Community Voices for Health

By: Kathleen Blandin

It’s inevitable. Parents die someday, somehow and in someway and you know this growing up; you’ve pondered the painful thought, but then you abruptly tuck those thoughts away saying, “but that’s not something to think about right now.”

You shake your head, you change channels in your mind to something more ‘happy’ and you move on with your day. You see friends write posts about missing their parents, grandparents, siblings or even friends and you think, “wow….I don’t even know how I could deal.”  Well truth is…you don’t deal well. 

It was a Thursday night, just like any other Thursday night where NOTHING extraordinary happened. It was another day in the life of lounging on the couch, binging shows on the DVR until you fell asleep, only to drag yourself up to bed, set your alarm for work the next morning, and do it all over again. 

I got a phone call from my mom that night. It was a routine phone call. It was the usual I love you’s and small talk before she went into work the night shift. The phone call was shorter than usual, she was running late for work, banter between my fiancé and myself and her laughing. “I love you….have a good night at work…,” standard of conversation. Nothing out of the ordinary. 

Little did I know that that would be the last time I ever heard, talked, communicated, saw a phone call with her name pop up on my phone….ever again. 

My mom had an asthma attack at work. The asthma attack was so profound that it caused cardiac arrest. When help arrived on scene she was found without a pulse, given CPR and shocked to get her heart in rhythm. 

Five days of intensive care in Boston changed everything I knew of my life. Tests and procedures done in hopes to save my mom as she lay with a ventilator; fully sedated and paralyzed with medication to help bring her back to us. 

Within five days, my best friend-my one true and closest friend in the entire world was ripped out of my life. 

Somethings you really do take for granted. Somethings in life are so unpredictable and so, so disbelief causing that you just look at life and go how is this real?! How is this really the life I live right now? How is this not a nightmare? How is there so many more hours, days, years left to live without someone that means so much to you?

With the holidays now upon us, I write this brief and condensed traumatic journey that is my life to make you think, to make you realize; life really is too short. Life is really too fragile. Hold the ones you love close, never forget to tell them you love them. Never make an excuse to not go the extra mile because you never know when the last time will be the actual last time to see a loved one.