I Lived to Hear My Eulogy

(God has a sense of humor.)

My mother died on New Year's Day following our annual family gathering. The date was 01.01.01. She was 61.

That evening, at 7 PM, she was the last person to leave my house. Usually, I walked her to her car, but that night, I just couldn’t. The exhaustion from back-to-back celebrations – New Year’s Eve and then New Year’s Day– had taken its toll. I stayed inside, scrubbing pots and rushing through the cleanup.

About fifteen minutes after she left, a knock at the front door startled me. Not expecting anyone, I answered the door to find my neighbor standing before me. I looked at him, then through him, and I saw my mother’s car, still parked on the street with the interior light on.

I don’t remember if he had the chance to say anything to me. I immediately ran, full speed, to the car with the weak-looking interior light that seemed to be illuminating the fog. I found her on the driver’s side, feet on the street, lying back across the front seat with her hands in front of her chest. My heart fell to my stomach.

I climbed on top of her. “Wake up,” I remember saying. I shook her. “Wake up! Wake up!” I yelled again. She didn’t. I dragged her onto the street, where my neighbor and I began CPR, with him doing chest compressions and me giving her breaths. “Wake up!” I kept thinking or screaming. She didn’t. It was the coldest day I had ever felt, and I was barefoot without a coat. Worse yet, her skin felt like dry ice.

The local volunteer firefighters arrived quickly, although it felt like hours. They took over the CPR efforts. Then the ambulance arrived. They hadn’t gotten a heartbeat yet but promised they would continue lifesaving efforts on the way to the hospital. It was the first time I had ever ridden in the front seat of an ambulance. Watching vehicles move out of the way as we sped to the hospital was eerie. I imagined that’s how it must have looked when the Red Sea was parting. I was numb, and everything seemed to be moving in slow motion. Despite the clearing roadway, it didn’t seem like the driver was going fast enough. “Hurry up!” I screamed in my head, which, of course, he didn’t hear.

When we arrived at the hospital, I called my three siblings and explained the situation. They were on their way, with one living over an hour away. I was called to my mother’s room. The doctor said, “Sometimes we go too far to save someone. This is one of those times. We have a heartbeat, but it’s medicine-induced only.”

“No!” I argued. “She’s still here.” I could see, on the machine, that her heart was beating. “She’s not dead,” I said with force.

The doctor pulled back the sheet that was partially covering my mother to show me that her body was blue and, indeed, she was dead. I don’t know how I didn’t pass out. I grabbed the railing on the side of the bed and felt someone grab my arm. I guess it was the doctor.

My siblings arrived, and we were advised to take her off life support.

“I’m afraid to smother. Don’t ever let me smother,” my mother used to tell me, so I didn’t allow them to turn off the ventilator.

All night long, we sat and watched her heart rate go up and down. Up and down. We would audibly gasp with each drop. It was hours of torture.

Finally, when it was 01.02.01, the medication stopped circulating through her body, and she finally died. Watching the flatline and hearing the alarms while watching the ventilator push her chest up and down, falsely mimicking breaths, made me want to vomit. It was the worst day of my life.

The grief and guilt of not walking her to her car for the first time in our lives overwhelmed me and made me think all sorts of horrible things about myself.

Guilt is a monster that relentlessly stalks a soul.

My mother and I did not always have a relationship, but for the eighteen months before her death, we were solid. We found our way back to each other.

Forgiveness is a beautiful thing.

Maybe our reconciliation made the grief and guilt worse. It felt like I was dying too. Maybe I deserved to die for not walking her to her car AND being a failure at CPR. Maybe my heart should stop beating, too. It didn’t. I knew I would never be happy if I did keep living. I thought that I didn’t deserve to be happy since I didn’t walk her to her car, and I failed at CPR.

But God had a different plan, and He has a sense of humor.

The priest began my mother’s Mass.

“Luci’s life was …,” he started.

I paused, tilted my head, and questioned what I had just heard.

“Luci will be missed by all who…,” he continued.

Was he confused because I made the arrangements. I was his funeral contact person.

“…, but Luci lived a good life…,” he continued confidently.

I haven’t mentioned this yet, but my mother’s name was Lolita. I realized that I was not mishearing. The priest was presiding over MY funeral!

I leaned forward to look at my siblings further down the pew. They were mortified, and their faces reflected their horror.

“God called Luci home because he…,” he continued as he stared at the church's ceiling. I followed his eyes up to see what he was looking at. I found nothing.

I glanced back at my three siblings, who had all begun to giggle. We were like six-year-olds trying to stifle our chuckles because we were in the house of the Lord!

Laughter is contagious, and since it was a small gathering and everyone knew the priest was saying my name, not my mother’s, everyone, and I mean EVERYONE, was holding their mouths to smother the laughter. The priest continued, unaware of the faux pas, and I don’t think he even noticed the stifled laughter. It was perfection. The situation made my insides stop dying, at least for a moment.

I don’t remember much more about that day, but I do know I needed that laugh—we all did. After her funeral, we laughed until we cried, thinking about the situation's awkwardness.

The months that followed were difficult, and the grief and guilt doggedly pursued me and kept a strong hold on me. But whenever I’d think back to “my funeral Mass,” I would again laugh at God’s spectacular sense of humor and the Priest who (possibly) unwittingly saved my life.

Even in our darkest moments, He finds a way to drag us back to a life that is always worth living if we give our aching hearts some time. How do I know God’s hand was involved? No one else could have ever scripted that hilarious debacle, and a soul-cleansing laugh/cry was precisely what we all needed, especially me.