A Voice for Mama: The Silence Stroke Left Behind

Twenty years ago, my mother suffered a massive stroke that changed our family forever. 

For two decades, the details of that day -- the fear, the confusion, the heartbreak, and the silence that followed -- have lived behind closed doors, shared only among family. 

In this episode, I'm opening that door for the first time. This episode is a way of honoring my mother's memory, and speaking words that she couldn't and that I wasn't ready to share until now. 

If you've ever lost a parent, cared for someone after a stroke, or carried grief in silence, this conversation is for you. 

This is not just my mother's stroke story -- it's her voice that I carry through mine. 

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Transcript

0:14

Every episode is a place of clean and a reminder that we are all walking through life together. Welcome to At the Root of It. I'm your host, Tiffany. We are at the end of May, which is also the end of Stroke Awareness Month. By now, you've probably had an opportunity to listen to the stroke survival stories from Donnie and Reina. And if not, I highly encourage you to go back and listen. Did you know that statistics show that every 40 seconds someone in the US suffers a stroke? I know that now, but I sure wish I had known that more than 20 years ago. Today I'm here to tell a personal stroke story. I'm speaking on behalf of someone who unfortunately is unable to be here with us today to share their story. My mother. I do believe this is the first time I've shared details of what occurred during that time with anyone outside of my family. So I really don't know what to expect out of myself today in telling this story. I I don't know if I will get through it in a breeze. I don't know if I'm going to pause and cry. I don't know if I'm going to get choked up. I I don't know what to expect. But what I do want is to be able to speak to my mother's story, give her a voice when she essentially lost hers. And give someone hope. A lot of times we deal with hard things in life, we deal with unexpected tragedies, and it almost takes people out of here sometimes for the ones who are left behind. But it doesn't matter if the tragedy or loss was yesterday, five years ago, 30 years ago. It doesn't take away the pain, that void of missing that individual that you love. And I want people to know you can survive. I survived, my family survived, and you can survive too. So I hope this story honors my mother's memory. I hope it serves as an inspiration to others and that you just take your health serious. If there are things that are not right, take a pause and go get them checked out. Your body feels things, your body knows things. So if you're feeling off, if something doesn't feel right, go get checked and do what you need to do to stay on top of your health. I will say there are other family members that I would love to be a part of this conversation, but at this time the weight of this situation is still hard. And some are just emotionally unprepared for the discussion right now, which is fine, and I respect that. And I do look forward to having an opportunity to sit down with them and get their perspective on some of the things that took place during that time. Because again, after 20 years, there may be things that even my mind may be fuzzy on that I may have forgotten some things in time. For anyone who's ever lost a parent, it's an indescribable type of pain. You're able to push it down so deep and cover it with other things. Work, activities, investing into other people, other family members, other people that you love. But it's always there. That just shows you how much they were loved. In November of 2005, I remember waking from a disturbing dream. In the dream, I saw my family. We were attending a funeral, and we were in the processional. So I could tell by the way the dream was flowing that whoever's funeral we were attending, it was an immediate family member. And I remember I jumped up, I woke up, my heart was racing, I was terrified. I could not figure out what that dream was about. And as I was thinking about the dream, even when it was happening, looking into the dream, I remember frantically scanning the room, trying to figure out who in my family is missing, whose funeral are we potentially attending? And I could not figure out who was missing from that dream. I remember I called one of my siblings in a panic. It was late at night, and I'm sure she was panicked to get that phone call in the middle of the night. I woke her up and I said, Hey, I have a feeling something bad is about to happen. And she said, What do you mean? And so I told her about my dream, and I said, I don't know what's happening, but I have a feeling something bad is about to happen. I think we are getting ready to lose somebody in the family. She said, You know, people have nightmares all the time. And she tried to calm me down. And I said, No, this feels real. It didn't feel like just a nightmare, and this was a scary moment. This feels like something is about to happen. And so I remember she told me, just go back to bed, calm down. She said, just say a prayer and ask God that whatever it was that you saw in your dream, just pray that it's not as bad as whatever it was that you saw in your dream. And I said, Okay, so I did that, went back to bed, but I could not shake that. We get through November 2005. That feeling is still with me. That dream is still with me. We get to December 2005. That dream and that feeling, they're still with me. I remember New Year's Eve of 2005 fell on a Saturday, and we had watched night service at church, and the next day, which was New Year's Day, fell on a Sunday. And so I remember the decision was made. Yes, we would still show up for our regularly scheduled church service. So we got up Sunday, went to church, like always. And my family usually always went to dinner together Sunday afternoons. And so we were trying to make a decision about where to go for dinner. And I remember my mom suggested she wanted to get barbecued. And others in the group, like some people just weren't feeling it, like, no, maybe not today. Maybe we ought to eat something else. Maybe we ought to ought to do something else. And she said, No, I want to get barbecue. And I remember my dad, he was like, Really? Barbecue? Is that what you want today? And he says, Well, are you sure? Why don't we do something else? And and she said emphatically, I want barbecue. And he said, Okay, well, we'll go and get barbecue. So we went out to a local barbecue restaurant, had dinner, and we went back to my parents' home, which, for the sake of clarity, as I'm telling this story, we always refer to as the house. So if you hear me say the house, I'm always talking about my parents' home, the house I grew up in. And so after dinner, we went back to the house, and everyone was there for a little while and it got really late. I remember most people had left. For whatever reason, I just didn't feel a need to leave. I didn't feel, oh, it's time for me to go, even though I knew I had to go to work. Something in me just would not allow me to leave. I remember there was a burgundy recliner chair that sat in the living room that my mom would sit in and she would go through her weekly sale papers, make out her grocery list, read the newspaper, all that stuff. So, as I mentioned, most people had already left the house that night. I remember my dad was on another side of the home. And in the living room there where the recliner was, my mom got her paper out like she always does. She sat down, and I remember um I was in the room, my sister, my niece was in the room, and one of my other siblings, I remember being in the room with us. And so just hanging out, and all of a sudden, I remember we started hearing zzz, zzz, and we looked at each other and we were saying, What's that noise? And so we assumed it was my niece playing with a toy. She