WORST CHRISTMAS EVER

Around 12:30 in the afternoon on Christmas Eve my mother choked. This was not a new occurrence since she has Parkinson’s. It makes throat muscles weak. She choked on a pulled pork sandwich of all the fucking things. The pickle…my dad yelled he needed my help. I ran down the steps, we were trying to get the food to come up. I screamed for my husband to call 911. We have done this before and it has worked. We get the suction mask for chocking that helps to pull the food out. It is working – food is starting to come up. She takes 3 breathes – my dad and I think we did it again. Except then she is not breathing. I run up the stairs for the EMTs – I heard the sirens.

SHE IS NOT BREATHING I frantically yell to the EMT who is quickly coming up the driveway. I let him inside and pause momentarily for the other EMTs further behind him. As I am walking behind the other 3 EMTs we arrive to see the first man pulling my mother’s body out of her wheelchair. I run upstairs to put my dog in our bedroom to keep him out of the way.  When I return 3 police officers and about 6 more EMT have arrived. There is a group around her working frantically. The police officer asks my father, husband and I questions. I worked on procedural shows for years. Does he think we killed her? What the…

They’re able to get her heart beating again but they are breathing for her. Now this happened before. And an hour later she was on the phone, completely fine. So my Father is feeling optimistic that she will bounce back. I am not. This seems different. This seems like the moment we knew would arrive. One of these times we were not going to be able to help her.

We call the hospital – she just got there the woman at the desk angrily tells me. She will tell the doc to call us. They call about 25 minutes later, the doctor is solemn, he says that they have her on a ventilator and what is concerning is that she has not breathed on her own. They are moving her to ICU. A dear friend of my family accompanies my dad, and I stay are home with my husband and kids so they can open their gifts. Keep things normal for the kids. Months of my shopping is laying on the floor. My feelings were weird. I retreated to the place I have been storing my feelings for years. They are frozen in some sort of vacuum.  

My dad still thought she would bounce back. On Christmas Day my dad and I went to the hospital. She was hooked up to all of this equipment mapping her brain. It was causing her to have seizures and her eyes were rolling back into her head. We spoke with the doctor – my dad wanted an answer from them. A definitive answer. Dad, they won’t give you one. She is not there anymore – you need to call people and tell them if they want to see her again they need to come tomorrow. We need to end things. The decision was not hard to make. We would wait for my brother to show the next day and then we would end her life. I have been mourning this moment for 25 years. Now that it was coming I found myself unnervingly calm.