My Mom's Heart

The monitor was grainy. Black and white in the dimmed room. The mass of tissue indistinguishable under the ultrasound wand being pushed between my mothers ribs. Blobs of gray snow and black shadows smeared across the screen until the rhythmic beating became clear. "Take a deep breath, Mary Frances". The technician instructed my mom, yet I couldn't help but inhale deeply and hold my own breath until directed to exhale. The ER nurse in me was watching intently; both fascinated by the technology and curious professionally, looking for cardiac abnormalities. Reading an echocardiogram is by no means my specialty but my eyes strained anyways, while looking for any valvular anomalies, or calcifications or blood flow aberrations. It was a detached, medical, calculating, diagnostic and safe place for me to be while my mom lie on the table in front of me. I didn't have to think about the fact that she had recently suffered a heart attack.
She was on vacation in Hawaii visiting my sister Martha when she noticed a general malaise and an increasing shortness of breath upon walking even short distances. And here I have to say that even on her best days my mom could never be accused of being a great historian when it comes to describing her physical symptoms. When I talked to her on the phone from 3000 miles away her description of how she felt was, "I just don't feel right". Hardly worthy of a 911 call. And to be fair, people can have "silent" heart attacks where the usual symptoms of chest pressure, nausea, sweating, etc. just don't occur. But it's hard to know with my mom, Mary Frances... a woman who can find a silver lining in just about any rain cloud. Like, oh, I don't know, seeing the loss of a limb as an alternative weight loss program, for instance. But the lingering fatigue and winded feeling upon her return home, landed us an appointment with her doctor. And mom's reaction to Dr. Wingren, holding the EKG in his hand explaining how she had had a recent heart attack? Classic Mary Frances..."Really, well I'll be." Puffing her way back out to her car after receiving the bad news, my mom said, "I don't know, James, do you really think I had a heart attack?" The question reminded me again of the powerful combination of Polyanna and denial that I was raised with and that I now employ as a coping mechanism in the face of bad news. But not this time..."Yeah, mom, I think you did".
I pulled back from the memory and looked at the pulsating screen of grainy lines. But this time I saw something I hadn't earlier. I saw the beating heart of my mother. I was no longer an analytical nurse looking for answers. I was a mess. I understood for the first time in my life the actuality that my mom is mortal. That she is finite. That the heart that I was watching beat with the precision of a clock right in front of me, was winding down and would stop someday. The rhythmic beating of her heart was hypnotic in the darkness of the room and with each beat I was drawn deeper into the blackness of the space inside. I felt more connected to my mom at that moment than I had since I was a child as I could actually see the source from which all of her love poured out of her. The valves would close, perfectly white, and then open again to a black depth that seemed bottomless, was bottomless. That unending source of love that has been with me from my first breath here. I was overwhelmed by the thought that I could actually see the endless ocean of love inside my mothers heart. It became timeless as I sensed the heart of my grandmother and all of her love and her mother and her great grandmother and on and on. I couldn't look away. Somehow that piece of meat on a TV screen transformed into life and love and a connection between generations that flows now through me into those that I love.
I can choose to see my mom's heart attack as devastating as it signals change and loss. But I know, deeply, that it it will always be there for me and in a very real sense beat through me. I am so grateful for having experienced it all. Thanks mom.