Good morning…
Unexpectedly waking at dawn near Cleveland, Ohio, I shed quiet tears beside the bay window in my parents’ villa. As I look out on their continuum of care community, gloomy rain turns to gentle, white snowflakes on this memorable late March morning. Soon we will visit my mom in the ICU, wondering whether her loving life will turn the corner toward a slow, steady recovery or will turn her soul toward her heavenly home.
Yesterday was surreal. I woke to a text from my sister saying that our mom had been taken to the ER at 11:30 pm the night before. But we had just talked with her around 7:30 pm following my belated birthday dinner with our kids. Just four hours later. ICU. Ventilator. How could this be?
I scroll back on my phone now and read a text that came into my phone on March 5th, while we were on our ten day adventure in the Holy Land. “I hope your trip is going well!” my dad wrote. “Yesterday while we were in exercise class a woman fell into your Mom. Granny fell to the floor and broke her hip. She is having an operation this morning to repair it. We are in Southwest Hospital. Love, Dad.”
It turns out my 83-year-old mom had a break in her upper femur. She would not be able to put weight on it for six to eight weeks, so she came home from the hospital to the skilled nursing unit in their retirement community. On Tuesday, she got word that she would be coming home to the villa with my dad on Saturday. As we talked by phone she was worried about the toll it would take on my dad to be her caregiver, there active, independent lives would change drastically she feared. Then on Wednesday, my parents sang me their traditional “Happy birthday” rendition over the phone, but as the day progressed my mom’s speech got slower, more measured, and she spent increasingly more time in bed, in silence, not eating. By Thursday we were losing more of my mom’s vibrant vitality, and my dad called around 4:00 pm to say, “Your mom has had a very bad 24 hours, I really worried about her.”
I called to talk with them as my dad trying to feed my mom her favorite dinner around 5:30 pm. Our whole family then talked with my parents after my belated birthday dinner, “We love you, Granny. We love you both.” We all went to bed with Granny in limbo. We woke with her in the ICU. As the day wore on, finding a flight to Cleveland became my top priority. Flying out at 8:45 pm, I arrived for a kind pick up from our nieces at 10:30 pm. That was last night.
This is this morning. Visiting hours open at 11:00 am. The snow turning to rain symbolically marks a transition in our family’s life. Will it be slow healing on earth or full healing in heaven? Only God knows.
I have described to you the experience of feeling like a “prayer magnet,” diligently praying for so many in need in our community. Now the veins of prayer flow in the opposite direction as I feel a tender loving tapestry blanketing our family in the power of prayer. I want you woven into a tapestry of love, in touch with everything there is to know of God. Then you will have minds confident and at rest, focused on Christ, God’s great mystery. All the richest treasures of wisdom and knowledge are embedded in that mystery and nowhere else (Colossians 2:2-3, MSG).
Thank you for being the tangible body of Christ to me. You are each a palpable strand in the colorful tapestry of God’s eternal love.
…Sue…
