Mother’s Day 2003: Tomorrow’s tragedy isn’t cause for ungratefulness today.

Written by a younger version of myself in 2006.

As the man on the television disappeared in the darkness and the humming of the fan took over the room, I laid back into the comfort of my bed wondering what tomorrow holds. The room was dark—so dark that one could not tell whether their eyes were open or closed. The hypnotic, repetitive humming of the fan started placing me into a trance and I noticed that I was falling asleep. As my eyelids grew heavier and heavier, I took a deep breath and let all of the day's paltry worries slip away. It was in my last conscious moment that I was reminded, through flashes of imagery as if an old projector was frantically changing still slides in an effort to tell a story, of an anxiousness, that broke way into the plot, one that I knew all too well. As I drifted away into a world of thought, the only thing left was the fear that this story's lesson had started to fixate inside my mind: fear of what life will have in store for me when my eyes opened again.

His pupils dilated as the rays of light pierced through his curtains like a hot rod through an already melting marshmallow. He clenched his covers and pulled them closely to his chest as a cold chill ran over his body, beckoning that today was not going to be a good day. He laid in bed trying to return to the fairy tale that he was living in just a few moments before, but there was a noise—a noise that is unmistakably the most haunting noise that anyone can experience: the unbearable screeching of utter silence. The young man lay there motionless, trying to hear what was un-hearable and straining all of his senses like a wild animal on the hunt or a horse before a storm. With his bedroom door closed he could see nothing, hear nothing and any chance of breaking that was being diminished by the silencing powers of fear. Though no evil could be said, heard, or seen, the one thing that could be sensed was far from being anything but evil. His nostrils burnt of the sharp smell of panic—a mixture of vinegar, ammonia, sweat, and fear. As he took in breath after breath of panic, he was thrown into a cloudy dream of the night before when he had just arrived home from the airport, where he and his mother broke into one of their usual arguments, screaming things that neither of them meant and storming off in their own directions. However, there was one part of the memory in particular that was haunting his thoughts like an old Beatles song on the radio: he had remembered his mother holding her head as she walked away—a descriptive, almost detective-like image that seemed irrelevant to his current situation. Opposite of that image was the audible memory of what he had said before he closed the world out and entered into another one of complete control: “Please God, I wish she would just die.” He did not yet understand why he was thinking of this moment in his recent past, but the very remembrance of those two memories shook his bones like an earthquake and stimulated him past the hesitant motivation that was keeping him in bed. It drove him out past the blockade that was shielding his eyes from the evil and to the stairway that only led one way—down. He knew that if he was to find out what his body had been trying to tell him, he would have to descend—descend into what he knew would be a different life.

He placed his trembling hands on the rails and gripped them as if he were holding on for dear life. Matter of fact, he was holding on for life—holding on to the life that he knew would be different as soon as his feet reached the bottom of the stairway that was now appearing to be more like a mountain than anything else. He used every bit of strength he had to overcome the paralyzing powers of trepidation and took the first step towards truth. With each step, more and more of his truth became visible. A bead of sweat rained down his panic-stricken body, leaving a trail of raised hair behind it. He stops a few stairs down to let his goosebumps and chills subside and hopes to gain composure before reaching the beginning. He stands ever so still, thinking that he could just stay stagnant enough, long enough, that he could remove himself from his current situation, much like a scared animal in the presence of a predator. It is here that the life that existed before started to overlap with the new one that he was about to discover.

In the distance he could hear footsteps—not just any footsteps, but ones of concern and ones of purpose. No fumbling or missteps; ones you would expect to hear from military personnel walking in a completely silent corridor, their boots hitting the floor in a repetitive pattern—back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, back and forth is what the varying distance of the sound made by the feet told his senses. It was what these footsteps left that haunted him now; a question mark, present among a growing list of others. These answers could only be revealed by

leaving more of his life behind. He broke through his hardening shell and continued on: “only 8 more steps,” he said to himself. He picked up pace and kept with it, one foot after the other until he finally came crashing down onto the solid, cold oak that just didn't seem to be giving its usual glare. He was now face to face with the most tempting and challenging competitors anyone could ever face: escape. There in front of him laid his last chance to exit this awful truth that he knew he was about to discover; all he had to do was turn the doorknob in front of him, run through the front door and never look back—taking another step, leaving behind the life that he knew was about to change everything.

The gripping fists of fear were no match for his overpowering curiosity and love for his father, who he knew was trapped in this awful reality in which he wanted to run from. But instead of running away from the foreseeable future, he took that life-changing 90° turn and there in front of him lied not only answers but even more questions. It was a figure that resembled what appeared to be his mother—a swollen outline of a woman lying face down in a heterogeneous mixture of vomit, bile, urine, and blood. He can only assume from the clothing and hair color, that matched those of his mother, that this was in fact her. However, these were the only characteristics that were alike from the night before. Her baby blue eyes that always seemed to sparkle were now closed shut by inflammation, just as if she had been punched in both eyes. Her calming face that he had known since he was a child resembled the characteristics of an over-exaggerated theatrical depiction of a reaction to a bee sting. Her ears were purple and ran not with wax but with a mixture of clear and red fluid. The left side of her body laid motionless as if it were a foreigner to the rest of her anatomy. Though all of these pictures seemed infamously surreal, he could not deny the reality of the situation. He was no longer asking what; it was the why that eluded his thoughts now.

Bilateral subarachnoid brain hemorrhage—this term didn't mean much to me before Mother's Day of 2003. I do not recall much of the hospital stay for my mother outside of it being long and the heavy weight that seemed to exist all around us. But this term above is what changed me and my family's life forever. My mother suffered her ruptured brain aneurysms at 10:30 PM and we did not find her until 5:30 the next morning—on Mother's Day. She went over 8 hours with little to no oxygen-rich blood reaching her brain. In the medical field we are told that every minute an individual goes without oxygen to the brain is worth 10% of brain tissue and therefore 10% of their survival chances, meaning that someone is only expected to survive 10 minutes after a significant brain bleed. How she survived at all is a mystery that I can only expect will never be answered.

What I can tell you is that her recovery was an ongoing process—it fluctuated between her being 50% functional to being 10% functional. Despite the prognosis, my father and I myself as a result, were both confident in her full recovery for most of her remaining days, I wonder looking back if that "Hope" was a reflection of faith or that of a useful coping mechanism. However, one thing will never recover: my irreversible new outlook on these reoccurring days that we call life. We must all face death in our lives—those of our friends and families and then eventually our own. It is in this knowledge that one must find the importance in life. To believe that you are born to get a job, move the economy, go to school or make money is just simply ignorant. It took witnessing a miracle and a tragedy to realize that sometimes what we as a society perceive as truth is nothing more than a lie. So as you lay your head back at night and before you close your eyes, do as I try to do—let go of all of your worries, stresses and insignificant woes that this world's lies bring you and remember what is important in life. Close your eyes and be thankful for the day that has come to pass, regardless of what tomorrow may bring.