That's the day I witnessed my grandmother suffer a severe stroke.
She'd been recovering from having a pacemaker put in. And she woke up that Saturday with nausea and vomiting. A lot of my family members were at a breast cancer walk. I had blown out a tire the day before and was having it replaced. My mom went and took care of my grandmother.
The visiting nurse came, my grandmother took a nap, my mom made her some soup. She went to babysit my niece and nephew. I dropped my sister off at work, brought my mom a coffee, and went back to my grandmother's.
My grandmother had woken up and was reheating the soup. She ate and said she wanted to go back to bed. Knowing she'd been vomiting, I told her that wasn't the greatest idea. She asked if we could sit on the porch.
So I went ahead, opening doors. She followed slowly behind. She got to the back door, went to take the step down and froze. Then she collapsed onto me.
At this point my cousin had made it to the house with her boyfriend. I called to them for help and they tried to get my grandmother seated while I called 911. My mother told me later that she knew the ambulance was for my grandmother.
I rode with her in the ambulance, not understanding what had happened, sobbing uncontrollably, feeling like I had done something wrong. I kept apologizing to her in the emergency room and she just stared back at me, unable to speak. She'd suffered a severe stroke on the left side of her brain. They were able to repair it but she lost the ability to communicate clearly and she lost the ability to move the right side of her body.
My family members kept telling me they were so thankful I was there and that I had saved her life. We got another year with her before she had a second stroke she didn't recover from. But it's hard to feel good about that day, even two years later. It was hard to look at her and not feel sad and guilty, even though I know there was nothing I could have done differently.
She felt trapped within her body during that yearlong attempt at recovery. And I felt like I sentenced her to that. And I wonder if that feeling will ever go away. I wonder if this weekend will ever feel like a happy one. I feel ... well a lot of different things. And I don't know how to deal with it except to cry. So that's what I do today. I cry. I get it out of my system. And then I'll put on a brave face and pretend like everything is okay. And maybe next Mothers Day weekend it will be.
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