
As the phone rang a couple times, I tried to pull my eyes open wide enough to comprehend what I was hearing. My husband had answered the phone, it was 12:30 am, and my experiences have been that any phone call that you get after 9pm at night typically isnt a good one. It was so true this time. My said, “Here’s the phone, your mom has had a stroke.”
“What?”, I asked as I grabbed the phone. On the other end of the call was my mothers boyfriend. Yes her boyfriend. My mother’s is living a very “hip” life, at 70 she is generally an energetic person, has had a live-in boyfriend for the past couple of years and has managed to increase her social life quite abit since she lost her husband of twenty five years. My step dad passed away in 2000, and it wasn’t easy. He suffered a long fourteen year battle with Alzheimers, which took his life in the end. My mom went through what every women would go through after being married to a man for twenty-five years, and having to be his caretaker for the last ten of it. I have always had a strong sense of admiration and was in a state of awe to her selflessness that she lived. She has always been a someone who has taken care of those she loved her life, well for most. So with that being said, tonights events made the last five hours feel like a blur. Like it just seems wrong.
I spent the last four hours at the hospital with her, waiting for the doctor to confirm what we could pretty much tell had happened. She had a stroke, she had difficulty talking, and even more difficulty making her brain function to make her body parts move. They would ask her to sign her admittance form and bless her heart, all she could do was stare into the nurses eyes, dazed and confused. You could see her looking at her hand wanting to make it move to write the name she has been writing for the past 70 years of her life, but nothing was happening. I wanted to cry for her. One minute your getting ready for bed and the next minute your entire world is turned upside down.
This all felt suddenly very familar. I was brought back to seven years ago, when my father, who was suffering from pancreatic cancer had a very serious surgery, “The Whipple Surgery”, which we were told that he wasn’t going to have long to live if he made through the surgery, and if he did we were reminded that only 10% of those who have this surgery actually survive, didn’t give him much hope. But guess what…he did survive and did pretty well until the cancer returned, it matastisized through out his body. He fought an intense battle, drugs, chemo, more drugs, and finally one day he said he was tired. He was tired of fighting and it was time for him to rest.
I couldn’t help but start to put my mom in this similar catagory of “what will I need to do for her”. I felt frightened. I kept smiling and trying to keep the room filled with little jokes and laughter to try to keep my mom in a place of lightness instead of fear. I immediately realized that the way my mother and have made it through so much in our lives together was because of humor. It was validated when I had to leave and the attending ER doc commented on the responses that my mom was giving her. She seemed concerned, saying “Your mom seems very confused right now, when I ask her question to try to evaluate her condition, she smiles and tries to answer, she ends up with the right answer….” Wow, I couldn’t believe it, but I had to defend the fact that my mom and I (she taught me how) have always dealt with any and all situations that were bad, scary, or negative, we found ways to laugh. Not pretend that things weren’t happening, just trying to keep a positive spin on things. I am afraid of what will come next, and I am feeling some anxiety because I’ve been up all night but moreso because I know that in 3 or 4 hours I will have to begin the search, to find which hospital she was sent to, and to somehow absorb and be the rock that I’ve always had to be in my family. Standing strong, hiding the tears, stuffing the fears…all so that my children don’t go into a state of panic, but mostly for me so that I don’t delve into a pool of darkness and fear over what “ifs”. My mom can be a worrier if she’s not given the opportunity to find humor in a sitaution or to laugh at whatever it is we can find to laught at.
The first thing I did when I got home was get on the compter and find the WebMd site so I could find out what was going on, you know, the stuff the docs don’t tell you…and here I am, blogging my feelings so that I don’t feel overwhelmed by them.
And with that I was immediately blessed, tI did a lot of praying and asking for help on the way home, and even asked for validation that someone heard me, which I don’t normally do, I am a believer in most so there was never a need to feel validated, until now. The first thing that popped up was an email from Beliefnet, giving me information and telling me about St Mary Magdalena. Thank you! St Mary Magdalena had always been a saint and ascended master that I have prayed to when things felt really tough and mostly when it was based on someone being ill, hospitalized, injured…
Amazing! Just what I needed! Confirmation to my request that they were here for me, for support and divine guidance and love right now!
So with that being said….the good news is she’s gonna be fine. She has some healing to do, but she’ll be ok, and the other good news ~ Mary Magdalena is gently guiding, supporting, healing and loving all of us on this earthly plane who need her and arent’ afraid to ask. Even for those who are to afraid to ask, she is there! Here’s some info on her…and thank you for listening to me pour my heart out! Blessings to all and much love!
THE FOLLOWING IS COURTESY OF BELIEFNET.COM
St. Mary Magdalene de Pazzi
(1566-1607)
Mystical ecstasy is the elevation of the spirit to God in such a way that the person is aware of this union with God and both internal and external senses are detached from the sensible world. Mary Magdalene de Pazzi was so generously given this special gift of God that she is called the “ecstatic saint.”She was born into a noble family in Florence in 1566. The normal course would have been for Catherine de Pazzi to have married wealth and enjoyed comfort, but she chose to follow her own path. At nine she learned to meditate from the family confessor. She made her first Communion at the then-early age of 10 and made a vow of virginity one month later. When 16, she entered the Carmelite convent in Florence because she could receive Communion daily there.
Catherine had taken the name Mary Magdalene and had been a novice for a year when she became critically ill. Death seemed near so her superiors let her make her profession of vows from a cot in the chapel in a private ceremony. Immediately after, she fell into an ecstasy that lasted about two hours. This was repeated after Communion on the following 40 mornings. These ecstasies were rich experiences of union with God and contained marvelous insights into divine truths.
As a safeguard against deception and to preserve the revelations, her confessor asked Mary Magdalene to dictate her experiences to sister secretaries. Over the next six years, five large volumes were filled. The first three books record ecstasies from May of 1584 through Pentecost week the following year. This week was a preparation for a severe five-year trial. The fourth book records that trial and the fifth is a collection of letters concerning reform and renewal. Another book, Admonitions, is a collection of her sayings arising from her experiences in the formation of women religious.
The extraordinary was ordinary for this saint. She read the thoughts of others and predicted future events. During her lifetime, she appeared to several persons in distant places and cured a number of sick people.
It would be easy to dwell on the ecstasies and pretend that Mary Magdalene only had spiritual highs. This is far from true. It seems that God permitted her this special closeness to prepare her for the five years of desolation that followed when she experienced spiritual dryness. She was plunged into a state of darkness in which she saw nothing but what was horrible in herself and all around her. She had violent temptations and endured great physical suffering. She died in 1607 at 41, and was canonized in 1669.