Breathe, Part Three: Sent From Heaven Above

After my beloved hubby bless/kisses me goodbye around 6:30 in the morning, I often snuggle under the covers one hour more. Then like a trumpet reveille, our Timex radio blares Family Life Radio music. This June morning I beat the alarm and sat up, a Bible and devotional book beside me as dashing MBH kissed me, surprised. In a throbbing migraine, I struggled to verbalize an old off-Broadway show tune God played in repeat in my thoughts: 

We plow the fields and scatter the good seed on the land/

But it is fed and watered by God's almighty hand...*

When he left, I took up my laptop, turned off Wi-fi connect. Time to take a deep breath to share Almighty's hand in events one early evening mid spring.

On the road up from my childhood home, Mommy screamed. Suddenly, the side of a parked Tundra truck was a foot from my face. I stared in disbelief at the driver’s side mirror dangling from a twist of wires. My youngest sister’s hybrid console binged incessantly that keys were in ignition. Try I might, the driver’s door would not open for even a snake to slither out.

Over the smartphone my husband's voice reassured me from faraway Deep South. A hook and ladder drove up just as my second youngest sis pulled me over the seat console and out from the passenger’s side. Mommy's neighbors stood on the driveway, clutching unlit cigarettes. A young man covered my shivering frame with a puffy comforter. Then the truck's owner emerged from the house with a glass of water—for me!

His wife told me they were waiting for others to arrive for her birthday outing.  Mom and I were on a quick errand, as I had invited Sisters over for home-cooked Filipino dishes. The sisters who arrived on scene got uninjured Mommy home first, then me after the policewoman left. They would handle the cleanup.

On my mom’s driveway, I watched my shaky fingers fumble on the phone screen. Thank God my eldest son, Miguel, answered. Thank the Lord for the years my son worked in customer service quality control.

Miguel listened well to a panic of what ifs, mom hysteria, and verbal self-immolation. Like a great physician, he determined that I was sore and in shock. He had me do stretches, then had me drink more water. We chuckled as he realized aloud that water wasn’t good for someone in shock. Then his voice nudged me to my old bedroom's sleeper sofa where I elevated my feet and collapsed.

Phone records show my eldest stayed with me for 52 minutes. An hour of powerful mercy, Miguel calmed me. He breathed measured inhales and exhales alongside me. Oh so like his father breathed near me decades ago, as God sent Miguel into our world.

Such is the way of our Heavenly Father, to send the gift of a son into the world. In sacrificial love the Lord gave His Son, the only Son of God...

begotten, not made, 

of one Being with the Father

Through him all things were made

For us and for our salvation

 
he came down from heaven: 


by the power of the Holy Spirit 


he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary, 


and was made man. 


For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; 


he suffered death and was buried. 
On the third day he rose again…**

Oh thank the Lord in song:

* Steven Schwartz, Godspell

** Council of Nicaea A.D. 325, Nicene Creed

BREATHE

Part One: Heartbeat for Us

On Thursday, April 10, 2014 far west of the Deep South, the earth pulled the sun to set lengthening shadows of the east face of the Santa Cruz Mountains. Lights twinkled along the El Camino Real, the King’s Highway. Long ago, Father "Junipero" Serra trod this coastal trail to establish missions, to spread hope and eternal life in his Lord, Jesus Christ.

Nowadays restaurants, malls, schools, and residences crowd the route between Missions San Francisco de Asîs and Santa Cruz to its south. Seekers of a golden life settle here, like my mother's family and my mother’s many siblings and their families.

My extended family gathered in an upper room of a medical complex along the King’s Highway. Auntie S. nudged her siblings to sing karaoke tunes with her. My uncles’ eyes glistened, rimmed with red.