was on the floor playing with the toy. And so we said, Is that your toy making that noise? And she lifted a toy that she had in her hand, and the buzzing continued. And we were saying, What is that noise? At that time, one of my sisters realized that the recliner had now been turned around where the back of the chair was facing us as we were sitting in the living room. And I remember she said, Is that mama? And so we got up and she spun the chair around and she was like, Oh my God. And so my mom was in the process of having an active stroke. And I'll tell you this, if you have never, if you've never witnessed a person having a stroke in real time, I can tell you it is one of the most disturbing and frightening visuals you will ever see. I would not want anybody to have that visual in their mind the way that I remember seeing my mom turned around in that chair and her face being completely distorted. So I sister got on the phone and called 911, and I ran across the house and got my dad, and I'm like screaming, she's having a stroke, she's having a stroke. And he's like, What? He's trying to figure out what's going on. I'm like, Mama's having a stroke. He dropped everything and he ran into the other room and uh he was hovering over her. And so watching my dad in church, pastor, whatever, I've seen my dad pray, like I've seen him pray good, heavy, fervent, solid prayers. But I will say, I've never seen him pray with the intensity and the fervor that he had that night for his wife. So he had his hands on her head and he was praying for her, and my sister was on the phone with 911. By the time 911 showed up, it was a complete change. My mom had gone back to how she was before we witnessed her having the stroke in that moment. And somebody might be listening saying, How did you know? How did you look at her and know that she was having a stroke? Um, she did have a stroke in 1997, but it wasn't to the same level. But there were some things that had taken place at that time. There were cues and things that we knew to look out for when she had her stroke in 1997. I had never known anything about a stroke prior to that. A few days before she had the stroke at that time, she was looking at some soap opera on TV. And I remember there was a person, I think the person was in a wheelchair, but the way they were talking, it was just so strange. And I remember asking her, What's going on with this person? Why are they talking like that? And she said, Oh, they had a stroke. And as I'm thinking back into 1997, probably story for another day, but I remember when she was talking at that time, it sounded similar to what I had heard of the person on television. And I remember asking her, Did you have a stroke? And she said, No. And ultimately she did because there were some other things that were going on, and she had to be forced to go to the hospital to have that uh determined medically. Anyway, back to uh 2006. So the paramedics show up, and my mom is sitting up talking, fully alert, and they're like, Do you know your name? What year is it? Who is the president? She's rattling off all the answers correctly without Phil. And she did not want to go to the hospital, and they were suggesting that she go to the hospital. And so finally the decision was made, like, yeah, she's gonna go to the hospital for further evaluation. So we get over to the hospital, we're all in the waiting room, and we're just trying to process like what happened? How did she wind up having a stroke? We later found out that she had stopped taking her high blood pressure medication, and we don't know exactly at what point she stopped, how long she had been off of it. And so that was a major contributing factor. Her stroke was classified as a major ischemic stroke. I was getting nervous. They were in the back for a long time, and I'm saying to myself, does this mean something has happened? And so somehow I find myself wandering through the hospital and I find the room that they're in. And I remember I opened the door, and whatever happened, she must have been unconscious at this point because I remember opening the door and I saw a nurse in the room. My dad was in the room, and my dad was holding her hand, but he was shaking her frantically and he was calling her name, and she was not responding, not waking up. And I remember just freezing in that doorway. And I shut the door. I'm sure they never even saw me there. I shut the door and I started walking back to the waiting room. And I'm like, I gotta pray. We gotta say a prayer. I think something's happened. She's not responding, and so they're trying to calm me down. I don't know how many minutes pass. My dad comes out and he tells us she's okay. They're gonna keep her for observation. She's resting right now. And I do think that we all had an opportunity to go in and see her before we went home that night. So they kept her overnight, and she wound up being in the hospital, I'm gonna say, for several days before they let her come home. She came home and uh she was weak. She didn't really have her balance, so she needed someone to stand nearby to make sure she didn't lose her footing. Her speech was a little slower, but she was still talking and responding and very much aware. She never lost her reasoning capabilities. So while there were things that she could not physically do, she couldn't drive for a period of time, she couldn't understand why she couldn't do those things because in her mind, I'm fine. I'm here, I'm standing up. And I'm like, yeah, you're standing up, but you don't realize I'm standing on the side of you holding you up, or someone's on the other side of you holding you up, or you got to do this physical therapy. So her mind recognized she was fully there, but could not comprehend that her body had not caught up to that. She had to have a modified diet, even that was a struggle because you can there were certain food items that she wanted that she could not have. And it made her very angry not to be able to get the things that she was asking for. And so we would have to explain to her, you just had a stroke, you cannot eat this. They said you can't have this, or you gotta modify your diet for this, or you gotta do the physical therapy, which she couldn't see the point in that. And so there would be times that we'd have to tell her if you want a 10-piece, you got to do the physical therapy. But we're not gonna give you a 10-piece, and you might just get one, and then the rest of your meal might have to be a salad. Some of those tactics we had to apply to get her to comply with what needed to be done. And there was an instance, one of my siblings was sleeping in the living room with her to this day. We do not know how my mom accomplished this, but she got herself up on her own, got completely dressed, put on her tennis shoes that had laces that she tied herself, and she had her keys and was proceeding to leave early in the morning to go to the grocery store. So thankfully, they heard the jangling of the keys and they were able to stop her before she left the house. That also didn't go over well because she was angry that, and in her mind, it was like we were stopping her from doing the things that she was doing all the time. When in essence, we weren't quite stopping her from doing the things she was doing all the time, but really trying to get her to understand your body is not ready for some of these activities and things yet. Like your body's not prepared for getting in the car and driving to the store. Your body just needs a time to rest. Maybe within a week or two. It was a Sunday morning, and a few of us stayed home with her, and my dad went to church. He was kind of reluctant about leaving her that morning. My mom started exhibiting symptoms that look like she was having another stroke. So we called 911 and we called my dad, like, hey, we need you to turn around. We just had to call 911. We think she's having another stroke. So he meets us at