My Precious Mama

We lost my mama unexpectedly on New Year's Eve 2010. She was only 52 years old. It has been such a shock to our family. Sometimes I realize that to the rest of the world it is already April, but to me it feels I am right back there at the hospital telling her goodbye after she was already gone. She had a pretty serious surgery on Tuesday, December 28th. The surgery seemed to go better than expected and she seemed to be doing really well. She even commented that if she had known how easy it would be, she would have done it years ago. She was a little groggy after her surgery so most of us decided to go and let her get her rest that night. Angie, my oldest sister decided to stay with her for the night. We all went back to my parents house for a bit. The whole family, except for Angie's husband Michael, had been in town for Christmas. So we went back to the house and made supper and hung out for awhile and played a few games.
We have a huge family. My parents have 10 children, 5 sons-in-law, 1 daughter-in-law and 6 grandchildren. It's not often that we all get to be together, but thankfully this year, on what was to be our last Christmas with Mama, almost all of us made it.
On Wednesday morning at various times, we all made it back to mama's room at the hospital. She was in really good spirits and was feeling great. She joked that between 1-10 her pain was at a 7 and she could easily handle that. She talked with us and played with her grandchildren. Once she was sitting in the chair beside her bed and she told my nieces and nephew to hop up on her bed. When they did she showed them the buttons to make the bed rise and fold. She lifted the bed as high as it would go and folded it as far as it would go, just to hear their giggles. She was a great Nana. She was always wanting her grandbabies to have some sort of adventure, even if she WAS at the hospital recovering from surgery. That day we talked with her and laughed with her about everything under the sun. We all had a really good day.
My husband and I were going to try to get home that night. He is a preacher and had a class to teach at our home congregation. We had done a pretty bad job of keeping up with the time at lunch and were already thinking that we would have to rush to get home in time for Evening services. We had to go by the hospital to tell Mama goodbye, and to pick up my sister, Suzanne, who would be traveling home with us. We went to the hospital and the nurse had just made mama sit in her chair again. She was on morphine and we were worried that she might fall out without someone with her. Daddy and my sister, Daphne, were on their way to the hospital to stay with her, but we didn't want to leave her alone for even a few minutes. My husband, Jonathan, and I decided that we could stay, but the few minutes that it would cost us would make it nearly impossible to get home in time for services. We decided to call someone else to do his class for him and stay. I'm so glad that we did. We got to spend even more time with her that day than we had planned.
Later that evening, Jonathan and I went to church at Lost River. Several of our friends asked about mama and her surgery and we told them that things went really well and though at first they thought she would be in the hospital for a week, we thought she would get to come home in a couple of days. I was making plans to come back to town and stay with her for a week or two during her recovery. After church that night I went back over to the hospital to spend some more time with mama. When I got to her room she was in a lot of pain. Her veins had collapsed and there were two nurses trying to get her iv back in.  Since it was late and visiting hours were nearly over, I decided to tell her goodbye and come back in the morning, so I told her that I loved her and that I'd be back in the morning. Jonathan and I took Suzanne and her her kids to get something to eat and then we dropped her back at the hospital, because she wanted to stay with Mama that night.
At about 3 o'clock the next morning I got a call from Suzanne telling me to get to the hospital as soon as I could. I asked if Mama was ok and she said, "I don't know." There was so much fear and sadness in her voice that I tried to prepare for the worst. Jonathan and I left as soon as we could and called my brother, Stephen, on the way. He and I got there at about the same time. In time to see about 20 doctors and nurses in Mama room doing what they could to get her to breathe. I saw them use the defibrillators on her. A few minutes after I got there, I heard someone say that they had a pulse. This whole time was so scary to me. It was so unreal. I knew that it was MY mama on that bed in there, but it seemed like it was happening to someone else. Once they got a pulse they transferred her somewhere else to see what was wrong, what caused her to stop breathing in the first place. Suzanne, Stephen and his wife Mary Anne, Jonathan and I were asked to clear out her room. She had get well soon cards hanging on the wall from each of  her grandkids and some of her younger kids as well. As we were cleaning out her room at 3:30 that morning, I think each of us realized that she wasn't coming back. A couple of hours later her doctor came in and gave us a little bit of hope. Most of us, including Daddy, hung on to that hope. We were all hoping and praying that she would come out of it, but it wasn't to be. That day was probably the longest of my life. I "knew" most of the day that she wasn't going to make it. I believe that God answers every prayer, I just felt that He said, "No," very early on in the day, it didn't keep me from asking Him to save her for us, I just realized that HE was saying no. 
We aren't really sure what caused her to die, we haven't really gotten a straight answer on that. I don't even know if KNOWING how she died would be of any help. She is still gone. Knowing won't bring her back.