Love From Ground Zero

 

Thirty seven years ago today, my mother died.

It was the last day of school. I had just washed a bunch of play clothes. My husband came home from work when the phone rang.

"Come quick, they just flew Mom to St. Louis University Hospital.!" It was my sister's voice.

I threw the clean clothes from the dryer into a basket thinking there must be something for everyone in there. I threw bread and lunch meat into a bag and the kids into the van and we were gone in minutes. It was a 90 minute drive to my Mom's hometown where we dumped my kids off without a second thought with my sister's best friend, then another 90 minutes to St. Louis.  When we got there is was dark, but my brother was standing in the parking lot looking for us. I don't know how long he'd been there, because we didn't have cell phones back then.

After all that I got to see my mother for less than two minutes before I was ushered back out to the waiting room. There I sat. There we all sat, because people kept coming. My Dad, Grandma, my mother's mother, my aunt, my mother's best friend, my brothers, their wives, my uncle. We sat. 

And sat. We sat all night long, upright, in straight back chairs, in a hospital waiting room. Afraid to breathe. Afraid not to pray. Afraid to think, but I did think. I imagined her making it and I imagined her not making it! I knew how scared she was, because she hated doctors. They terrified her. And finally morning came.

We lined the hallway on both sides as they pushed my mother, on a gurney down that hall, between all the love we could pour silently out of our hearts and minds . . . and that was the last time we saw her alive.

Tonight I watched Love From Ground Zero and I remembered all those feelings. The shock. The fear. The presence of family that suddenly was so precious. I remember my Dad hugging me, my grandmother's wail of anguish, the utter disbelief that this could have happened. I looked at all these people who loved me but it was not enough.

Those people who hold our hearts while we grieve are never forgotten.