2/10/12...

The first thing I registered yesterday morning was the simultaneous sound of my bedroom door slamming open and my niece crying hysterically. It was closely followed by Cash crying and Brad screaming for his life. Myself? I was calm and all too aware that the time had come.

 Just as I was about to slap brad in the face to wake him from his hysteria, he snapped out of it and jumped up.... So I ran downstairs. I see my brother in law kneeling next to my sisters favorite recliner, lightly pushing on her chest, crying and saying "breath my love, please breath". I yell for brad to hurry, she needs CPR, which he's trained to do. He gets there and for a split second I see him register the bile coming from her mouth, but he doesn't hesitate to put his mouth to hers and start breathing for her. He tells Terrance, my brother in law, to push harder. And so they continue this until the help arrives.

 The firemen are the first responders. They pull her lifeless body to the floor, forgetting to brace her head. Brad catches it, and saves them from cracking her head on the wooden floor. They asked all these questions, we answer and watch helplessly. Terrance and I had both sunk to the floor, him still crying, me, in shock. Brad was helping. My niece still hysterical on the phone trying to reach my sisters oldest daughter. Her boyfriend upstairs, keeping the kids from the stuff nightmares are made of.

 Ambulance arrives. More of the same. Then they load her on a gurney and I yell for everyone to get a jacket because we are hauling out to the hospital. We arrive right behind the ambulance, through the back doors with my sister. Drs are waiting, a room is waiting, partitions to block everyone from that area are set up. We are strategically blocked from the room and told to answer some questions for the dr. It's just a diversion to keep us calm and away from the gory stuff they had to do to try to get her heart pumping. They place us in our own room, far away from hers, armed with boxes of Kleenex and warm blankets. I take the few moments to call my father, brother and oldest sister.

 My brother and sister head to the hospital, my father is stuck in the mainland on a trip to visit his brother. I don't know how long it was, but by now my sisters oldest daughter has arrived and my siblings aren't far away. The Dr comes in to say there is a slight heart beat but she's not able to breath enough on her own, and her body isn't keeping enough of the oxygen. So, she was alive but only because of the machines, and even with that, she'd slowly slip away very soon.

We can go see her now, "spend the rest of the time with her" .

 We walk in the room, she's been tubed and has dark blood running out of the side of her mouth. It was the side that I stood on, not the side all her kids were on. I try to clean it without them noticing, because when my own mother died, seeing her mouth fill with blood was an image I've never been able to shake.

 I hold her hand. It's still so warm and feels so alive, just like it did that month I spent with her in the hospital when she was first diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. I held her hand a lot then, also. This would be the last time I'd feel it. I memorized her fingers, the tan from all her rings she loved so much, her beautiful long nails. I thought of how different her hand felt in mine, in comparison to my mothers that final day. She still had so much life left in hers.

Then, even despite me knowing better, I got so mad at God, silently yelling at him that it just wasn't fair.... She had so much life left! Everyone took their turn talking to her one last time, kissing her one last time, thanking her for all she'd done for us... one last time. We all held hands and I led a prayer. Then my brother took over holding her hand that I had held for so long, as we all watched her oxygen drop from 42 to 30 percent in the hour we sat there. Then we gave her husband some time alone with her.

 We all knew her wishes of not living on machines and it was clear she wouldn't be able to live without them, so it was time for her husband to tell us his decision. She had made it so clear to us all, that he needn't explain it to any of us, but he felt he had to, he felt he needed to say he was sorry. Him and the kids sobbed and hugged for a long time, them telling him that he had nothing to be sorry for. He spent more time alone with her and then my niece informed the drs of our decision.

 We stayed for the disconnection, not wanting to miss a second of time with her. What happened next wasn't something anyone should see. The tubes came out, as did bile and blood. And she kept breathing, breaths I've heard referred to as "death breaths". Her daughter softly cried out, " she's still breathing!" this went on for about ten minutes, until a look of shear horror and pain fell on her as she took her last breath, that you could hear filled up her lungs with fluid. Then the torture in her face slowly eased..... And she was gone forever.