the hospital. We get her down to the hospital, and the people at the hospital are telling us, no, she's she's not having a stroke. She's having a seizure. And we're like, no, no, she's having a stroke. She's never had seizures. They begin to give her a medication to counteract that they believed she was having a seizure. From that point on, I would say is really where my mom declined. I have a lot of strong feelings about that hospital. There were a lot of issues with that facility to the point now they've rebranded themselves as another hospital under a different name. So they give my mom this medication and she essentially goes downhill from there. And in hindsight, we do believe she was actually suffering another stroke at that time, and that they did not treat her correctly in that moment, which is why her situation continued to decline. So they give her the medication. I think she was able to come back home like later that night. And when she came home, she just was listless, um, limp. You hold her arm up, her arm falls down. Just somebody who just seemed like they were out of it, just drowsy, dozied, not really talking. And as we are observing her behavior and her symptoms, we're like, this is not right. Something's definitely not right. We got to take her back and figure out what's going on. So we get her back to the hospital and she starts having seizures. And we're like, what is going on? Because you all gave her medication to supposedly stop seizures. And they come back and tell us, oh, well, a side effect of the medication is that it causes people to have seizures. And we're like, why would you treat someone with a medication that's supposed to help the condition they have, but instead you help accelerate it? So uh medication for seizures causes seizures. Makes no sense, right? And so my sister was one who figured out before they said it that it was the uh quote unquote anti-seizure medication that they had given her that caused her to start having these seizures. But none of that was shared as they administered any of this medication to her. My mom wound up losing her ability to speak. She wound up losing her mobility. And it turned into a situation like taking care of a baby, a baby who can't fan for itself. They can't tell you what's going on, they can't tell you when they're hungry, when they're hurting, they can't lift up and do things. They are totally dependent on you for their care. And that's essentially what it became. So we spent a great deal of time at the hospital just taking shifts, making sure we had somebody there at all times to keep an eye on what was going on because there were a lot of things happening that should not have been happening. I do think they were doing some things to maybe experiment on her or maybe trying to do some things slowly to try to ease her out of this world. I wholeheartedly believe that based on some of the things that had taken place. They had given her a tracheotomy without consulting with the family. Um, I at that time I had no idea what a tracheotomy was. I remember being there one day and the next day showing up, and my mom has this hole and plastic thing protruding out of the middle of her throat. According to them, the tracheotomy or trach was to assist with her breathing, which she was not having any breathing problems, but they said it was to assist with her breathing and that this trach was temporary and that the hole in her throat would close. The trach was not as temporary as what they had made us believe, and the hole in her throat never closed. At one point, made a comment to us that she had had a heart attack. And we're like, no, she's never had a heart attack. So they're like, Oh no, she had a heart attack, and just you know, adamant she had a heart attack. And we're like, Well, when does she have a heart attack? Because we have all been here with her every day. None of us have witnessed this and no one has spoken to us to inform us that she has had a heart attack. Oh, yeah, she had a heart attack. So by then we began saying we need a copy of her medical records because we need to know what has happened from the time she's been here to what's going on now. That was a fight. Whatever was going on further cements my feelings that they were doing things they should not have been doing because they were very against us having her medical records. They were doing all kinds of things to keep us from obtaining her medical records. And I mean, we had to fight hard to get that information and go through in line by line to figure out what has happened from day to day, who her nurses were, what kind of medication they were giving her, what her symptoms were so that we could stay on top of what was happening. We wound up spending a lot of time in the hospital waiting room and we bonded with two other families who were there for some other tragic issues. One lady, her daughter had been attacked by uh, I believe a homeless man dealing with some issues, and the daughter suffered injuries, wound up being in a coma. The daughter was pregnant, the baby was born while the daughter was in a coma. The other family, the the father in the family, I think he had had a heart attack or a stroke or something too. And so it was just it was a difficult time. And the three families spawned together. There would be times where someone would say, I've got to go back home and let the dog out. I've got to do this. Can you keep an eye on my loved one? Here's my phone number. Call me if the nurse comes back or if the doctor comes in. And so we would all look out for each other there. We had a lot of prayer circles in the hospital waiting room. And while it was a hard time for all of us, I think it helped having other people there who were dealing with such heavy things in life that it's like, you understand what I'm going through. My mom was also put under frequent heavy sedation for whatever reason. And they would come in and they, when I say they, I'm talking about the people who worked at the hospital. They would say, Well, she can't hear you. We'd be in the room talking to her, and they would walk in and say things like, She can't hear you. You you don't need to talk to her. There's no reason to talk to her. She can't, she can't understand, she can't hear what you're saying. And I'm like, no, she can hear me. And they would say, Well, she can't hear you because she's sleeping. And then they would come back and say, Well, her condition's not improving. She she just sleeps all the time. You know, she just never, she never gets up. We can't do our exercises. She doesn't do this, she doesn't do that. She just sleeps all the time. And we said, Of course she sleeps all the time because you guys are coming in here giving her sedatives every couple hours. If you were sedated heavily, you'd sleep all the time too. So finally we said, no more sedatives. They claimed that they were giving her the sedatives because it was helping to keep her calm, because they were saying that she was getting worked up because of frustrations of not being able to communicate and things like that. So we said, no more sedatives. Get her off of the sedatives immediately. I'm not even sure that it was a full 24 hours after they stopped the sedatives. I remember going into her hospital room. She was sitting upright, eyes wide open, somebody who looked like they had been refreshed from taking a much-needed nap. And I just could not believe who I was looking at. Total difference from the person lying in the hospital bed, just completely listless. She had lost her ability to speak at this point. So communicating with her was also a challenge because we don't know what she needs. We don't know when she's hungry. We don't know if she's hurting. We don't know, does your pillow need to be adjusted? Does your scalp age? We don't know any of that. As we're talking to her, we say, well, if you can hear me, squeeze my hand. And she squeezed my hand. Okay. I wonder if