I guess it's about time for this update.
I had never imagined things happening this quickly.
Then again who does, right?
Here's how it went:
September 23 - I ran the Omaha Marathon and won it, along with qualifying for both the Boston and
New York Marathons.
September 24 through September 27 - My mom apparently told the entire population of
Nazareth and Amarillo that I won the Omaha Marathon, and showed them my blog on it.
September 27 (evening) - Apparently hospice went over to my parents' house to check my
mom's blood level, and deemed that she needed a blood transfusion. They planned to go
the next morning.
September 28 -
8:00 am - My parents went to hospice to get my mom's blood transfusion.
1:00 pm - I called my parents house to see if they had gotten the mail, because
I had sent them something. No answer. I called my dad to see what was up, and
he said that he and my mom had gone to the hospital to get a blood transfusion
that morning, and that they'd be there all day, most likely. At that time, he
was going to get his laptop from work, and then he was going by home to get
the mail, to get them something to eat, and then he was going back to the
hospital. i told him to call me when he got back to the hospital.
3:00 pm - Called my dad back to see if he had received my mail, and when I
asked him about it, he went into a run-on sentence about how my mom wasn't
doing well and that she was kind of out of it and how he thought I might want
to get a flight to Amarillo as soon as I could.
WHAT?
At that time I had been on the way home from the gym, and I panicked. I couldn't
get home fast enough. I pulled up to the house, jumped out of the jeep, and
told Phillip the news, after which he immediately started looking for flights for me
while I dove right into packing. I had just begun packing when my dad called back.
He said, "Yeah, you definitely want to get on the first flight you can. I'll pay for it.
Just do it." So I continued to panic and pack, and Phillip said there were no flights
that night, only one in the morning for 5:00 am, which would put me in Amarillo
at 9:45 am Saturday morning. That would have to do. It was all I COULD do.
I called my dad back and told him. He said, "That's not going to be soon enough.
Can you get anything tonight?" Of course there was nothing, so I told him, and he
said that that would have to do, and that he hoped it would be okay until the morning.
As I was packing, my uncle called twice, and my dad called once more. The time my
dad called was around 8:00 pm that evening. He said it was looking really bad and
that I just needed to stay on the phone with them. I did, and around 8:20 pm, Friday,
September 28, 2007, my mom was gone.
I didn't make it in time.
The next day my sister told me that my mom asked about me twice, if I was on my
way, or if I was coming. :(
I got off the phone with my dad around 9:00 pm, and told him to call me if he needed
anything before morning. Of course I knew I would not be sleeping that night, and I didn't.
My dad ended up calling me around 10:00 pm and said that his boss was sending his
private jet and pilot to pick up Phillip and I from the TAC Air base in Omaha. The pilot
would be there at 1:40 am. We finished getting everything together and I just paced
the floor until 12:00 am. We left to go to the airport, and we had a 3 hour flight to
Amarillo. We arrived in Amarillo at 5:00 am, and I finally got to sleep at 6:00 am.
I slept about 2 hours, and then I got up to get ready to face the next few torturous
days.
September 29 - People started showing up at 9:00 am, bringing food, or just coming
by to stay for awhile. We had lunch that my dad's family brought by, and nearly every
one of my mom's and dad's family were there. It really sucked because I didn't want
to be there. So me, my dad, sister, brother, and Phillip went to the funeral home
around 11:00 to take care of the funeral arrangements, (fast, I know, but you have
to do that, I guess), because my dad wanted the funeral set for Monday, October 1,
2007.
We left there, and Phillip, my sister, my brother, and I went to get some stuff to
wear for the funeral. It took a while to find stuff, and we arrived back home at
about 5:30 pm. My dad was planning to have a family viewing of the casket that night
at 7:00 pm, so Phillip and I dropped off my sister and brother and went back up
to the funeral home.
This was the first time I got to see my mom since September 18. It was so hard.
I cried for an hour and a half, until everyone else arrived to view her body. I still
cried, but it was during that hour and a half that I came to realize that she was
really gone. Before that I had just heard that she was gone. They could have been
lying to me for all I knew.
September 30 - At around 5:00 pm, we drove with the hearse to Nazareth, and that
night there was a prayer service at the church in Nazareth. It was a blur. We all
came back to Amarillo that night, just to have some time to refresh for the next
day.
October 1 - We left to go to Nazareth around 11:00 am, because there was a lunch
being put on for us by my dad's family. Both sides of the family were there. I ate
nothing.
4:00 pm - We all attended the mass and burial of my mother. It was the single
most saddest day of my entire life. I cannot express to you the feelings I felt that
day, or to this day now.
My dad is not the same man as he was. He keeps busy ALL the time, undoubtedly
so that he doesn't have to think about how much free time he actually DOES have.
He loved my mom with everything he had. They were married 29 years, and he
will never marry again. I don't want him to, and he won't. My mom was the best
thing about our family, and she always will be.