They surrounded the bed of their 82-year young sibling. Her eyelashes curled above her high cheekbones like Sleeping Beauty. As in the previous ten days, unassisted, her lungs inhaled oxygen given her. She was hungry the first week and ate orally. Somehow without her daily dialysis, her renal system worked! For ten days her lungs evenly inhaled the oxygen provided her..despite a rupture from a cardiac arrest. With her complications, it was too dangerous to mend.

That evening one of sisters, a former nurse noted her breathe hasten and slow down, then hasten. "Cheyne-Stokes respiration," she called it over the phone, this the breath of one in heart failure.

When my aunt was a baby, my grandmother rushed her to the hospital before she was to be christened with the name "Violeta." In anguish she begged, “Dear Lord, please, please save my baby. If you save my daughter, I will name her Milagros; I will do so.” So it came that she was christened “miracles.”

Last time I visited Aunt M. we chatted in a nursing home north of the hospital. She pointed out at the left side of her body and wondered why it would not let her dance. Ten years or so after severe stroke, the Miracle Maker kept Auntie a jovial jokester. She let her daughter and others enhance her mature features with red nail polish and lipstick.

Friday morning I got the call that I knew would come. Just before busy Holy Week the Catholic priests and funeral directors couldn't arrange the wake and memorials until midweek after Easter Sunday.

In the tears of yet another farewell, I knew Fr. Serra's hope hugged me. Auntie Milagros' final miracle is to be alive and well in heaven. Her restored soul dances gorgeous on God's heavenly dance floor, which the Bible says is paved with gold. From there my Lord heartbeats forever joy, my Lord breathes forever health to all who by faith depend on Jesus as Savior and the Lord of perfect miracles.

 Big C, D-Day,God with a Big 'G'

Was it just nine days ago that a scope revealed a mass? Its adjective “malignant” sucks the mundane out of me as it stamped a Big "C" on my mom, a double C: colon cancer. While two sisters waited five days to tell our mom about the reason for a consult, other siblings bristled to speak up. The dear duo, however, didn’t want her to worry alone at night.

Alone for 37 years since Dad died, Mom prayed her worries nightly to her God, my God--the Heavenly Father who with the Spirit and the Son Jesus are omnipresent, forever and ever. Amen.

Before they broke the news to Mom, my sisters took her on a holiday jaunt.  They tasted fresh artichoke bread, sniffed cleansing salt spray at Pescadero Beach, and smooched kisses with my special, four year-old nephew. When they finally shared the news, Mom AD/HD chatted off topic! Finally, she declared that Monday would be her “D-Day.”

D-Day was the longest day for the Allied Nations during World War II. June 6, 1944 Allied forces hit the beaches of Europe to free millions from the killing Socialism of Mussolini/Hitler’s goosesteps.

As a teenager my mom knew such oppression via another Axis power. A student nurse, my mom learned far beyond her given curriculum—how to write and read Kanji, how to speak Japanese, how to bow at a certain degree when an occupier came her way.

From the chapel to wards Mom nursed many injured and dying with prayers, sulfa pills, and two syringes sterilized by a fiery thread of an oily wick. All the while sleep-deprived nights became day bright from the bombing of Manila. Shouts of joy filled the islands when MacArthur fulfilled his vow.

Now at 87.5 years Mom endured her D-day. It began Monday morning and lingered Wednesday evening in waves of sharp, abdominal pain. “Worse than labor,” said the former delivery nurse with six kids.

Pray this protracted day will liberate Mom from weaknesses. There is every hope to see her healed. The doctor said due to good habits her body is “young.” In Great Britain she might not be deemed young or worthy of surgery. This week a UK headline reads, “Cancer operations are denied to thousands of elderly patients 'because of ageism'.” In 2012 Mom lives in a country where she was not refused cancer surgery.

The day after surgery Mommy sat up, walked three times, and demanded scrambled eggs. Request refused. Nil Per Os. Ice chips for a few more days. Then liquids for a few more weeks and by Labor Day, watch out!

God's not dead; He’s surely alive. In the malignant and the mundane God will handle your problems as you LET them GO to grasp God with a Big G.