that's a fluke. So we have her do it again and she does it again. And we're letting the hospital staff know she's responding to commands. We're asking her to squeeze and do these things, and she's doing it. And they're saying, oh no, she doesn't understand. She can't do that. She's only doing it out of reflex. And so we say, well, if it's only out of reflex, why is she only doing it when we tell her to do it? She's doing it on command. She's not doing it at any other time, only when we ask her to do it. No, no, you guys are wrong. And so they begin saying things and even speaking in front of her. Oh, she's a vegetable. Um, there's nothing that can be done. You know, you guys just need to put her into a nursing home. And we said, no, if she's not gonna be here, if she's not going into a nursing home, we're we're gonna take her home and we're gonna take care of her. No, you can't take her home. Why can't we take her home? You just you will not be able to care for her the way she needs to be cared for at home. But if you guys are not gonna do what you're gonna do at the hospital and take care of her, why can we not take her home if we've already told you taking her to a nursing home is out of the question? And so they proceeded to fight us again on that issue and told us that we could not take her home. They would not allow us to release her to go home. As time went on and we are fully convinced she can hear us, she can understand, she's responding to things on command. I asked her one day if you can hear me, which I believe that you can. I said, I need you to show me some other ways that you can communicate. And I said, if you can hear me, can you blink two times for me? She blinks two times. And so I said, Okay, let's try it again. If you can hear me, blink two more times, and she blinks two more times. So I tried it with a couple of other blink three times, do this four times, and she did those things. So I run out and I get everybody like, hey, y'all, I think I just figured out how we can communicate yes and no. And so as we are bringing everybody into the room, like they're watching me speak to her and asking her if you can hear me, I need you to blink this many times, and she does it. So we talk to her and we say, Okay, this is what we're going to do. If going forward, if something is a yes, we need you to blink this many times. And so we do that. She blinks the number of times we shared. So from there, we were able to get cues for things that are yes and no, so that we could effectively communicate with her to understand the things that she needs. All right, fast forward. One day I'm at work and I get a phone call from my dad just in a panic. And he's like, hey, and this is probably about I'm I'm just gonna say two or three o'clock in the afternoon. It was probably closer to three, if my memory serves me correctly, but I was late in the afternoon. He says, We've got to get some things set up at the house. They're sending your mother home. And I'm like, what do you mean they're sending her home? I thought they said we couldn't take her home. He said they showed up and said, We are not treating her anymore. She's got to go. You got to get her out of here, and she's got to be gone by 6 p.m. So, well, what do you do when you've been told for a month or so that your loved one can't come home? Your home is in no condition. We had no medical equipment at home, we had no hospital bed at home. We did not have the things at home at that time to have been prepared for her to come home when they released her, when they did. I think it was done intentionally. I do think that they did that as a means to try to um cause her demise. I think it was also a tactic to try to say, look what we did. They asked us to take her home. We sent her home. They didn't even have appropriate accommodations for her, so she'd be better suited going to a nursing home. I do not know how we did this in three hours, but within three hours, we had a hospital bed delivered to the home. We had all the medical supplies needed, the things that she was already using in the hospital. We had already had all those things picked up, and uh, she was picked up in our family minivan and brought home. We were given no resources about uh wheelchairs, we weren't given resources about home health. We just we weren't given any instructions but get her out of here by 6 p.m. and take her home. So we get her home and we get her situated and we explain, and I'm sure she knew she was back at home, but we explained we've brought you home because this is the better place for your care. We're gonna take great care of you, and we did. We did what we had to do round the clock. That was such a hard time for us as a family that I think people knew, okay, her mom's had a stroke and they're taking care of her, but they have no idea what we had to go through during that time. We did not have a medical van when we had to go to appointments. We had to take the seats out of the van. Somebody found the wheelchair at the medical store. So we get the wheelchair. This is how we had to load her into the vehicle for appointments, put her in a wheelchair, and we would have to manually pick the wheelchair up, put it into the van. And because it's a regular family minivan, not a medical vehicle, not a medical van, some of us sat on the floor and held the wheels down to keep her from moving. So when we got to the appointment, got out again and loaded her, um, unloaded her, and did the same process when we got her back home. Um just even trying to figure out about what do we do about her regular medical care. I remember Googling some things and keep in mind, 2006, the internet it was a thing, but it was not at the level of sophistication that we have now. There were two things that I found. There was a company that does hyperbaric oxygen treatments that we had done some research on that treated athletes and other people for injuries. And then I found a mobile doctor in the area. So we decided to take her to the oxygen treatment. And I from the first treatment, again, keep in mind this is someone who has lost their mobility. So essentially it's like a baby. You know, when babies can't hold their heads up, she couldn't hold her head up. She left the house, her head was down, she was in the chair, she went to the first treatment. By the end of the first treatment, she was able to like sit up, sit her head up on her own. She was able to hold her head up from that first treatment. And we were like, we're gonna keep taking her to this. And so it didn't matter how much it cost. We were gonna do whatever we had to do to make sure that the things got done. So we find the mobile doctor, and very nice man um shows up with his doctor's bag and he checks her out and he's looking at her and he's taking vitals and whatnot, and he's remarking at how well she looks. He says, I see people at home who are in horrible condition and they have bed sores and things like that. Not one bed sore. He's like, her skin is is blowing, it's pristine. She's in great health. So he signs off that her care is exceptional. At some point, the hospital reaches back out and they start demanding that we bring her back to the hospital to be evaluated. And we ignored the phone calls because they said they weren't treating her anymore. So if you're not treating her, why do we need to bring her back down to you if you're if you've refused to treat her? So they're calling, they're leaving threatening voicemails and just being very harsh in their phone calls. And so they call my dad again and they say, We need you to bring her back down here. And he says, I'm not bringing her back down there. And you guys said you are not treating her. There's no reason for me to load her up and bring her there if you all said you are not treating her anymore. So the next call was a threat that if you do not bring her back here, we are going to report you all to Adult Protective Services. We did not respond