One Last Special Moment With My Aunt Theresa

Written on 10-25-17.

     I am sitting outside, and I’m the only one out here.  I am at the Abiquiu Inn again, and I’m about to have dinner on their patio.  The leaves on the cottonwoods here are at the halfway point.  The trees straight ahead of me are still mostly green, but the trees to my left are in full yellow.  The ambiance is awesome, but I miss Belinda, and I wish she was here with me.  I just sent her a text to tell her so.  My waiter just lit one of the outdoor gas heating lamps near my table.  It is dusk, and it’s cooling rapidly.

     The biggest news in our lives right now happened just this past weekend.  Belinda and I drove to Lakewood to visit Mom and Dad and Joe and Tammy, but it turned out to be something entirely different.  Just before we arrived at Foothills Elementary School for me to drop off some Time to Teach books, Dad called.  He said that my Aunt Theresa was having some real difficulties (congestive heart failure, renal failure, and non-responsive), so she was being transported to St. Anthony’s.  Theresa was born in 1960, and she had Down’s Syndrome.  
     It sounded awful.  He said to go ahead and have my meeting, though, so we stopped at the school, but the principal was out for the day, so I simply left the books for him.  Then we headed to the hospital straight away, and that was where we ended up staying for the majority of the weekend.  

     It did not appear to be as bad as what we were told.  When we saw Theresa, she was...

fighting the staff and all of the stuff they were trying to do to help her.  We all thought that she was certainly not non-responsive.  We all thought that was a good sign.  Soon after that, Theresa and I had one glorious moment, too, and it is this special moment that I will choose to remember from this past weekend.  The rest I will do my best to forget.  

     While she was struggling, we stopped her by saying look who’s here.  She stopped, opened her eyes, and looked right into mine.  She smiled.  I smiled.  When we asked her if she knew my name, she smiled even bigger, and she said, “Pat.”  She did the same for Bev, and it was wonderful and hopeful.  I am so glad we had that brief moment.  Then things got worse.

     Bev and I were shown the x-rays of her lungs when Mom had gone home after spending the first night at the hospital.  They were supposed to look black (nothing stopping the rays), but they were mostly milky white.  Not good.  To top that, we were told her white blood cell count was normal.  With all of that pneumonia in her lungs, normal was a bad thing; it meant her body was not fighting like it should have been.

     Later, we were told that we should expect her to die that evening.  Sigh.  To end the agony of recounting the rest of this, they turned off the monitor that was checking her oxygen saturation level (normally in the nineties) immediately after I gasped when I saw that number go into the thirties for the first time.  Bev, Barry, Mom, and I were at her side when she died close to 1:30 AM on Sunday morning.  That was the first time I had ever seen anyone die, but I was glad to be there.  

     So, my Aunt Theresa is dead now.  I am sad, of course.  It was a brutal weekend.  I am glad, though, that Belinda and I could be there for help and support, especially for Mom.  Also, I am thankful for our one last special moment together.

That’s all I want to say about that…for now.