Fourteen Weeks

It was fourteen weeks of emotional roller coaster rides in purgatory. 

On January 25th my mother in law had her accident.  On May 2nd, fourteen weeks later, she passed away. 

My last post explored the truth that God provides help for families facing the hard decisions when it comes to caring for ill parents.  It has become a moot point.  When the doctors told her there was no hope of her getting off the machines that kept her breathing, she chose to turn them off.  She had always stated that she never wanted to live at the whim of a machine.

She was not the healthiest person I knew.  Her body had spent decades betraying her wish for an independent, active life.  She fought through pain each and every day.  She had a myriad of medications that she would not take because they would cloud her memory. 

Every day she insisted on coming to our comic book store.  For years, she would open on days we were supposed to be closed.  She would join me on days I was supposed to be working alone.  She could not stay away.  Her "kids" and "grandkids" might come by that day. My husband may be an only child but Gail claimed oh so many more as her own.

Over the fourteen years that I knew her, (yep, I met her before I met her son) I watched her go from walking and shopping to depending on a scooter unable to manage more than twenty feet.  One thing she did have was the ability to talk.  Gail would greet customers after not seeing them for years by name.  She could inquire after family members.  She remembered what books everyone preferred.  I don't know if Gail ever read a comic but that wasn't why people came to see her.  It didn't matter that she knew nothing about the drama and action in the stories.  It mattered that she knew the people. Gail turned a business her son began into an extended family. 

The ventilator took away the one thing Gail had no trouble doing.  It took her voice.  To breathe, a tube was inserted into her neck taking the air away from her voice box.  To use the "button" for speaking she could not be on pressure assistance, it required breathing on her own.  Determined as always, she managed to communicate without her voice.  She had the final say on whether the ventilator stayed on. 

On that Tuesday, she spoke with our pastor for quite a while.  She accepted Jesus as her savior.  The family witnessed her baptism there in the hospital.  Then she looked at my husband and said she was ready to go home. Angels celebrated a new life in Christ even as they welcomed her home.

 That evening the machine was turned off.  A couple of hours later she fell to sleep.  Gail woke up in Heaven the next afternoon. God healed her.

She will be terribly missed but I thank God that we will see her again.