to that telephone call. One day, Adult Protective Services shows up at the house. And so my dad calls and he's telling me they're here. And I'm I said, Well, what do they want? What are they looking for? And so the visit had nothing to do with her care. They wanted to know how much income the family brought in. They wanted to know how many bathrooms we had in the home, how many bedrooms are in your home, just stuff that had nothing to do with her and her care. So they have to get to the bottom of why are you all in our home? And so they said, Well, we got a report that she was being neglected and which she never was. So that was a downright lie. So they said they had received a report that my mother was being neglected and that we were refusing to provide her medical care. And an investigator was sent to come over to the home and see what was going on. So they come over and we have records to show that we have a doctor who makes house calls to come and do her vitals and check her out, check her skin and everything. Like the every two weeks, the doctor was coming by. So we had all the medical records to show that the doctor was treating her. They were able to look at her and inspect her and see that she was in good shape. She didn't have any bed sores, she wasn't hurting. We had all the things there that we were doing the exercises with her to keep her flexible, bending her legs and her arms and things like that, resistance bands and all that kind of stuff. And the investigator who showed up offered my dad an apology that the hospital had wasted his time and their time by sending them over to the home. And they said she's in pristine condition. She looks better than most people we see in a hospital. So, whatever you all are doing, continue to keep doing that. She's in great shape. And they left. And we never heard another word from that hospital. We never heard another word from Adult Protective Services after that. My mom couldn't regularly leave the house just because we were also trying to be cautious about exposing her to a lot of different people. We didn't want her to get sick. But you could sort of tell after a while, it was wearing on her to not be able to leave the house when before her stroke, she was accustomed to leaving and going and doing the things she wanted to do and going to church and all that kind of stuff. So we'd get her outside, sometimes on the wheelchair, and get her out for some sunshine. And then at one point, we'd said, it's time she may be ready to go back to church. We got her wheelchair together and got her to church. She just seemed so calm, and you could even tell she was smiling a bit. It was in the summer. I was a little warm in the building. And I was fanning, and I started fanning her. And the thought came to me to put the fan in her hand. I wanted to see what would happen. I don't know if I mentioned it to her, but I remember slipping the fan into her hand and she began fanning herself with the fan. The church service was active. And when she started doing that, it was like everybody in the building lost their complete concentration. And we just, everybody just looked at her like she is fanning. Her arm is working, she's got something in her hand, and she's fanning. And remember taking the fan out just to see again if that may have been just a fluke with the reflex thing, and she didn't do it. But when it was put back in her hand, she would continue to fan herself. That was just another reminder of how God works in his timing to just show us there are still things there that she can do. It may not look like what it looked like before, but she still had certain abilities. As time went on, my mom was able to heal and strengthen in certain areas. She was able to sit upright without an issue, was able to smile. She was able to nod her head. She could turn her head back and forth. We realized that she regained the ability to move her right arm when we noticed that she could fan, but she even got to the point where she could raise her arms. You would ask her, Can you raise your arm? And she would raise her arm. As time went on, she got to eat regular food again. So they sent her home with these nasty shakes. They looked nasty to us, so that I'm sure they tasted nasty to her. But with the whole thing with the trach and the thing they put in her stomach, she was getting a lot of her food pumped in through these shakes. And so it did make us feel bad to eat regular food and then watch her have that shake pumped in her stomach. One day, my sister Meredith, I don't know if it was a popsicle she was eating. And so my mom just kept looking at her in that popsicle. And Meredith said, Do you want to try something? So she nodded, and Meredith took a bite off and gave it to her, and she was able to swallow it. And so then we realized, okay, she likes this and she can take down soft foods. And so where we could incorporate regular foods back into her diet, we would just make those foods soft for her to be able to enjoy it. Every now and then we'd sneak her uh a sip of her favorite pop or something that, you know, but she didn't have a full glass. But just so she could have that taste, when we realized she could take those things in that way. My mom got to a point where she got very particular about who she wanted to do things for her. Meredith gave her a lot of the medication, and there was uh another one who was giving her medication with no issue. But when it came down to feeding her, like her regular meals, I don't know what it was, but she did not want anyone but me to feed her her meals. And so sometimes I would get calls or uh leaving work or I was at home. Hey, what time are you coming by? Because she was to the point she was refusing to eat unless I was there to feed her her meals. And so we could not figure out why. And I said, Well, I'll be there at X time, you know, just somebody give her her soup or whatever. And they're saying, no, she's refusing to eat. And I'm like, well, what do you mean she's refusing to eat? So I got there and it sort of made light of it. And I walked in one day and I said, Hey, I said, I'm here. And I walked in and I kissed her on her cheek. And I said, What's going on here that you're refusing to eat your food before I get over here? And whoever it was that had the bowl, they said, Well, watch this. And so they held the bowl up with the spoon and they tried to feed her, and she closed her eyes and she turned her head. And I said, Okay, I'm gonna feed you your soup or whatever she had in the bowl. And I took the spoon, got the food, and I held it up and she ate it with no problem. So I said, Okay, I said, Well, I'm gonna go step away for a second, I'm gonna let so-and-so give you the food. Every person in the room, she refused to eat. So even now we laugh about that, like we could not figure out what it was, but apparently she really enjoyed when I fed her her meals. So that's one of my primary responsibilities. But I had to be the person to be there to make sure she ate her food. As time went on, it was the summer, and we were going to a family reunion, and it was in, I think it was in North Carolina. So my dad and I um we were talking about the family reunion and what should we do? And we were like, well, are we gonna take mama? And so we were trying to figure out can she make a ride that long? She had never really been out of the house except for going back to church at that point in the wheelchair, and that was probably a 30-minute ride. So a couple of my sisters said, Won't worry about taking her. They said, We'll stay here and stay with her, and you guys go to the family reunion. So my dad and I drove to North Carolina for the family reunion, and I mean, the entire way, he just talked about how sad he was to have left her and that she looked so sad that we were leaving and she couldn't go, and he just felt really bad about that. I was trying to be positive and just say, well, you know, you did what