Shock and Sadness

It’s with the greatest of sadness that I share the loss of my mom.

Yesterday she and my dad had decided to get out of town and spend a little time in the mountains, which they loved to do throughout my life. They were thrilled as well as anxious about taking a little trip as it had been the first since mom’s severe heart attack in May of this year.

They stayed at a beautiful campground with a beautiful view of the Sierra Mountains and a soothing running river in the background.

They were thrilled to be outdoors, enjoying the fresh air, sunlight, sounds of the mountains and being together, along with Cruiser the little puppy.

According to my dad, the day could not have been more perfectly spent.

Turning in for the night my mom was overly excited at the thought of sleeping on a cot outside under the starts with her dog. Something she did countless times throughout her life. During the early morning hours mom woke up and decided to get into their 5th wheel trailer when she fell hitting her head. My dad of course rushed immediately to her aid. He could tell immediately it was not good because she was throwing up.

Thankfully they had cell service, so my dad called 9-1-1 and reported the situation. The lady on the phone told him a helicopter was on the way along with medical personnel but that in the meantime my dad would have to give my mom CPR and provided him with guided instructions until help arrived. Once help arrived they airlifted my mom to a well-known trauma hospital in Reno, Nevada, which took my dad about an hour to drive there from their campsite.

Once to the hospital after several test the neurologist said there was very little chance of survival due to the severe bleed her head had suffered. So much so that it had already caused her brain to swell and shift to one side of her brain.

My father called both my brother and I around 4 a.m. and gave us little information other than mom was not doing well, so we immediately began heading to Reno, which took us over two hours to get too.

Truly nothing in this life prepares you for death. We can rationalize it, we can explain it, we can experience it, but no matter how many times, we can never truly prepare for what we will feel or experience after it happens.

I can say my mom for all intensive purposes passed peacefully for she never regained consciousness after falling. Moreover, she was so blessed to pass doing something she truly loved, and it wasn't even as a result of any of her medical conditions. You just never know when your time here is up.

We as a family were so blessed to have this precious time with her as well because truly it was a miracle she lived through the heart attack in May.

Of course during times such as these we find ourselves reflecting on so many things and for me a couple of them is not telling people enough how much they mean to me or not taking more time to live outside of just working. It seems we are so engrossed in our everyday lives and enslaved to our jobs for the sake of financial survival that we forget to tell those we know how much we love them and how much they mean to us.

My mom does know how much we love her as we not only told her but we showed her as well. She is the foundation to our family, the glue that seems to bind us together, the focal point that draws us all near. What an extremely precious and dear woman. I love my mom so much.

I LOVE ALL OF YOU.