A Sober Christmas Eve

Quick on the heels of my Triumphant Toffee, came a rather more sobering event. I caught the first real glimpse of my parents' age. The worst part is that I had no idea it was coming.

My sister, Norris, Mason, and I went to bed around midnight, because like good grown up children, we still play Santa with my parents. We wear matching pajama sets that we get on Christmas Eve, and we go to bed early so that "Santa" can stuff our stockings and prepare the gifts. So this night we tucked ourselves all snug in our beds, and I had been asleep for maybe an hour and a half when my dad burst into the room I was sharing with Brett, yelling, "Katie, Brett, wake up now. The ambulance is coming for your mom." Out of all the reasons for being awakened only 1/8 of the way into my sleep cycle I could have imagined, this was probably the very last on my list.

I leaped out of bed, and on the way downstairs Dad told me that Mom had been having chest pains, and that she had collapsed, so he called 911. Now, I have to stop here and explain something about my family. My parents are super hardcore. They don't get sick. They handle pain like burly mountain men who can lose a foot to gangrene without needing a bullet to bite on. Dad ran a warrior dash only a few months ago. That's a 5k with an obstacle course. No mean feat for a man nearing his mid-fifties. So if something happened to make Dad feel that an ambulance was necessary, I knew that it was serious business. Serious, potentially life-threatening business.

I ran into my mother's room to find her basically convulsing on her bed. She seemed totally out of it, and I was having a hard time controlling myself. Brett was hot on my heels and we sat down next to mom on the bed. She was having trouble breathing and kept clutching her chest. Every now and then she would stop breathing for a few seconds then gasp back to life in a frightening jolt. I had never seen my mom like this before. She was so hardy, so tough, and I had never seen her so completely not lucid.

The ambulance seemed to take forever to get there. Those were long moments, waiting for someone to get there who knew what to do. Brett and I were sobbing uncontrollably, trying to keep Mom awake and talking. She complained about her feet being cold and it being hard to breathe. Neither of these things were particularly encouraging.

When the firemen/EMTs finally got there, they established that her vitals were stable. They gave her an IV and carried her to the waiting gurney. Dad hopped in the ambulance with her and they headed to the hospital with the rest of us following behind in the car.

What followed was the long wait. When she was finally checked in, we could go visit her two at a time. We waited for over three hours for the doctor to finally stop by her bed and see her. Three hours of watching her lapse in and out of consciousness, begging to go home, shivering with cold, and having a lot of trouble breathing. My mother, my tough, incorrigible, healthy, spry mother, who could probably outrun me and beat me up, was lying there, helpless and in pain, for over three hours. I did not take this well. Neither did she. She kept crying (another thing I am not used to seeing my mother do) and pleading with us to just take her home and let her sleep. Then she would get very serious and tell Brett and me that if the worst happened we were supposed to take care of Dad, and that she loved us. These were the worst moments. Then she would get frustrated because she couldn't remember how she had gotten to the hospital, and the whole cycle would start all over again.

Seeing my mother this vulnerable and helpless was, to put it totally mildly, disconcerting. I know my parents are middle aged. I know they are human and aren't going to live forever. But I, and they, are still young enough that the idea of them dying is completely incomprehensible to me. They are intelligent, fit people--not the kind of people you would ever expect to be ill or incapacitated. It was devastating to see that stripped from my mother, and worse not to know what was causing it; it might have been something that was killing her as I watched. My mind leapt to a million possibilities, each more macabre and horrifying than the last. Maybe it was a heart attack. Maybe it was going to turn out to be stomach cancer. Maybe she was experiencing and early and particularly violent attach of dimensia. Maybe it was a small stroke. It could have been any of these things, and even as I was steeling myself to hear and accept the worst that the doctor could tell me, I was denying the possibility that anything could be wrong with my mother. Sickness and death were things that only happened to other people's parents. Or on tv and in movies. Nice, safe, removed places and people that might stir my sympathy, but that I could compartmentalize and put away when I didn't want to be sad anymore.

But she continued to sit there, completely disoriented, frustrated, tired, and in pain, and there was nothing I could say or do to make anything better. They wouldn't even let us give her water. And I knew real fear in that moment. Real, helpless, primal fear. I just knew I was going to lose her. And I am not ready to lose my parents--not by a long shot.

Fortunately, my fears proved unfounded. The doctor finally came by, poked and prodded her a little bit, and pronounced that it wasn't her chest that was causing all the trouble, it was her gall bladder. She had developed a gall stone that filled the entire bladder, causing pain and making it difficult for her to breathe. The pain would eventually pass and she would have to have the organ removed soon, but for the moment, she would be fine. She would just have to avoid particularly fatty foods and large amounts of vitamin supplements forever after losing the gall bladder. So, at about seven in the morning, we finally took my mom home to go to sleep.

I know I won't ever forget this Christmas. Next year we will probably laugh about it, and tease mom about how she is going to fake another heart attack to get out of cooking Christmas dinner. But I won't tease her too hard. Because I know the reality of almost losing someone close now, and I won't be able to take my parents' health for granted ever again. The inescapable fact is that they are terribly, monstrously mortal, and despite all their efforts, I could feasibly lose them at any moment.

I am not sure I am grateful for this lesson. I would have been a lot happier to continue harboring the delusion that my parents will be around as long as I want them, that is to say, forever. But the truth is that regardless of my happiness or gratitude, the lesson is learned. And I am a little more grown up, a little more sober as a result.