you could, but we don't know how she will do on a ride that long. It's not like we took her somewhere for an hour. You're talking about a car ride that's several hours long. And so we get to North Carolina and we get settled and we're there for the first night. And later that night, my dad calls and he's like, I call Meredith and Lisa, and I told them, bring your mom. So they're gonna drive your mom up here. And I'm like, What? So I call them and I'm like, okay, and you got her bag, and you got this. And do y'all have the shakes? And do you have this? And they're like, Yeah, we got it. And so they had this giant wedge that was at the house that we would prop her up against a lot to help with her positioning in the bed. They brought the giant wedge with them and they drove her to North Carolina in that wheelchair. And I do not know how they secured it and any of that. They'll have to come on here one day and talk about that part of the story. But they drove her to North Carolina, and I just remember my dad was so excited that she was there and that she made the trip, and people just kept saying she looked so great and really excited to see her because many had not seen her since she had the stroke. She slept so good in that hotel room to the point that she was snoring. And I don't ever remember my mom being a snorer, but she snored and slept really good at that night. The summer was great, but uh November of 2006. I'm not sure what changed, but somewhere around the beginning of November, mid-November, somewhere in there, she just started uh having these instances of seizures. If I'm thinking about seeing people who have had a seizure, that's what I would classify it. It looked like she was having a seizure, but she'd have these massive sweats right after the doctor that was treating her from all accounts, everything was still good. So we couldn't figure out what was happening. While I do talk about that, it was a hard time and it was hard for us as a family. Family, I can only imagine how hard it was for my mom to suffer a massive stroke and it takes away your voice, it takes away your mobility. I can't imagine what it feels like. She essentially was trapped in her body for all that time, fully aware I'm here, but I can't utilize my limbs or I can't do this, or I've got to sit here and wait for this person to come in and do these particular things for me. My dad had a speaking engagement at a church in Florida. And we talked about whether we should take her to this event because she was dealing with having seizures. So he said, we'll ask her. And so we did ask her. We explained, we're going here. Is this something you would like to attend? And she answered with her blinking system that she wanted to go on this trip. So several of us went on the trip with him so that we could help manage three things with the chair and the van and all that. So we get to this event, we get her there, everything's fine. She seems to enjoy the event as November. It's kind of cool. They're serving chili afterwards. Chili probably would have been, even though it's a soft food, probably the most uh solid food that she had, considering that it had a little bit of meat in it. So she tasted it and she ate about a half a bowl of chili, which was exciting. Her appetite was there. So we get back home and she's having these seizures. And so we don't know what's causing it and why she's having these sweats. One day, I dad said, I'm wondering if there are some changes happening with her vision. I don't know if he was brushing her hair or he's rubbing his hand in her hair, but he said when he reached over, she didn't flinch, like she didn't blink. And he's like most people when something's coming across their area of vision, they're gonna blink or do something, and she had no reaction. There was another day it was happening again, and he wanted us to see it. He was taking his hand and he was hovering it over her eyes, and there was no reaction. So again, this is early November, and I remember driving one day and I hear a commercial on the radio about a casket warehouse. And they're saying, and we've got the lowest prices in town, and get your casket here at wholesale prices. And the way the commercial ran, it did make me chuckle a bit, but I remember saying out loud, who would have need for a casket warehouse? And little did I know we would. One night, it was a Saturday night, my sister Lisa was receiving an award at the place she worked at. And at the time, her oldest, well, he was her only at that time, but her oldest, he was about a year old. And she asked me if I could go with her to the event. And she said, if you can just sit with him in the audience because her husband had to work and he couldn't make the events. I was a little reluctant at first. I come here and I stayed here with mama. I sleep in the hospital bed with her. And so I said, Well, it's just one time. I'm like, I never leave her. I'll do it one time. I'll go with you. And I said, but let me tell her that I'm not gonna be here tonight. I want to be there to make sure I'm giving her her meals before I leave. I walked up to my mom's hospital bed and I was just like rubbing her hair and I was saying, Hey, um, I'm gonna stay with Lisa tonight because she's getting an award tomorrow and she wants me to watch the baby during the program. And I said, But I won't be able to stay here with you tonight. And I remember saying, um, I'll be back to see you tomorrow. And I said, I won't be able to stay here with you tonight, but are you gonna be okay? And she turned her head to me and she looked at me and she shook her head, no. I said, Yeah, you're you're gonna be fine. I said, I'm gonna stay with her tonight and I'll be back and I'll be back to see you tomorrow. And I said, and you'll be fine. And she looked at me again and she shook her head no. And so I just remember rubbing her hand and I said, Yeah, I said, You'll be fine. I said, Meredith is gonna stay with you tonight. And I was saying, gonna go to the program and I'll be back. So I really tossed around calling Lisa back to say, No, I'm not gonna be able to go to the program. I'm gonna stay at the house with her tonight. And I just said, No, I'm gonna, I told her I was gonna go wash the baby. I've committed to it, so I'm gonna go with her. The next day was a Sunday. So I go to the program with Lisa to get her award. And when we left there, we went to our church. And so every year at church, we always did a community Thanksgiving dinner the Sunday before Thanksgiving. And we were there. My mom didn't come to that one. We decided this was probably not good to bring her out since she has started having these seizures again. So Meredith was at home with her, and I remember while we were having dinner, I don't remember who it was, but I remember somebody walked in and got my dad. And I just remember that day just having an uneasiness. And I don't know if it was because I was feeling sad for having to leave my mom overnight when I had not left her side for months, but I just had an uneasiness on me that day. So I saw the person come in and get my dad, but I could tell the way they walked up to him, the way the conversation was going, I could tell something had happened because I remember my dad did this fast turn and he walked out of the room in a rush. And so I turned to Lisa and I said, I think something has happened. And she said, What do you mean? And I said, I just saw somebody come in and get daddy. And I said, and he rushed out of the room. I think something has happened. And I said, and I and at this point, I am trying to keep myself calm because I can feel myself about the hyperventilate because I don't know what to expect. I don't know if if she's had another stroke, I don't know what has happened. So Lisa says, Well, nobody's come and shared that. And as fast as she was saying that, my dad came and got us, and he's like, hey, we gotta go. And I'm like, gotta go where. And he was