Dear Mom,

This is your journal.  You’ve asked for a record of every nice thing people have done for you since March 13, 2015, the day you experienced an ischemic stroke.   The first person to thank is you.  If you had not spent at least the last thirty-five years taking care of yourself—eating right, walking or exercising, getting regular check-ups -- you wouldn’t be here reading this letter.  Your body had such a fight on its hands.  Your heart that you always counted on shook rather than beat and sent a blood clot up to your brain.  The way the nurse explained it to me, your strong parts of your brain had to take over and surround the parts that got hurt.  Your brain is still doing that for you now, surrounding the hurt parts and finding new ways for you to get strong again.  That is why your body is asking for you to rest.  You are like a child with growing pains.  Every rest gives your body the chance to replenish and renew yourself.  Life won’t be the same or as easy as it was before (was it ever really easy), but it will be different and each time life gets different it gives us a chance to learn.  So look at it this way.  You are learning now.  Learning how to rest.  Learning how to replenish.  Learning how to stay positive even on bad days.  Learning not to fret.  Learning no matter what, you are going to be okay.  No one is going to let you go.  We have you now.

            So that gets me to the second person (you were the first) that helped you:  your daughter, Julie.  That morning you got up to rest in the recliner, when your body was finding new ways around the stroke, you were not alone.  It did not take Julie long to see that something was happening.  She helped you walk back to your bedroom to get dressed for the day and she noticed you were having trouble walking in the right direction.  As she explained it, you were trying to walk into a wall.  That was probably because the stroke had affected part of your vision. 

            Like you always are, you told Julie not to worry and to go to work.  Thankfully, she didn’t listen.  She called Molly and Sue Brander and they both came to your side.  That’s always their way, isn’t it?  For over forty years, they’ve become a family you can count on just like family.

            It didn’t take Molly long to figure out your body was fighting a major battle.  You didn’t want to go to the hospital, but she asked you to, and you let it happen.  I’m imagining that from that moment, you did not feel like your life was your own.  With 911 called, the rescuers descended.  The paramedics who got your safely out of your home, the first E.R. doctors at Resurrection, who Joycie reminds me are very handsome.  In addition to woman, daughter, sister, wife, mother, and grandmother, you became patient.  Instead of you seeing to everyone’s else’s care – does Walter have breakfast, volunteering at Norwood Park Crossing, bring Mrs. Buikema her communion -- everyone else was seeing to yours.

            I don’t know a lot about those first few hours, but I know that shortly after Julie met you at the hospital, Joyce got there too, that is, after calling each of your children in descending order.  That’s the thing about Joyce.  She wants nothing to be a surprise for anyone.  So that was Teresa, Joan, Tim, Carole, and Maureen.  Oh, and lot’s not forget Russ.  While the doctors were diagnosing what had happened to you and the nurses were asking you those same questions over, and over again, Russ was already finding room for you at one of the best hospitals in Illinois and the nation for stroke recovery.

            That’s the thing about stroke recovery. It begins the moment that insipid blood clot finishes its business and lets fresh and powerful blood flow to the brain again.  With each heartbeat, the blood left your heart and traveled upward to your brain for what you needed for recovery.  Adrenalin to keep your body fighting.  Dopamine to take away any pain you might be suffering.  Even shock to keep you from knowing all the answers, but to prepare you breath by breath for what lay ahead.  So there your beating heart was, along with Joyce, along with Julie, along with all the well wishes from every one who loves you, willing you forward for whatever your new forward would be.

            Remember the questions, every hour on the hour.  What is your name?  What month is it?  Where are you?  Do you know why you are here?  When is your birthday?  At first, you had no trouble answering those questions, other than for being annoyed by them.  Mary Nockels.  March 2015.  Resurrection. I had a stroke.  August 6^th.  But then they got harder.  Not because you didn’t know the answers.  You know those answers.  But because, a new struggle came to light.  Now that the stroke was over, the doctors and nurses had to find the cause of it.

            It would be nothing any of us expected.  It was your heart, Mom.  Can you imagine that? The woman with the biggest heart ever.  The woman who took care of everyone else.  The woman who laughed big laughs and cooked a largely very good meal (okay, you know what I mean here), had a heart that had physical, never spiritual, struggles.  To this day, we don’t know what for sure came first.  The troubled heart or the stroke, but we are guessing it was your heart.  It had trouble keeping its rhythm.  It wanted to race and then go slow.  Race and then go slow.  Race….

            If anything made you tired that first night and into the next day, it was your heart trying to figure out what to do.  And while it did that, your people rallied.  Loyola Medical Center was full.  It wasn’t supposed to have a bed for you for three days, but then Russ made a call, and moments later, came the call to Joyce.  The inn had room for one very special woman.  The ambulance arrived.  You left Resurrection Hospital so late that first night.  You have said the ambulance over was not the least at all comfortable.  But you made it.  Julie went to rest.  Joyce followed you.  She called us all when you were safe.  In the new place that you would call a lot of names, but mostly the place that made you better, the Loyola Medical Center Neuro ICU.  A lot of care was coming your way, Mom.  Where other hospitals might fail you, this one would not.             

            “What is your name?”  “Mary Nockels” 

            “What is the month and year?”  “March 2015”

            “When is your birthday?” “August 6^th, 1932”

            “Where are you?”  “Loyola Medical Center”

            “Do you know why you are here”  “I had a stroke.”

            You had a stroke, Mom.  Your heart, Mom, it had trouble regulating.  This Part One will end with you safely in good doctors and good nurses hands.  But let me add this.  On June 9^th, almost three months from your stroke, you tell me you are afraid.  “It’s been a month since I walked,” you said.  You wondered if you might walk again.  This is what I know.  You will walk when you are ready.  You will walk when the rest your body craves is finally quenched.  You will walk when that nutrition you are eating finds it has served your heart and brain well and now has extra energy for your legs.  You will walk, Mom.  But, if you close your eyes.  If you imagine your loving God standing beside side and holding your hand, you are already walking.  For now, walk there.  In your dreams. In your beliefs.  In your faith.  Because one thing is for sure.  A woman like you, loved by so many, embraced by her loving God, has never and will never walk alone.

Love you, Mom.   Stay tuned for Part 2.