That Day When Mom Told Me She'd Had A "Little Heart Attack"
In which Teófilo remembers the night he had to take his Mom to the hospital due to back problems and no one helped him. Shortly afterwards he was told a lie.
A bad night
As if nothing else could go wrong in my life at the time, early one night Mom started to complain of lower back pain. Her pain kept getting worse as the night progressed. I went to Papi’s room to ask him to take her to the ER. He couldn’t be bothered and told me so. I can’t recall if Titi Gloria still lived with us at the time or if she had moved to her highrise apartment already. I was a 17-year old with a parent screaming in pain and unable to walk.
I called 911. They thought I was prank-calling and were very skeptical. No matter, they acquiesced.
An ambulance came and paramedics loaded Mom on a gurney. I remember turning on all the lights and opening the gates and the doors wide for them to pass. I turned off the lights as they passed below them, shutting doors and gates behind me. I rode in the ambulance.
Mom spent several hours in the ER waiting for a hospital room. Nurses kept asking my age to determine if I could sign off commitment documents and such. I kept saying “no.” Mom had to be bothered to sign all the forms which maddened me.
The otherwise tense, boring night was broken by one funny incident. As I sat waiting in the ER, I observed an older man also laying on a gurney nearby. He fell asleep while holding in his right hand a male plastic urinal. A female nurse went to wake him and the man, startled, doused the poor nurse with a splash of his own urine. No one saw the event but me. Her expression froze between shock and anger, with a pint of wryness. She looked at me, and I also made a face, between disgust and amusement. I wasn’t the only one having a bad night. The nurse’s tragedy comforted me, a little.
The Germans call that feeling of satisfaction at someone else’s bad luck, schadenfreude. I was schadenfreude-ing that night.
After Mom was assigned a room, I walked home, called la Academia and explained that I wasn’t going to make it to school, and why.
Later that afternoon Papi came to the house and asked me how Mom was doing. I regret to say I exploded at him in sharp, cutting anger.
What is it to you? Last night you couldn’t be bothered! Why didn’t you help me?
He left in a sad huff.
This episode became one of my many not fine moments in my life. I would come to decry it to myself much later. Then again, he left an adolescent deal with a major, adult matter. I was hurt.
Aftermath
I don’t recall if I went to the hospital later that day but I think I must have, and with Mercie by my side. I went to school the next day and at lunch break I lurched to the hospital to spend 5 minutes visiting and then returning to the school on time for the next period.
And for the life of me, I don’t recall whatever happened to my little Brother that night and where he ended up and how. He was in grade school at la Academia at that time, but I can’t recall anything about his state and whereabouts. I may have overseen his wants and needs, I just don’t remember.
Mom ended up having lumbar surgery as a disk was inflamed and stressing her nerves. That’s why she was unable to walk. The day of the surgery I waited outside the operating room, sitting on the floor, and being chastised by the passing nurses for doing so. Finally, she was carted out back to her room. Prognosis was good.
Mom praised my help during this difficult situation. She even said I looked to her “more mature.” Then, she started fidgeting and gesturing in the way I described before. It was the preamble to a lie.
I didn’t want to the doctors to tell you but during the surgery I had a little heart attack (“tuve un pequeño ataque al corazón.”) I’m going to need more of your help when I get home.
She was my mother and she’d just had surgery and I’d handled the whole episode as an adult. Of course, I believed her, but something was gnawing at my mind. There’s no such thing as a little heart attack just like there’s no such thing as one being a little bit pregnant. These were huge things that couldn’t be minimized. None of the doctors talked about it when they had the chance. Though they taught me how to change Mom’s bandages, they never mentioned any post cardiac episode care.
The “little heart attack” claim led to an increase in the number of my chores and a decrease in the time I had to spent with Mercie. Mom manipulated her convalescent condition to the utmost. Even when I had completed my chores and was sure she was OK - she was walking again - she always gave me a guilt trip for leaving her for Mercie.
My relationship with Mom was heading into an emotional reckoning and explosion. We didn’t know it then, but such an outcome had become unavoidable.
Our relationship was circling the drain.
State of my soul
At this time I was fighting to convert my will to the Lord. I’d converted my heart already as well as my intellect, though my intellect was attempting to grasp human contradictions in the pursuit of God in Jesus.
I loved the Triune God with intensity. I was no saintly example in the working out of the implications of that love as I endeavored to set my love for Mercie within the obligations of the First Commandment. Having converted my intellect and heart, I fought to convert my will.
Thanks to my friendship with the school’s librarian, Mrs. Yolanda Santiago, I was able to check out reference books and take them home to devour them and return them to the library in due haste. I remember reading Ludwig Herlich’s Historia de la Iglesia in this way. It was from reading this work that I became aware of the “iron age” of the Papacy and the election of truly bad popes to the Chair of Peter. I’m not even talking about the Renaissance Popes, but the ones elected by Roman families prior to Pope St. Gregory VII’s reforms in the 11th century.
Now, every time someone goes beyond fair but respectful criticism of Pope Francis’ performance, I recall my earlier reading of Popes who were elected when they were 13 or 18 years of age. Or Popes who died in battle leading armies without confession. Coming to know these Bad Popes didn’t make me despair of the Church. Instead, their pontificates increased my awareness of the depth of time and history, and the very human beings called to be protagonists in that time.
Later on, in a period of doubt, these “Bad Popes would come to trouble my conscience. Not anymore, though. There are (inset adjectival and nominal expletives here) in every human endeavor. Drama is inevitable and the line dividing good from evil passes through one’s very own heart.
And that’s where I was at the time, exploring this “line” through my heart and the “territories” within the line kept apart: I was coming to terms with my inner borderlands that stood between good and evil. I knew that knowing my inner layout would lead me to convert my will to Christ, in time.
It was a slow plodding. Coming events would complicate my quest for holiness even more.