in a rush and he got his things. And one of my other siblings was like, we gotta go. And I'm like, what happened? Tell me what happened. And so I could tell they were trying not to, or at least she was anyway, trying not to tell me what happened to maybe sort of call my reaction in that moment. And I'm like, I'm not gonna be able to just get up and go, like, I need to know what I am potentially walking into. I need to know what to prepare for. So she said, Americ just called and said she doesn't think mom is breathing and she's called 9-1. We got to get home right now. So we drop everything and we leave and we get across town and where the church is and where my parents live is probably about a 35-minute drive. So we get over to the house, and as we're driving up to the house, I can see the fire truck on the street, I see the ambulance down there. And I told Lisa, I said, uh, she's she's gone. And Lisa's like, well, don't say that. You don't know what's going on. I said, I don't think all these emergency vehicles would still be actively on the scene from the time we got the phone call and everything. Like somebody would have called and said they moved her to the hospital. Like I said, she's she's gone. My parents live in a house that's up on hill. You have to drive up a hill to get to it. So we drive up the hill, and I see the family members. You could just tell people were in such a panic, like they just stopped their car wherever they were in the backyard and just got out. Like cars were just parked all over the place. So we get out of the car, or I remember I jumped out first. Um, and I don't remember who came out of the house, but whoever was coming out just walked out and said she's gone. And I remember I turned to Lisa and I looked at her, and everybody who was outside just lost it. So we come inside, and it was sad, it was surreal. My mom, she was gone, but she was just laying in the hospital bed that was set up in the house. And we just all stood around the bed looking at her in disbelief. And some of the grandkids who were a lot smaller couldn't really understand what was going on. So we had to explain all that to them and then navigate their reactions to it because from their seat, that's the first time that they've lost somebody that close to them. That's the first time they've had to experience losing somebody in life. So navigating all that, and I went to go check on my dad, and he seemed to be in a little bit of a fog. I think everybody was just, it was just so unbelievable to to process what had actually happened. And I'm like, my mom is gone, my my mom is dead. Like, not my mom, right? No, no, not my mom. It can't be, not my mom. So, anyway, we're calling the coroner and the funeral home, and it was just a little crazy because whatever happened on the day my mom died, we were told by like different funeral homes and the coroner that apparently there were a lot of people who had also passed away on that day, which is why it took them so long to come and remove her body from the house. It was in the afternoon, it was daylight when we got there and had been made aware of everything, and it was night time, like pitch black night by the time they took her out of the house. And I think it was, I don't know, maybe nine or ten o'clock. They came and got her out of the house, and we all just stood in the hallway watching, watching as they covered her, watching as they put her in a body bag, watching as they transferred her out of the house. Like the house that I remember us moving into, the house that all the meals had been prepared in, the house that she and my dad had made a home that we all lived in. That was her final time in that home. They took her out and we watched as they took her from the living room, which connected to the where the kitchen is, and everybody we all just moved in unison, um, just around the the um, I don't know what you call it, cart, gurney, whatever that they had her on. And as they wheeled her out of the house, we all just stood in the kitchen door that went out to the backyard, and we all just stood there watching as they loaded her into the coroner's vehicle. They left and we all just kind of sat there in silence. Everybody just went back into the living room. You know, you had the the tears and the quietness, and everybody's trying to process everything. And I remember my dad saying he wanted all the medical equipment gone, he wanted the hospital bed gone. He could not stand to look at any of that stuff. So we were like, well, we can't do anything about it tonight, but tomorrow we'll start looking at what we need to do for that. And so many of us wound up staying over there, sleeping at the house that night. I slept in the hospital bed that she was in. I slept in that bed that night. There were probably like 10 of us in the living room who had slept from there together, and other people were in other parts of the house. So that was the Sunday leading into Thanksgiving week. So Thanksgiving comes, and that was um, that was a bad time. I don't even think we had a regular Thanksgiving dinner. Um, I don't even remember what we did. We may have just ordered takeout that day, but I just remember being so, so angry because I and I was like, why did she stop taking the medication? She cooks Thanksgiving dinner. This is not supposed to be happening. What is this? And so just having a moment to sort of get our bearings together as a family and figure out what the next steps would be, even with preparing funeral services. And so um the funeral was pretty quick. And I don't remember why we had the funeral planned the Saturday after Thanksgiving. I don't know if that was the earliest date. Like there were also some December dates, and maybe we decided not to wait that long. But I remember being a little concerned that while the timing of all of this was not good either. Oh, and remember when I asked who would have the need for a casket warehouse? We were about to find out how necessary a casket warehouse is as we were planning my mom's funeral. So while we're at the funeral home, and by the way, watch these funeral home people because they like to nickel and dime you when they know people are emotionally fragile. But anyway, we're at the funeral home making arrangements, and we pick out a casket that everyone loves, and we're all like, yes, this is the casket. Only to find out that the casket is somewhere in the range of like seven to nine thousand dollars. And we're like, this is quite expensive. The average funeral is what about $12,000? And they're about to have us blow the budget with a $9,000 casket. So we're trying to figure out should we cut other things out? We're like, no, we really need this, or this will be a great addition to have. But that casket, that's expensive. And so as we're talking, it just came back to me, the casket warehouse. And I said, hey, y'all, I said, I heard a radio ad where there is a casket warehouse local that you can get caskets at wholesale prices. And they all looked at me like, a casket warehouse? What are you talking about? And I'm like, no, listen, it's a real thing. I heard it on the radio, and they said that the caskets are thousands of dollars cheaper than at the funeral homes. And so my dad said, Do you remember where the casket warehouse is? And I said, Well, I can look it up. So I leave the funeral home and we go over to the casket warehouse. I've never seen anything like this. It's exactly what you imagine as a casket warehouse. It's like a giant warehouse full of caskets, obviously. All kinds of shapes and sizes and designs and all kinds of things. So we get in there and we're telling the person, we just left said funeral home, and a casket was more than what we want to pay. I think we were all in agreement we would get it if everybody really wanted it. But if we could get the casket at a more affordable price, we want to do that so that way we can use the rest of the budget for other