Happy Birthday, Mom

For me, January 10th of each year is a special day of remembrance. Had she lived, today would have been my mother’s 80th birthday. I can’t help but think about the person she would be if she was here. Those of you who know me well know my father was not an especially kind man. Had he predeceased her, I would like to hope she would have blossomed into a confident and self-assured woman of graceful age and wisdom. Instead, her life ended in 1988, at the age of 47, as a result of massive, traumatic injuries sustained in a car accident on July 24th. She was making Sunday dinner for family, and had made a quick stop at the grocery store for a few last minute items. After leaving the store, she was at a traffic light, making a left-hand turn, and had pulled into the intersection in preparation. As the light started to turn red, she went ahead and made her turn. This is something those of us who drive do on a regular basis, and usually never have need to give it a second thought. On this occasion though, an 18 year-old in a pickup truck coming from the opposite direction ran the light. Most likely, he saw it was about to change, and rather than stop, he tried to beat it. He sustained no injuries. No, he wasn’t drunk or on drugs. The day was clear and sunny, no rain. He was just 18; young, still believing himself to be immortal, and not thinking about the possible consequences of his actions. We were all 18 once. 

Those “possible consequences” caught up with him that day, changing not only his life, but those of everyone whose life my mother had touched. I wonder about him sometimes. He’d be 50 now, and I wonder about the impact that split second decision has had on his life.

My mom was driving a Hyundai. When an inexpensive compact car and a full-size pickup try to occupy the same space at once, you can probably guess who comes out on the short end. My then husband and I were on our way to my parents’ house for dinner, and that was how I discovered my mom had been in a serious accident. As we were approaching the intersection, I saw there had been a bad accident involving a white Hyundai, of which there were thousands of on the roads. It wasn’t until we got closer that I recognized the vanity plate on the front of the car…or what had been a car, but was now an almost unrecognizable mass of metal, all sharp edges and broken glass. I only have a few mental snapshots of that time. The impact was such that there was only about six inches between the driver’s door and the passenger door. Mom had put a six-pack of soda on the passenger seat, and every can was crushed. It looked as though the front and rear windows of the car had exploded from it. The police officers on the scene said an ambulance had taken my mother to the hospital about 20 minutes before. When I got there, the emergency room workers allowed me to be in the room with her while they desperately tried to stabilize her enough for surgery. She was hit so hard that her aorta had sheared off and she was bleeding directly into her chest. They allowed me in because they didn’t believe she’d make it out of the ER and into the surgery she needed to repair the damage to her heart. She also had massive head trauma with so much swelling on her brain that they drilled a hole in her skull and inserted a monitor for the pressure. Her body was so damaged that it’s unsurprising they didn’t believe she’d hang on long enough to make it to surgery. In her favor, at 47, she was relatively young, in good health with no preexisting conditions, and had a strong will to survive. In the end, that wasn’t enough. After an emotional roller coaster of a month, during which I practically lived in the ICU waiting room, sleeping there each night, we had to take her off life support on August 24, one month to the day from the accident.

My mother was my rock: the one person I could count on to be there for me, regardless. I was 24, and by that point knew the Crohn’s disease with which I had been diagnosed several years earlier was going to be a severe and chronic problem. She was the one person who visited me every day of numerous hospital stays, was always ready with encouragement and unconditional love, no matter how hard things got. When I lost her, I lost an irreplaceable part of myself. No one loves you like your mother does.

Happy birthday, Mama. I love you.