August 20th – Code Blue.
I left New Orleans after mom had been in ICU for a month because the prognosis was she was going to have to go into a long-term care facility and that was only after she had been on the acute floor, the skilled nursing floor, the whatever floor and I knew that it was going to be a long haul. Wow, I still can’t believe I left, but it was so good I went. For me, anyway.
We were scheduled to return on the 22nd and I had been receiving email updates from my family, phone messages from the doctor, and I had routinely called in. Mom was progressing – not greatly, but not poorly. She ended up needing a trach, but she was able to wean completely off the vent except for it being used to help her expand her lungs. But the thinking was she would get stronger and eventually not need the vent and the trach could be closed.
She was transferred to the acute floor out of ICU on the 19th. On the 20th, calmly in her room, her heart went nuts and she basically died on the table until they shocked her back to life. Code Blue. She went back to ICU and I saw her this morning and she was doing remarkably well but still has so much ahead of her.
She mouthed many things I couldn’t understand but she kept saying Jose, Jose, Jose. My father’s name. And then she’d open her eyes real big in a weird way. I asked, “Did you dream of dad?” She shook her head no. Then she opened her eyes real wide and mouthed “JOSE” – and I said, “Do you see Jose?” She mouthed with big round eyes, “NO, HE’S DEAD.”
My father died on August 20th – twenty four years ago. He wanted to be buried in Israel – my brothers refused to comply – at the synagogue for services, the torah that my brothers had paid for tumbled out of the arc from behind thick velvet curtains and rolled down to where the rabbi was speaking at the bima.
Freaky weird stuff goes on.