Her boyfriend woke us up and said something was wrong, it sounded like she was chewing ice. Jerry and I immediately jumped up.
I knew when I walked into her room it was bad. Her eyes were set to one side and she was clenching her jaw, grinding her teeth (hence the chewing ice sound) and she wouldn't respond to me.
I had Jerry stay with her while I called 911. By the time they arrived I had made sure I had all her medications out for them to know what she was taking. They got her on the stretcher and went to the hospital.
We followed, along with my tiny baby who was 4 months old at the time. I don't remember driving there, I'm sure Jerry did. But I do remember the doctor telling me she had a massive bleed in her brain, and they needed to operate.
My sisters weren't there, and I'm not sure if I called them right then or not, but I know she had brain surgery.
They removed 1/3 of her brain and she would need extensive occupational and physical therapy for some time afterward. The surgery affected short term memory and her speech, but I do remember when she started waking up over the next couple of days, she would just say, "owie, owie, owie." Over and over. I felt so awful. Did we do the right thing? Is this worse? Should we have let her go then?
But I kept on acting like everything was okay, even though it wasn't. My whole world was crashing around me and all I had was Jerry and my baby. And all I could hear in my brain was “this can’t be happening again” “I’m going to be an orphan”. “This is NOT happening”, “just act normal Terri.” And so, I tried. Because this was all I knew to do.
Mom would recover enough to regain her sense of humor and for that I'm so thankful. When she was young and whining about being bored, her grandmother told her to learn her ABC's backwards and when she did that, then they'd talk about something to do. AFTER her huge brain surgery, even with her struggle to get the right words out, this lady could still say her ABC's backwards like we say them normal. That made me happy. She was still in there, just not in the same way.
I was still angry though and talking to God was the last thing I wanted to do. I wanted to be angry, I think I needed to be angry. But all that anger and hurt was inside of me. On the outside, I did my best to act like life was going on as planned.
Except it wasn’t.
My mom was always quite a character and stubborn. I always admired that about her. She would leave rehab to go live with my sister Diane, my other sister Dottie, left her family and missed her son's high school graduation to come care for her there. And I let them because I couldn’t. Even writing about this now has me emotional again.
I was busy learning to be a mom and wife. Jerry still liked to drink his beer, but it was only beer after all. But thinking back, even then, I had issues with his excessive drinking. We had moved into an apartment by then (then into a rental house briefly) when mom's place sold, and it was our first real shot at doing it all on our own. My other sister Debbie helped me pay the deposit to even get in the apartment and I repaid her, but it took me much longer than I told her it would. I had no idea how to handle all of it right then. Ironically, I helped mom as a kid, but couldn’t manage my own. Of course, money was always tight, and I was always worried about finances.
I was working for a tool company and we found an in-home daycare for Paige so I could go back to work to help with money. Leaving her with these people was the hardest thing I had to do. But we needed my income to survive.
Chapter 13
Trying to Survive
I would go see mom as often as I could, but I always had Paige with me because I didn't trust Jerry to be responsible even though he was "just" drinking beer. She was a tiny baby after all and if he happened to pass out while I was gone, what would happen if she needed something and he didn't wake up? So, she went EVERYWHERE with me. To the hospital, grocery store, you name it. I thought this was normal. All guys worked all day and came home and drank beer and watched sports. I had no way of knowing any different.
The only normal I had ever seen were my sisters families and even though their husbands didn’t do this, some husbands did, right?
I was at the hospital one night and my dear friend Baelie was there with me. Paige had just turned a year old a few weeks before. I found myself alone in the hospital room with mom.
She was semi-comatose, and I could tell she was struggling to figure out who was there. Oh, this is so hard for me to even go back to, but I'm going to.
I used to hate when my mom would cry when I'd sing. As a kid, you're like, "why are you crying?" and you don't want to see your mom cry. As an adult I realize it was because she was so very proud, and she loved me so much.
So that night, alone, in that hospital room, all I knew to do was sing to her. Her favorite song, songs we sang together, anything so she would know it was ME that was there.
"Oh Lord My