things. Anyway, so as we're describing it, the guy is like, hmm, yeah, I think I know what you're talking about. So he walks us across the warehouse and he pulls the casket down. He's like, Is this what y'all want? And everybody's like, Yes, that's the exact same casket. And so we're like, Well, how much is it? It was like $2,000. And so everybody's like, get it. That's a no-brainer. They were about to rip us off over there, paying $9,000 or whatever, and we got it over here for $2,000. So he put all the other frills on it that we wanted, and they shipped it over to the funeral home, and we got the casket that we wanted for our mom and for my dad for his wife. So we got what we wanted at a good price, and it didn't blow the funeral budget. And Thanksgiving weekend, people are probably out of town, traveling with their families, and her funeral is probably not going to be well attended because it's Thanksgiving weekend. I could not have been more wrong. That funeral had standing room only, and there were so many people there. Like to this day, people run up to us and say, Oh, I remember being at your mom's funeral, or your mom's funeral was so uplifting. And I'm looking at them like, thank you. And in my mind, I'm like, I don't even remember seeing you. Okay, I believe you were there and you got details. So, I mean, obviously you were there, but I do not remember that. And so I remember so many people getting up saying things like, I would not have missed the time to be here to celebrate her, and I would not have missed this. And some people were saying, and my family and I, after we had Thanksgiving dinner, we just got on the road and drove straight to it so that we would already be here. And I remember being so overwhelmed, just thinking about the sacrifice that people made during a holiday weekend, like a holiday weekend, and just say, I don't care that it's the holiday. We want to be here to celebrate her and we want to be here to support the family. At the beginning of this, when I told you all into November of 2005, I had that dream that my family was at a funeral. When we got to the day of the funeral, my family was in line, and we all walked into the church in the processional that they had us in. When we walked in and sat down, and they closed the casket. As soon as I sat in the seat, that dream immediately came back to me, and it was the same setting, it was the same casket. I looked around, everybody was in the exact same seats as they were in the dream. I've talked to my dad about this plenty of times, and he's like, maybe God was just showing me to try to help us prepare for that time, even though we didn't really know what it was, what that dream meant at the time. But even thinking about praying about don't let it be as bad as what I saw in my dream, it could have been even more devastating. We could have had a great New Year's Day and she could have died that night on New Year's Day, but but she didn't. So we got that extended time to just care for her, got that extended time to love her. It was another testament of God's grace in that, where you've got people who are giving timelines of what she won't be able to do, she won't last this long, and she surpassed all of that. It's hard to believe that this was 20 years ago, just about. And I like when I think about it, it's so real and so vivid in my mind as though it happened last night. But that just goes to show you it's no time stamp on grief. There are times that I think about my mom or I talk about my mom and I talk about her with laughs and happy emotions. There are times that I look at milestones in life and it makes me a little sad. It's been a while since I've started talking and the tears have started flowing. And even though she may not physically be in this world anymore, that love and that connection is always going to be there. And while Stroke robbed her of her voice, I'm here to use mine to speak on her behalf. So if I were to just think about where she'd be in life, I think she would be an active, thriving senior. I think she'd be trying to keep up with younger generations on social media. I can see her having a social media account, might not know how to fully navigate that, but I can see her getting on there, trying to keep up connections with other generations and maintaining a social media account. If I were to sit down and ask her about her decisions to not take her medication, I wonder if she would tell me that she would do things differently. And I'm not opposed to people who don't want to take certain medications. You have to do what's comfortable for you. But I think if you make those types of decisions, you also have to be mindful to make other adjustments in your life with diet and exercise and things like that. While my mom's story didn't end the way that I would have wanted it to end, I'm here to talk to you. We've talked about surviving strokes. I'm a survivor. My family's, uh, they've survived from the space of a daughter, a family unit, from the space of being caregivers. And no one's telling you that you can't hurt or that you won't deal with hurt or intervals of grief. But what I can tell you is that it that pain doesn't last forever. You have that longing, but you don't stay in that same state all day, every day. You learn how to live another day. You learn how to honor their memory, you learn how to make different choices for the better. I hope somebody who's listened to this that one the story was insightful to understand a lot of what we went through during that time. And there's so much more that again, I could be missing some gaps in time. So maybe as I have an opportunity to talk to other family members, they may be able to help fill in some of the spaces that I maybe I had forgotten about. But you can survive. We're still here 20 years later, and you can survive too. So take the time you need to grieve, take it how it comes. One thing that helped me was I created a memory box. So I have a box in my closet. It has just a few items of my mom's an article of clothing, it has an old grocery list because I never wanted to forget what her handwriting looked like. I have a bottle of her perfume in there because I never want to forget her scent. Just some other knick-knacks of things that she had that I admired, and I have those things in a box. And every now and then, when I get the urge, I just go up, I get the box out, I'll sit with it. I'll take time reading over her notes on her list and her handwriting. I take time to breathe in the scent from her perfume and just remember her. And after I have my moment of sitting with all that, I put the items back in the box and it goes back into the closet. And even though my mother is no longer physically in this world, her essence is. I think about her impression and influence on her family and friends and loved ones. I think about when I'm preparing meals that I watched her prepare and what went into putting those meals together. The ingredients, but the love that's behind it, because you enjoy serving other people. I think about it when we recall her off-the-wall sayings that we still quote and build upon now, or even in the ways where I get a glimpse of her when I pass by the mirror, or someone stops me and says, Who girl, you look just like your mother. There may be days that are great, and there are days that are not so great, but I can guarantee you for your loved ones who've gone on, they would not want you in a state of not being able to cope and thrive in life. They want you to do well, they want you to keep pushing on. They know that you miss them, uh to let it deprive you of living the life that's before you, don't let it do that. Take the space that you need, but continue to live another day. So that's all I got today for at the root of it. If today's episode made you laugh, think feel clean, I'll give you a little bit. I hope you continue to hold on to that or don't forget to like and subscribe and like the like.