Giving back

So I'm sitting here in this green vinyl chair that doubles as a bed when we stay with Mom at the hospital. I thought I'd seen the last of this place and I wasn't sorry. But here we are again -- let's hope for a much shorter stay this time -- while the doctors try to figure out why Mom's been running a temperature for the past week and how to get it to stay down.

Mom's birthday was last week, April 17, and I have never been so happy to celebrate a birthday with her. More than a month earlier, on March 3, in the middle of Jacob and Carrie's wedding and a lunar eclipse, she had a long-awaited liver transplant.

The surgery went well but the next five weeks were filled with ups and downs, including a couple of days when her immune system was putting up such a good fight with the new liver that I spent some awful hours trying to think how I could possibly get through the rest of my life without Mom, and desperately praying that I wouldn't have to. For the last two weeks that she was in the hospital, though, she wasn't deathly ill, just sick of being there and pretty miserable as the transplant team tweaked the medicine levels and dealt with an ongoing stream of minor crises.

All of this time Dad, Amanda and I took turns spending days and nights with her, keeping her company and doing for her the little things she would never have bothered the nurses over -- cleaning her glasses, brushing her hair, flipping her pillow to the cool side.

Over the course of the hospital stay I am sorry to say I saw myself slip from gratefulness to selfishness. Of course I never stopped being thankful that she was getting better, but right after the surgery I was just so happy she was breathing that I was thrilled to show my love by being at her beck and call. As the weeks passed, and with them the imminent danger, I became less focused on Mom and more frustrated with the many nights spent apart from Matt, the toll the routine was taking on my work, even the hours spent in the car.

Mom was sick of being in the hospital and so was I. She would get whiny and bossy and I would slip into put-upon-adolescent role. Oh, we were a joy.

But since she's been back home I've started to have a new perspective. She's a nurse and a giver, and nurturing others is at the core of her nature. As one of her daughters, I have benefited from her care more times than I can count. It is a gift and an honor if I can repay even a little of the selfless care she has shown me throughout my life.

I hope I remember that next time she wakes me up for a 3 a.m. stroll through the halls.