Party of Five: October 2009

so i wrote this sometime in 2004 during an english class i was taking and i came across it tonight. i wanted to share it because although it made me cry it was refreshing to see just how far i had come in my greaving. somedays are just as difficult, but i do strive to live everyday like it could be my last or my families last. i tell my husband and my children just how much i love them. because you just never know when it could be one person, one moment, one reality that could change your life. now it's about enjoying the small things that bring me joy! and though there are a lot of difficult day i am happy and i love my family and my life.

One Person, One Moment, One Reality

Jennifer Lynn Yancey

An hour and a half after I arrived at work on Monday, October 2, 2000, I received a phone call from someone at Wesley Long Community Hospital to tell me that my mother had been taken to the emergency room. The caller couldn’t reveal what had happened, but only that I needed to get to the hospital immediately. At that moment I knew that my mother had experienced a heart attack. It had always been the one thing that I feared the most, but I would never have imagined just how much the loss of her life would change my life.

At the time I was an assistant manager for a woman’s clothing store, and I felt as though I couldn’t leave the store unattended. The decision to stay would haunt me for many years to come. I made phone calls to anyone I thought could help. During this, what seemed to be an enormous amount of time, my mother’s sister arrived looking very worried and she literally pulled me out of the store and drove me to the hospital.

As we entered the emergency room we were directed to a private room where my family, and some of my mother’s co-workers, as well as our church minister were all waiting. As I entered the look on their faces scared me. It seemed as though no one knew what to say. I was unaware of the situation in that my mother was in and it seemed like only seconds after I arrived that the reality discovered. I had no time to take my seat when a woman entered the room and said “She didn’t make it.” All I remember was loosing all the strength in my body and collapsing. I couldn’t believe it, four hours earlier I was having lunch with her and talking about plans to go out after I got off work, but I was robbed. Robbed of a mother and a friend in only a matter of seconds. My aunt and my father came to my side where they helped me up, but I was in shock and had no control over my body. I had no time to prepare for such a statement, it was those words, spoken as if they had no meaning, that changed my life forever.

The nurse asked me if I wanted to go see her, my gut reaction said “yes,” but in my heart I was scared. None of this seemed real, it felt like I was in a dream. I was scared of how she would look, but there was no movie or television show that could have prepared me for what I was about to see. It was very surreal, I thought she was breathing but I knew it couldn’t be I just could stop thinking that it was only that afternoon we were having lunch and a few hours later I was saying goodbye. I knew my life would be different, but I could never have imagined just how much it would change. I was being selfish, all I could think about was want I was losing. I was losing the future moments that she and I were stripped of; she wasn’t going to be there to see me get married, or when my husband and I bought our first home or to see us have our first child, and she wasn’t going to be there to see them grow up, to see me grow up. I felt as though God was punishing me for something that I had done. I asked God “why?, why did you take her from me, you didn’t need her I do.” I was mad, mad with myself, God, my Dad, but most of all I was mad at her. I was mad because she didn’t take better care of herself. She always worried about everyone else’s problems when she should have been worrying about herself. I was also mad because she never told anyone that she had just began to take medication for heart disease. Why couldn’t she have told me that? I know she didn’t want me or anyone else to worry but she should have told someone. Then I became mad at myself for being so selfish, when she was alive I took and took and I was still trying to take when she was dead. I then started thinking that it was time for her to go, she had done all she could do. I needed to become an adult and learn how to survive without her, wow that was difficult to say. A part of me became angry at the fact that she left me here to deal with my father. How could she not take better care of herself, did she not care about me? I was determined not to take my mother role. I was also angry that I had to become an adult, because for the first time in my life I had to take full responsibility for everything I did. My mom wasn’t going to be there when I fell flat on my face, she wasn’t going to help me out financially when I was in a bind. To this day she in so many ways she is still taking care of me

At the time I lived in an apartment and the first night didn’t seem that difficult because my friends came to be bodies of comfort if I needed anything. My boyfriend (my husband now) stayed with me so I wouldn’t be alone. It wasn’t until a week later that reality hit. The funeral was over and I was back at work. Reality, the moment you realize that your life will never be the same again. My family divided the day my mother died, it soon became my mother’s side and my father’s side. My mother had been the current “caretaker” of my father who was retired and simply didn’t want to live anymore, only exist. When I say caretaker I don’t mean he couldn’t do anything for himself, he only chose to make my mother earn the money, fix the meals and take care of the home. She was also the one that would tell him what was going on in my life because he and I had never had a serious conversation about anything in my whole life. Suddenly I was forced to communicate with a man that didn’t care about his life or the life of others. I hated it and I hated him. I didn’t want the job my mother had, nor did I think that she would have wanted me to take care of him. He was, and still is, a difficult man, the type of father that only came around when it was time to punish me. I remember the day when things weren’t always that way, but over the years I started to despise my father and the way he treated my mother. I made the decision not to take care of my father because he is an adult who can take care of himself.

Even though my mom is gone, she left me with so many wonderful things. I inherited some of her life insurance which helped me pay for a wedding, buy a home, and, four years later, is continuing to help so that I don’t have to work while I complete my college education. The one change that I never expected was in the way my mother helped me to go to college. Her employer offered to pay for tuition and books for me to receive my undergraduate degree. He did this because he knew that this was something that my mother was trying to do for me, and it was his way of giving back to her for all her hard work. I am now the first person on my father’s side of the family that has ever going to college.

Today life still isn’t the same as when she was alive, it is only different, not better not worse. Sometime I still struggle with the fact that she won’t be here to experience the moments that I would want her to see, but she is always in my heart and I will always remember all the things she taught me and all the wonderful times we had. Who knew that one person and one moment would change my reality. Four years later I am a wife, a friend, a student, a daughter, a niece and a cousin and of these I find great pleasure. Being a wife and a student are difficult because they demand so much of my time. In high school I was not a good student, in fact I wasn’t accepted into college when I graduated. It wasn’t until my mother died and the opportunity was given to me that I decided that I needed to prove something to myself and to all of the school counselors who said I wasn’t cut out for college. Losing someone I loved made me realize just how important people in my life are. My husband and I were engaged a month after my mother died, I didn’t want to waste anymore of my time doing things that didn’t mean that much to me. The death of my mother allowed us to put our relationship into perspective. She was so stressed about her job, her home and her life that it forced me to realize that life is too short to be unhappy. It was a combination of stress and other things that make her heart sick, and I believe that it was God’s way of saying she had had enough and he didn’t want her to suffer anymore. This combination made me make a drastic decision in my life. I quite my job, started college and began planning a wedding, I made the decision that I want to do things in my life that would make me happy.

Party of Five

Saturday, October 24, 2009

six chicks on the go

halloween

10 years

One Person, One Moment, One Reality

i am soooo slack

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