Mommy

My mom is ill. She's in the hospital. I spent a day with my husband, my dad, my sister, my brother, and a few other family members in the ICU Lounge waiting....waiting...waiting...all day that first day. No doctor showed up. The nurses gave us as much information as they could.

Mom is septic. And more, and more, and more.

Still we 'aren't sure.'

They are pumping her full of strong drugs whose side-effects need drugs of their own. Blasting her with antibiotics for everything that can possibly be wrong in the hopes that one of them will curb the infection, where ever it is, whatever it is.

Massive medical attack.

It frightens me, the drugs in Mom's system, flowing around and through her fragile vital organs.

I hold my head in my hands. I abhor the lack of control I experience.

This is my mommy.

I pictured her dead while driving down to the hospital that first morning, the same way I pictured my dad dead when he had his stroke over a year ago.

Why do I do that? Is it some sort of coping mechanism, to prepare myself? Am I demented? Macabre? Immature?

My grandpa was in the hospital in the early 80's when he was about mom's age. We prayed over his surgery. He did great! He recovered well and the day before he was to go home he choked to death on green Jell-O in the hospital, right in front of the medical staff who could not revive him. His heart couldn't take the choking.

That incident flavors every hospital stay my parents - or other aging loved ones - encounter. I know all the spiritual platitudes. I trust God for purpose. But he never says it's going to be easy or that the outcome is the pleasant one, the one we all desire. So, though I trust, still I am anxious.

I love my mom. I can't imagine her gone. My head shakes even as I type - no, no, no.

It's been a long week.

And we aren't done, yet.