Today,
Aug. 30, 2013, would have been my mother’s 91st birthday. She
spent the entire summer that last year in a series of hospitals, and she was sick
for much of her last year, although she took great pains to keep us from
knowing how sick she was.
My
father had died in July of the previous year, and she had been driving back and
forth to the hospital to see him since he became ill in December of 2001. He
spent several months in the Veterans Administration Hospital in Temple, and she
made that 120-mile round trip almost every single day that he was there,
although on occasion, one of her church friends drove her. A couple of times my
sister and I met her in Temple, and the three of us spent the weekend in a
motel so that we could visit with Daddy and spare her that long drive. When he
was released to go back to Lampasas to a nursing home there, she didn’t have to
drive as far, but she would try to spend a big portion of the day with him,
which was still tiring.
By
September of that year, only two months after Daddy’s death, she was
hospitalized in Killeen. She always had tended toward anemia, and she was very
weak. But my sister had planned a trip to Alaska in connection with her job in
the next month, and Mom was supposed to go with her. That gave her an incentive
to take care of herself and get better.
They
did make the trip to Alaska, and they had a great time, even though the night
skies were cloudy the entire time they were there, so they did not get to see
the aurora borealis, which had been something both of them wanted to see. Mom
remembered a time from her childhood in Central Texas when, for some
reason—solar flares, maybe—the aurora borealis had extended as far south as the
little Central Texas farm she grew up on. But the closest they came to seeing
the Northern Lights in Alaska was in the post cards and books they brought
home.
My
sister and I fell into a routine of going to Lampasas most weekends that fall,
and we would take her out to eat or to the store. She had a lady who helped her
around her apartment several days a week, and one of our cousins made a trip to
Lampasas to visit with Mom in the middle of most weeks. Her friends from church
also stopped by to keep her company.
When
we went to Arkansas for Thanksgiving that year, Mom seemed to tire easily, but
she tried to do everything we wanted to do. On the way to Arkansas, we stopped
at a McDonald’s in Hope to get something to drink. My sister parked the car
near the door and went inside. Both Mom and I were slower. I had to get out of
the backseat, which meant moving around some of the items packed alongside me.
Mom got out and started toward the door just as I finally got out of the car.
As she turned around the front of the car, I saw her fall over backwards onto
the concrete. I ran to her where she lay, fearing that she might have broken
something. She wanted me to help her up, but I wasn’t sure how to do that
without hurting her more. She was
sitting up but still on the concrete when a man came out of McDonald’s. He
lifted her up and set her on her feet again. She was sore from that fall the
entire weekend.
When
we prepared to go to Arkansas again for Christmas, my sister and I decided that
she should fly. The trip would be shorter and much easier on her, and our
brother would meet her at the Little Rock airport and take her home. That also
gave her a little more time with our brother and his family. She had a great
time, even though there were a lot of emotional moments that holiday since it
was the first Christmas without Daddy. When the holiday was over, she rode back
to Arlington with us, and we took her back to Lampasas a few days later.
One
Sunday morning a couple of months after Christmas as she was getting ready for
church, she told us that she was not feeling well. Her heart was racing, and
fearing that she was having a heart attack, my sister and I called the
emergency medical technicians. She kept insisting that she would be fine, but
we said we wanted to be sure. When the paramedics arrived, they cut her dress right
up the middle to place the sensors on her. She was so upset because the dress
was her favorite. They took her to the hospital where she was kept in the
emergency room for a while, and then released to go home. Because of that
experience, we learned that she had a recurring problem with atrial
fibrillation, an irregular heartbeat, probably going back to a bout with scarlet
fever she had as a child. Although I remembered that she never had much energy
in hot weather and occasionally felt dizzy and had to sit down, if we had not
been there when it happened, we might not have known about the irregular
heartbeat.
In
the spring of 2003, she was excited about going to her grandson Graham’s
wedding. We had taken her shopping, and she had a new dress for the occasion. I
went down to pick her up when I got out of school that day. The plan was that
we would drive back to Arlington, pick up my sister, and go part way toward
Arkansas that night, then drive on in the next morning. But when I got to
Lampasas, Mom was moving very slowly. She didn’t seem to have much energy, but
I had no idea how sick she was. As usual, she never complained. When we
approached Glen Rose on the trip back to Arlington, Mom finally admitted that
she was not feeling well. She had thrown
up several times by the time we got to Cleburne, so she asked me to stop at the
Dairy Queen so she could use the restroom and change her clothes. We made it
back to Arlington, but my sister took one look at her and decided it would be
better if we let her rest that night and leave in the morning.
Mom
handled the trip to Magnolia, Arkansas, the site of the wedding, without much
trouble, but not long after we arrived, she was sick again. She made it to the
rehearsal dinner that night and to the wedding the next night, but in between
she stayed close to her bed in the motel. On Sunday morning, June 1, when it
was time for us to leave she couldn’t get out of bed. Not only was she still
having what appeared to be a major stomach virus, but the racing heart problem
hit her again. We called for an ambulance to take her to the Magnolia Hospital
and arranged to keep our motel room for a few more nights.
She
was released from the hospital in Magnolia on Tuesday, and we took her back to
Arlington. The next day we took her to Baylor University Medical Center in
Dallas to get checked out. They admitted her, and she was seen by a
cardiologist the next day. He talked to her about the atrial fibrillation that
was obviously getting worse and recommended surgery to correct the problem. The
surgery was scheduled in the next week. The plan was, once the heart problem
was fixed, we would move on to the abdominal problems she was having. She made
it through the surgery just fine, and we took her back home to Arlington with
us. The hospital had also arranged a visit with a specialist for the next week,
and I took her to it. I had to push her from the hospital into the medical
building in a wheelchair. He wanted to schedule a colonoscopy for her, but
before the time of that appointment, she went in to take a nap one afternoon
with us, and when she woke up, she could not get up.
We
called the ambulance again, and this time she was taken to the Medical Center
of Arlington. After we stayed there all night with her, they finally found a
room for her around 6 the next morning. Looking back, I think she probably had
a mild stroke that afternoon that affected her ability to walk. The hospital
began doing more testing. They did the colonoscopy there since she really
wasn’t well enough to take back to Dallas. And when she was finally released,
it was to go to a rehab hospital in Mansfield. She was there for the remainder
of her life. We celebrated her 81st birthday there, just a week
before she died.
In
the 10 years since her death, she remains an important part of family
celebrations. At family gatherings we still frequently remark on what Mom would
enjoy if she were still with us, just as we still talk about Daddy. The family
has changed some in the ten years she’s been gone. I retired from teaching this
year, after 36 years in the classroom. I don’t get around as well now as a
result of a car accident in 2010 and a fall in my classroom last August, both
of which resulted in broken bones. My brother’s oldest son, Corey, who came to
lived with my sister and me the summer Mom spent in the hospital, has just
started his 12th year of teaching. My brother’s other son, Graham, completed
college and went to seminary. After serving as an associate pastor in Fort
Smith, he moved the family to Jacksonville, Texas, a few years ago where he is
pastor of Fellowship Bible Church. He and his wife Leslie have three little
girls, Ava Grace, 6, Edy Rose, 3 1/2, and the baby, Joy Tatum, almost 4 months,
that their Mamaw and Papaw Hale would have doted on, just as the little girls’
grandparents do now. My brother’s
daughter Casey graduated from both high school and college in the past ten
years, and she’s now working on a master’s degree in counseling.
My
parents never had very much, but they left a great legacy for their children
and grandchildren, not in material goods but in the values they held and the
example they set for us. They would both be so proud of their family today.
Happy
birthday, Mom!
