The Gift of Another Day

Early this Sunday morning the phone rang at 3:30 a.m.  My sister heard phrases like ".....hospital calling,  doing rounds to Room 204.....saw she was not breathing....did CPR but unsuccessful....she is deceased......calling you as next of kin....."

As she phoned me, we quickly divided who was calling who. I woke my girls and we cried together.  I called my other children as my husband drove through the darkness, leaving messages when I couldn't get through. It seemed surreal as I looked up at the clouds swirling around the moon. Amid my tears I could only feel peace that Mom was now free from her suffering.  I remembered the joys of the day before....of reconciliation and peacemaking with her grand daughters....of my Mom seeing her great grandchildren for the very first time.  Within the hour, I was the first of my siblings to be walking down the hall to the nurses station.

They were shocked to hear why we were there. "What???  She is sleeping well.  Come look".   By the light of the flashlight, I saw her chest rising and falling.  Only then did I begin to believe what had to be the worst prank phone call ever. How could this happen?

As I tried to call my sister, my hands shook and I gave up.  As my sister and one of my brothers arrived, their shocked faces matched mine.  My sister was shaking as she recounted the message, the male voice, the exact words.  Before long she was trying to figure out who would harass our family in such a cruel way. Soon she too was walking down with the nurse to see Mom with her own eyes.

On the way to the police station, my sister stopped at home to look at the call display on her phone.  It was the name of her new place of employment, the new job she would be starting as of the coming week.  As the story began to unravel, this is what we discovered.

There was a woman with pulmonary fibrosis (the exact same disease as Mom) who was in respite care at this new retirement home.  My sister's name mistakenly showed up on the computer screen as the person to call.....so it was the retirement home calling...doing rounds to Room 204 (same room number as Mom)....not breathing so performed CPR (my mom has a DNR order, so this we had questioned)....my sister was to call the next of kin (but of course she heard herself as the person they were calling).

The other piece we later discovered causes me to feel sad for this other family. We were told this other woman had a broken heart, being estranged from her daughter.  When the daughter was eventually contacted, she had nothing in place that would allow her to be prepared in any way.  The devastation and remorse were evident to the woman calling. There would be no new day of second chances for this family.

How many families have received this same call only to find out it is not true?  We have not been the first family to experience the roller coaster of emotion that death brings.  We may be the first though to receive the gift of another day in such a dramatic way, to have opportunity to speak words of love and forgiveness, to ask questions of funeral wishes, to put things in place for the inevitable.  None of us know what tomorrow may bring.  Whether the phone rings tomorrow, or next week, I know it will ring, for my name is now first on the list.  I'm so thankful for another day with Mom.  It feels like a special gift given to us by the God my Mom intimately loves with her whole being.

We haven't felt the need to tell Mom and Dad what happened yet. We've just been processing what might have been. The peace Mom is experiencing in being ready to die is clearly evident to all who visit.  This peace is also available to us as individuals, as we process our emotions and reflect on this "dry run day".