It was Sunday morning, September 7, 2008. I woke up really early and couldn't get back to sleep, so I decided to go downstairs and check my myspace. I remember being upset that a friend hadn't responded to a message of mine. After myspace I watched a little TV, and around noon I decided to go back to bed. My parents weren't up yet, I wasn't surprised because my mom had just gotten back from the hospital the day before and my dad was always tired from taking care of her. Just as I started dozing off my dad started calling me. I didn't want to get out of bed but his voice started to sound frantic. Something was wrong. I heard him say my mom was unconscious, that he couldn't get her to wake up and she wouldn't move. I ran to their room. My dad was shaking my mom's arm, calling her name. She was lying on her stomach and her face was buried in her pillow. My dad asked me to help him turn her over. I walked over to the bed and placed my hands under her shoulder and took her hand.....she was cold. Why was she cold. We turned her over, her lips were blue. Why are her lips blue. Her chest isn't moving. I start to shriek her name. I lay my head on her chest and I can't find her heart beat. I look up and my dad is just standing in the doorway staring at us. I tell him to call an ambulance, he doesn't hear me at first. Dad! He snaps out of it and runs to the phone. I look back at my mom. Her mouth is open. I want to give her CPR but there is some godawful feeling in the pit of my stomach, telling me it's too late. It can't be too late. My mom. I have to save her. I don't know what I'm doing but suddenly I'm tipping her head back and forcing my breath into her lungs. Her chest rises and falls with each breath but it's not working. I beg her to breath. Please God, please no. Please mom, please God no. Don't do this. Please mom, don't leave me. Mom, please breath. God please!
The next thing I know the paramedics are there and they are peeling me off of her, I'm sobbing and screaming and pleading for someone, anyone to help. I go to the bathroom and throw up everything in my stomach. I'm laying in the bathroom doorway as I listen to all of the voices but no one is speaking English. I can't understand anyone. Someone comes to ask me a question, I try to answer but nothing sounds right, everything is blurring. Eventually, the paramedics leave. They tell us people will come back to take the body. I'm not sure what they mean by "the body." Or I don't want to be sure. They leave and somehow I bring myself off the bathroom floor. I stumble back to my parents room and my dad is sitting on the bed next to my mother, stroking her hair. He keeps saying, "Oh honey. Oh Myra."I look at her. Lying flat on her back. She is wearing the nightgown I got her a few months back. It has cats on it. I crawl in bed with her and lay my torso across hers. I pick up her lifeless arm and place it around my shoulder, part of me knowing that any second I'll feel her squeeze me tight. Part of me knowing that she'll whisper that she's fine and we're fine and everything is fine. But it doesn't happen. I make a couple of phone calls to my older sisters. I no longer remember what I said or what they said. I know they came over. I only remember lying there with my mother's arm draped across me for as long as they would let me. When they came to get her I went back to the bathroom. I watched them pass by with a large black bag. I had the strongest urge to hurl myself at them and cling onto that bag for dear life...literally. That was my mother in there. How could I let them take her away? But I sat on that floor and watched them carry her down the stairs and out the door.
The rest of that day....rest of the week...is a complete blur. I barely remember picking out flowers and a casket. Hardly recall getting ready for the funeral. I spoke and I sang her favorite song, "You're Not Alone". My older nephews and a few of my very close guy friends who knew my mother well carried her coffin to the hearse. We put her in the ground and that was it.
Really, I would say that the rest of that entire year was a blur. I'm pretty sure I was on auto pilot the majority of the time. I was also under a lot of medication. When I was fourteen I was diagnosed with this muscle disorder called fibromyalgia. I had spent the last four years seeing this primary care doctor who stuffed me with a new prescription every visit. Sleeping pills, pills to help me wake up, pills to calm me, pills to help me focus, pills to relax my muscles, pills to stop the pain, pills to make me happy, pills to help the pills that were supposed to make me happy. It was ridiculous. I couldn't stay awake in my classes. My teachers and friends were very sympathetic at first but after a couple of months it got old. They were tired of my crying, tired of my excuses for missing class. People forgot and I didn't get any better. I was a part of my school's Vocal Ensemble and another audition group that did music dance and theatre. After Christmas, I dropped out of the second group. I couldn't handle it anymore and frankly, the director really didn't want me anymore since I wasn't really contributing any good energy. I sort of stumbled my way through the rest of my senior year and did not end up graduating. After high school though, slowly but surely, I started to feel again. I started to wake up and find my way back into life. I got my GED, moved out of my parent's house, enrolled in college and vowed to make up for all the lost time. And here I am today four years later. Still finding my way back.
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