9 Years

Today, January 30th, marks nine years since my mom crossed over. I still remember receiving that early morning phone call to get to the hospital. I had just pulled into the driveway of my then job. I ran up three flights of stairs to tell my supervisor that I was needed at the hospital, only to run down the three flights and back to my car. The drive to the hospital was mostly a blur. I remember speeding down Michigan Avenue to Dearborn. I remember calling my boyfriend (now my husband) and telling him that I was certain my mom was gone and him telling me that he’d meet me there. And I remember the knowing that she was gone and there would be no goodbye and just then a song called ‘Believe’ by Brooks and Dunn came on the radio. I don’t remember parking my car, but I do remember racing through the hospital and to my mom’s side. My dad and brother held her hand as I kissed her gently on the cheek noticing that she was vented but nothing was being pumped. No oxygen was flowing in. No oxygen was flowing out. Her face looked as if she had struggled, but was it a struggle to stay or was it a struggle to go?

Just two nights before she had told me she wanted to go home and I told her that we were doing everything to get her there, she patted my hand and told me that wasn’t the home she meant. She wanted her mom and her dad. I tried to keep it together, but I put my head down in her lap as she went in and out of medicated sleep and I quietly sobbed that I wanted my mom too. Here. With me.  The movie Superman was playing loudly on the television and she asked that I turn it down, complaining that my dad left it on, and left it loud. I turned off the television and kissed her and what t I now know to be our final earthly goodbye, and left. The next morning I woke up sick with a sinus infection, but my dad and brother visited her. “She’s doing so good,” my dad boasted on the phone. “They are even moving her to a regular room and giving her regular food,” he told me. “They are even talking about releasing her soon!” I thought the move was a bad idea then. I still think it was a bad idea now. Maybe they knew and they wanted her to have some form of normalcy before home.

Normalcy wasn’t my mom, though. She had a hard life. An impecunious life. She often told me how she had just one toy, a doll, to play with while growing up. And so as we kids got older, we gifted my mom toys; stuffed bears and dolls. But we couldn’t recreate her childhood, and with all of her hardships brought depression and with depression brought illness and with illness brought blindness and with blindness brought more depression. It was a chain that could not be broken by her husband, her kids, grandkids or even a fuzzy teddy bear.

I’d never planned a funeral before and I was surprised how alike the planning of a funeral was to a wedding. Programs had to be ordered. Songs, clothes and flowers all had to be carefully chosen. And then the calls, invitations and thank you’s had to be written. My dad, never one to handle a stressful situation well, sat idly by while me, my sister and brother tried to do my mom proud, knowing how particular she could be, and not wanting to disappoint her in any way.

Today is 9 years since my mom’s transition to her new home. She always dreamed of living in a quaint home overlooking the water, with a kitchen window that looked over fields of wildflowers. She told me that she imagined that the state of Maine looked like her ideal place to live.

Happy Heaven Birthday, mom. I hope you have a beautiful view of the water, of your gardens, and that us kids and grand kids have made you proud. I miss you.

Sally Lou Schiller – March 2, 1937 – January 30, 2006

Age 68 of Westland, January 30, 2006. Beloved wife of Ronald J. Loving mother of Duane (Laurie), Cheri Ford, and Kristy Schiller. Dear grandmother of Helen Ford, Micaela and Connor Even. Also leaves many nieces and nephews.