My Mom

 Mom has had a rough few years.  

She had a Colostomy after her Colon ruptured about 6 years ago.  Her bowel was obstructed by a tumor.  If she'd ever had a colonoscopy, she would still have her colon. Alas, she refused and ever since, she has pooped through a bag on her stomach.  If you've ever wanted a good reason to get a colonoscopy, there it is.  No control over that bodily function, and you wear a bag to collect your waste 24/7.  She survived the surgery, spent 6 weeks in the ICU and another 4 in rehab before she could come home. (PSA - get a colonoscopy.)  She's learned to live with it, but she's never been happy about it.  She even named her bag after my Dad's second wife... so there's that.

Let's fast forward to Election Day, 2018.  All of this happened just after I stopped writing for this blog, and I had no idea how to even put everything into words.  Let's see what I can do.  As far as I knew, Mom was on blood pressure medication and was taking it every day.  My sister was living with her.  (OK, another story for another day.)  We BOTH though Mom was taking her blood pressure medication daily.

Election Night, they were watching the returns, when Mom got up to go to the bathroom and crashed to the floor.  She couldn't stand, she couldn't walk, and she was slurring her words.  My sister called 9-1-1, and they came out to the house and took Mom to the hospital.  I got a call around 11 pm telling me that Mom had fallen and everything should be fine.  I asked if she needed me to come down - it was a 2 hour one way drive) and she told me to get some sleep, and she'd see me in the morning.

6 am, I get a call from my sister that they were transferring her to the hospital in Arlington from where she was just north of Richmond.  I drove down to the hospital, found out that mom wasn't there yet and sat down to wait in the cafeteria.  My sister had been with Mom through the night and was headed home to get some sleep.  Mom arrived around 11 am, and they began to run a bevy of tests on her.

She'd had a stroke.  When she was admitted to the first hospital and run her bloodwork, it showed indications of a looming cardiovascular event.  So they transferred her to a larger hospital with a higher level of care.  She had another stroke that first night in Arlington before they got her blood pressure under control.  She lost control of one side - I think it was the left side - things have begun to run together.  Whichever side it was - it was the one that didn't affect speech.

Once she was stabilized, they moved her to a rehab hospital where she stayed for the next month while she relearned how to walk, eat, and dress herself.  Eventually, she went back home and moved in with my very overwhelmed sister.  We hired nurses to help her 24/7 for the first few months and then cut down on the amount of time they were there as she improved.  She had another stroke a few months later, and then several TIA's.  It was time to move her someplace where she could get the assistance that she needed.

Over July 4 weekend in 2019, we moved her to a place in Arlington.  She's close enough to Washington that she can see the Capitol and the White House on the other side of the river.

Moving day was awesome. Tempers were high, as you can imagine.  We couldn't find a moving van that day, so we all showed up with our various assorted cars to move her things.  My sister and her boyfriend showed up in two cars.  My daughter and her boyfriend showed up in another.  I showed up in my CRV.  (Did I mention husband was out of town?  Of course he was....)  AND, we had several of our friends from college who showed up to help.  

Let's give a huge hand to lifelong friends here.  We graduated from college in the last century.  NONE of us are young anymore.

And so we piled everything we could into the cars and moved her an hour and a half up the road.  I had her in my car in the front seat.  My sister was behind me, and my daughter and her boyfriend were behind her, and our assorted friends were behind them.

I had the box springs for her mattress on the roof of my CRV.  Keep in mind, I have no roof rack on my car.  I put that grippy stuff that you use on the bottoms of kitchen cabinets to keep glasses from breaking across the roof of my car, rollling the ends in through the back seat windows.  We put the box springs on upside down, and then we bungee corded the whole thing down - with cords across the front row and middle row.  I had the clasps just over my head.  It was something I tried not to think too hard about.  We then tied a heavy rope from my front bumper over the top of the car and around the back bumper - think tying down a kayak.

My sister had the mattress.  And she wanted it on the roof of her car.  She refused to have any bungee cords over her head, and she didn't want to damage her car with ropes from front to back.  So, the mattress was bungee corded through the second row of windows in her SUV.  Just the second window.

We set out in a caravan.  Our route took us straight up I-95.  If you're not familiar with 95 through Northern Virginia, be very thankful.  That traffic is some of the worst traffic in the nation.  I stayed in the left lane, put my blinkers on, and kept my speed to around 60 miles an hour.  My sister pulled over into the leftmost lane, and my daughter pulled behind her.

Do you know what happens when you hit a major interstate with a mattress strapped down only across the middle and hit NoVa traffic speeds?  It turns into a taco.  The mattress stands straight up and bends almost all the way back like a taco, held down only by the bungee cords.  

Daughter dropped back to leave room between her car and my sister's car so that if the mattress did fly off, she'd have a chance to stop or veer onto the shoulder.  And she put her blinkers on.  But my sister didn't slow down - she kept charging right on up the highway.  When she slowed because of traffic, the mattress would flatten out and become a quesadilla.  All the way up the highway - taco/quesadilla, taco/quesadilla.

My daughter told me that a couple of times they had cars who pulled in front of her, then the mattress would pick up again and look like it was taking flight and all of a sudden, they'd veer back over to the other lane.  

Eventually, we got mom safely moved into her new place.  The furniture was installed.  We helped her unpack and hang pictures. The staff took her down to dinner so that she could meet her new table mates.  When the day was over, we drove home through Washington DC so that we could at least look at the festivities on the Mall and all of the happy people celebrating.

Honestly, I will never forget the sight of the mattress taco in my rear view mirror, passing me on the left and flying past me up the highway.