole time. We’re leaving now but can’t get there for at least six hours, you and Sarah have to get there as soon as possible.”
“Ok” I said. Asking the basic questions, hurriedly scribbling the details of the hospital in Portland, the direct line to her nurse and important details of what had happened.
I mentally and emotionally felt a mix of shock but urgency to stay calm, gather facts, initiate a communication tree, pack. Sarah and I sprung into action trying to ensure our sister Andrea was notified and that someone locally could get to our youngest sister Mary with special needs, who had been sitting with our unconscious mother for 15 hours in a Portland hospital, alone. Gathering facts from the Neuro ICU nurse, it was clear this wasn’t a mild stroke, it was heavily severe and life threatening. “Hurry” he said to me.
Throwing my suitcase back together Sarah and I were on the road within an hour of receiving the phone call, while heroes swept in to rush to Mary, find Andrea where she lived on the Oregon Coast.
Sarah and I switched off driving the three hours to Portland through tears. I had done a similar drive seven years earlier to say goodbye to my Uncle James. I hate this drive I thought to myself as we took turns crying and collecting information and mobilizing crisis support. Bracing ourselves we swept into the Neuro ICU - where we found our mother laying motionless, seemingly lifeless, head tilted to the left, hooked up to tubes and machines. Skin nearly luminous but her expression all wrong. We learned quickly that the when the blood clot stormed through her it wreaked devastation to the left side of her brain, early scans showed it had “killed” nearly the entire left side of the brain. Specifically targeting the communication center. The specialist team explained that her right side was currently paralyzed and she may never speak again.
I’ll never forget my youngest sister, my brave beautiful little sister, Mary tucked back under the window.. Mary is my twenty six year old sister with Down Syndrome, who had never been apart from Mom more than a few weeks in her entire life. She had been alone through the night, due to complications in notifying us. Her face ashen and vacant, eyes dazed -- as we all would be as we navigated the next twenty-one days.
The doctors would come to tell us that the Left Ischemic Stroke she had suffered was severe and if she made it out of the hospital, she would never walk again, talk again, eat on her own or even potentially breathe on her own. Unfathomable realities. She was sixty-six, it didn’t seem possible.
Andrea and her partner Aaron arrived soon after and the medical team took mom for another MRI. As they wheeled her out - the four of us dropped to our knees in a circle and trembling, I began to pray. Though we don’t share the same language of faith -- in that moment the four of us leaned in to bring healing and peace into that room. Calling on everything we could to save our mother. Through a shaky voice I fumbled out a stream of words, knowing that even if I didn't have or know the words because I couldn’t think straight that God did, that He would hear us.
Over the course of the next few hours Julie arrived and we began to digest more and more information of the stroke, the critical window Mom was in of further brain swelling, and the impact of the stroke would/could look like. We gathered around her prepared to fight, release, grieve, rally, pray her awake - never a truer showing of the daughters she had raised. Through every breath, every movement, every small movement of her body we watched for her.
We took turns holding her left hand, talking to her, tears running down our cheeks. I watched as each daughter began to evoke their unique superpower.
Julie began to gather the medical information and orchestrate between the team of doctors, Sarah coordinated food deliveries with their community and started treating mom with mild acupuncture. Andrea began to bring in essential oils and healing modalities to calm the space - to draw Mom back, I turned on worship music over her, began making shift schedules and began communicating to her community and our extended family. Our cousin Mariah and Aunt Martha took Mary home to give her respite and deep care as we stayed watch by mom’s bedside.
She barely stirred for 36 hours after we arrived.
Countless people, of which felt like saints, all over the world had begun to pray, communities of faith spread all over the globe asked on behalf of myself, Sarah and Andrea held watch with us in spirit through those harrowing hours. Hours passed with her on the edge of another crisis, teams of doctors asking us to make life and death decisions in the event something more critical unfolded. There was no Advanced Directive, no Will -- the to-do list she and I had talked about a few days earlier to put those affairs in order -- sat on her kitchen table. It would become the beginning of profound chasm within our family to no ones fault, but simply due to a lack of preparation and a life filled with too much trauma and dysfunction.
Our mom is nothing if not a fighter and through the worst of odds she survived -- as is the story of her life. Though with an aching heart, I, many of us lamented that the life she may live would be her living hell on earth. She did, in fact, survive the worst of it.
Aunt Martha’s home (like it had been through our whole lives) became our haven through blurry eyes and exhaustion over the first few days, when we did depart from the hospital collapsing to rest. While we waited for mom to wake or for another crisis to unfold due to the swelling in her brain or the strain on her body, we all tried to catch our breath, but everyone was disoriented by the tragedy, the uncertainty, impossible decisions ahead. Days after arriving we all took a few hours away. It would become to me one of the revealing moments of how we all handle crisis, pain, stress.
Andrea stayed close to mom and then went to do yoga to rest + pray.
Sarah left with a friend and traveled to lavender fields to fully disconnect.
Julie left to see her best friend of twenty+ years.
I sat in the car weeping….and then I drove myself to Office Depot. In true event producer fashion I bought a printer, white board, binders, post-its, folders, because I found myself dancing between total cascading grief and shock to absolute problem solving and planning for the magnitude of tasks ahead of us. Part of my “break” to Office Depot was because I didn’t have my own home, close community or partner to go to (having just transitioned my entire life across country). While I had friends nearby these days was for the ones who know you in the heaviness and in the light. Refuge, for a moment, felt like buying supplies to make order out of the impending chaos. (we never did use the printer, white board, binders)
Over the course of the first days post stroke we were faced with impossibly brutal conversations, painful decisions, impending loss, trying to hold deeply onto hope for her life and quality of life. If you believe that will can move mountains, then this family of women willed her back to us -- yet some of us also were willing to let her go if that is what she needed. A visceral dance of hope and surrender.
____________
She stayed with us. Her story is not yet over.
While there has been an unimaginable amount of messy, heartbreaking kind of life that has ensued in the past seven months and there is so much left to navigate for her, for Mary, for each of us -- this part of me does not want to move too far into the future without honoring and remembering. Holding space for the beginning of what changed my mother's life, and as my older sister said when she first called with the news, what has changed all of ours, forever, too. I want too, need to honor the fight that she put up to survive and the bold, purposed support we all showed up with in the days and weeks and months that followed.
I imagine we all would say we have felt to have aged significantly in these last months. Exposed to a new world where so many of our nation's elderly and disable have limited access to quality care, if any, and systems that are so broken it’s staggering. Living in the impact of another's life, stories undone, relationships strained under the pressure, the trauma of our past and present shaping these days filled with grief of various dimensions.
If you have lost someone to death, to a medical crisis, to illness, to the relationship fracturing -- wouldn’t you agree - we always think there is more time? The lack of it has left me disoriented, all of us soul battered, disappointed.
As you walk in the aftermath of an event that changes lives -- you face your greatest strength, glaring weaknesses, and if you’re looking for it - you will find the light the always, always breaks through the darkest of days. Even if sometimes it’s just a glimpse.
While there are so many profound life lessons that are shaping me in this season - I would encourage you, as I keep trying to tell myself, be kind. To yourself, to those around you in pain, and when you fail (because you will), hold fast to the chance of a new day.