Data on a Screen

As I sit here beside a hospital bed there is a screen full of changing data. Heart rate, respiratory rate, blood pressure, oxygen levels, etc. They are seemingly just numbers on a screen, but at this point they signify so much more. In some way, the data represent the health, or lack thereof, of the biological body to which they are attached. How much is the supplemental oxygen supporting the life of the person it is intended to support? Do those numbers represent life as we know it?

Although I suppose those numbers do indeed represent the biological side of life, I am reminded that they do not represent living. Living is a much different concept than survival. “Live life or just survive." That is a quote I coined while raising my kids to encourage them to step out and enjoy life to the fullest possibility and find meaning in the choices they make throughout their lives.

Our lives are lived each moment of every day in the relationships we foster and the connections we develop with each other within the concentric circles of our community. Our community can be as large as we allow it to be. We can choose to keep our lives as private as we want or we can choose to share the experiences of our existence with those with whom we come in contact. The struggles in this life are real and we will deal with them until we each take our last breath and our heart beats its last beat. The people we share our lives with make the time between birth and death most meaningful.

I return to this writing now some weeks later than when started. The data screen for my mother has now gone blank. I had the opportunity to spend most every day with her in the hospital as the medical professionals tried every tool available to "bring her lungs out of the fire" as one doctor put it. In the end, all the tools available could not do it.

Mom's life here on this earth ended on the numbered day of the month that it first started, May 7th, 2022. She was born October 7th, 1936 in Blue Ball, Arkansas and had five siblings, with her being the oldest. As many in her generation did, she lived through some very hard and trying times which, understandably, gave her a strength and determination many in generations since do not know. In one of our many conversations in the last weeks, she told me that her sisters said she was stubborn but that she thought of it differently. To her, she was determined. And that she was.

Up until the morning of May 6th we had continued to do the best of physical therapy exercises in her bed that she could handle, and at the end of each session it seemed that she felt as if she had won the Olympic gold medal. When I left the hospital the evening of May 5th we had discussed what I was bringing her for breakfast the next morning and our continued strategies for health improvement and for getting released form the ICU ward. For the last 48 hours the medical staff had been decreasing the amount of oxygen being supplied to her, and I really thought that we were on the way out. We were, indeed, on the way out but not as I had anticipated.

Upon my early arrival that Friday morning with breakfast consisting of the Scooters Maple Waffle breakfast sandwich—they are wonderful by the way—and coffee, I was surprised to see mom in so much discomfort with air hunger and desperation. The medical staff had already started some sedative to help her calm down and she eventually made the decision to just be comfortable going forward. As the effects of the additional morphine drip began and she slipped off to sleep she awoke a few times exclaiming "Richard! I'm falling!" Richard was my dad. I asked if he caught her and she said yes.

Now I don't know if during the transition from this life to the next if our loved ones that have gone before us come into view but it sure did seem that way. Mom passed peacefully about 7 pm on May the 7th with my brother Kevin and myself at her side. Her breathing struggles were over and she did not gasp at all. She ran the race of life well and I do believe won the gold medal! We celebrated a life well lived during a memorial service a week later.

Several times since that day I have had the familiar thought that I should call Mom. Of course, those opportunities are gone now, but I can, and do, reflect on the love, forgiveness, compassion and example of living that she was for me for the last 61 years, about 57 of which I can remember.

We do not grieve as those who have no hope!

Today I celebrate the lives of those that we can aspire to be and pray that I will never miss the opportunity and impulse to be kind and generous to those whose paths cross mine in this life! The lives we are blessed to live are so much more than "Data on a Screen.”