Get Busy Living Or Get Busy Dying

Greetings and Salutations--
     I hope that I find you well and having a wonderful start to you week.. Last Monday I fell short of creativity and couldn't keep the waterworks shut off to my eyes.. Oh what a wonderful difference seven days can make.. For that I am eternally grateful that I have been granted more time with my mom.. My mother has always been my fountain of inspiration and strength.. Now I know what this woman is truly made of.. I have learned so very much about myself and how I relate to the world around me, with stress I have never seen the likes of until now.. I look forward to the coming months to see how all this will shape me into the person I can sense is just underneath the surface.. I can't begin to tell you how I felt when they extubated her (took the breathing tube out) and 10 minutes later a woman who was only able to respond with holding up fingers as requested but unable to hold her eyes completely open for more than a few minutes was sitting up, wide awake, talking, and the personality that is my mom shining through.. It was like seeing a dead person speak and in my twenty years of nursing, sixteen of which I have spent in Emergency Rooms across the United States, I've never experienced anything like it..
     Today, twenty days into this journey that I am on with my mom takes me to new ground.. I feel an awareness that I have never felt before.. Things that I once may have had trouble seeing clearly as to where they fit into the importance in my life are now sharp in color and contrast.. I feel more determined than ever to make my life count to both myself and any one that I could possibly touch.. I feel different with everyone I am coming into contact with.. Today was my first day back at work after taking time to process what had happened and be available to see my mom and cry my ass off.. To go through those steps I learned about in nursing school that I thought I could skip over with some time in the yard.. Its an odd thing to understand what you are about to go through from a academic standpoint, yet also to recognize that even if you know a glimpse of what is about to come next, it is best to ride the wave and attempt to control the length of time you spend riding it then try and control even getting on it in the first place..
     I feel as if my skin is crawling with the anticipation of what I want to do next.. What I want to cultivate into happening in my life.. That quote "Get busy living or get busy dying" from Shawshank Redemption  just popped into my head as I am writing this to you and I really think that it best, simply describes how I feel at this moment.. I mean this in relationship to my experience which I understand isn't a singularity.. I am speaking (humbly) to what my thoughts and feelings are about what has happened and yet to happen with the most important person in my life on this earth.. You can either take an experience in your life and go through it with patience and understanding for yourself and be determined to make it work to your advantage, or you can be a victim.. You can put your head down and let it defeat you.. You can be a shell of the person you were before "it" (what ever "it" may be) happened.. The choice is yours.. (Maybe) not to what happened but to your response to it..
     I can easily look at this life threatening health event with my mom and say "see, what good does it do you to be healthy.. Here is a woman who doesn't smoke, drink, take meds, or have any medical conditions and yet out of the blue she suffered a major stroke".. I say where she is today, her fortitude withstanding, is very much based on the lifestyle which she has lead (Bless her for the lack of drinking and may I be forgiven later for all of mine LOL).. She has a healthy body to be the foundation to recover from.. I am not forgetting God, the thousands of prayers that have been prayed on her behalf, or the outright tenacity that my mom has.. I could blog on those topics for weeks.. I am just speaking of the foundation of what God, prayers, and her will had to work with when this happened..
     I lasted ten days before it all crumbled around me.. When the nurse lost the battle to the daughter inside that hadn't taken the first class on how to handle something she had never been through in her life.. For the nurse to let the daughter take over and begin to feel what needed to be felt in order to be healthy and start to heal.. It took about five days to feel like my head was above water and I could actually breathe even a shallow breath.. To begin to work though the process with the aid of some wonderful friends and knowing that my mom was surrounded in thoughts and prayers and the wonderful care she was receiving in the ICU.. Then I could start the process to pull into myself and at the core, work my way thought all of this on my terms.. To know and learn myself as I navigated new waters.. To feel what I intuitively needed to get to the other side of this awful experience.. To not stop believing that soon, I would stop crying and be strong.. That it is OK for me to be weak and grow strength from this painful experience..
     I did acupuncture.. I spent one night getting rip roaring drunk (so glad these days that only took one day to get that out of my system).. I prayed.. I cried.. I watched TV and movies.. I cried.. Most of all I never lost sight of wanting to make all of this count.. Feeling that as close as I came to losing my mom, she is in my heart and soul on or off this planet and I found comfort to know God was in control of this.. My wants of this earth are selfish and I want what was best for my mother.. I didn't want her to suffer not even one nanosecond.. Even in near death as mush as possible, she is inside me and I can be close to her by living the example I believe she gave birth for me to pursue.. She has given me the gift of my tenacity and love for life.. I know now more than ever I don't want to squander the life she gave me.. I will be blessed every day she remains in my life and forever grateful God has granted me more time to learn from my mother..


Tootles :)
Heather