How do I love thee?

Today my Aunt Linda blogged about my mom and how my Uncle Mike misses her. Uncle Mike was Mom's baby brother and you would be hard pressed to find anyone she loved more. Now there are a variety of reasons why she loved Uncle Mike but tonight I'd like to share one very simple reason that *I* do.

When my mom had her first heart attack, there was a few days where we seemed to float in limbo - not knowing what the whole story was. At first it was a blood clot, then a mild heart attack, then a medium one, then more serious. Every day her condition seemed to get more serious but the doctors weren't in a big hurry to do anything and so I tried not to worry too much about it. Then all of a sudden one day, things seemed to go bad all at once. Her blood pressure took a nose dive and they decided to air care her to Genesis in the Quad Cities - where they specialize in heart related surgeries etc. They heliport-ed her up there, took her in immediately for a cardiac catheterization and put four stents in her arteries.

It could have been a disaster, but it wasn't. She survived. I, mercifully, was unaware of what was going on until it was all over. My dad didn't call my cell phone and I didn't get home from work until after 9 p.m. While I hate that I didn't know what was happening, I was spared a lot of heartache and worry - for which I am grateful.

Now I was not there to witness this but I heard it from my mom on numerous occasions. It was a "favorite" of her war stories...if you can have favorite stories about heart surgeries. (Her absolute favorite being my Mike's "homicide attempt" against her while she was recovering.) Only seven months passed between my mom's surgery and her death but I probably heard this seven or more times. She could never get all the way through the story without tearing up.

In the first hours/day or so after her surgery, the prognosis was good but guarded. It was still the early stages and there were no guarantees. My Aunt Linda and Uncle Mike had been at the hospital when things went bad with my mom and they went with my Dad to Genesis when they air cared her out. They sat with her while she came out of anesthesia. She was groggy and didn't remember much of anything after the surgery but she remembered Mike being there. (At this point in the story, she'd get teary and sniffle her way through the rest.) He stayed with her until she was awake enough to recognize him and know that he was there with her. That meant so much to her - that he'd stayed. And that he wouldn't leave until she knew he was there. She felt so loved.

Like I said, there are a bunch of reasons to love Uncle Mike but that's one of mine. And, for me, it's a big one.