It took three tries but I was finally able to get through to my brother. He lived only a few hundred yards from my mother’s house. He was a master mechanic and ran an automotive repair shop next to his house. His wife was a nurse that worked long hours and as a result, mom had practically raised his boys. They were mom’s favorite grandchildren and she loved them dearly. That was something I couldn’t say about my own child.
“Randy, what are you doing calling at this time of the day?” he asked
“Listen, I need you to drop what you’re doing and go check on mom.”
“Something wrong?”
“No, I just got of the phone with mom and was expecting her to pitch a fit. When she didn’t, I began to worry about her. I just wanted to know that she’s okay. I’ve tried calling her back, but she must’ve the phone off the hook because I get a busy signal.”
“So, you want me to check on her to make sure she’s all right?” he asked.
“Yep, would you?”
“I can’t, but I’ll send Tanner down to check on her.”
“I’d appreciate it.”
“What happened between you two?”
“I don’t know. You know how she is. One minute she’s happy as a clam and the next she’s spitting like a cobra.”
“That’s our mother. Hold on what time I call the boys.”
A couple of minutes later he was back on the phone.
“I sent Tanner and Eddie down to check on her. It’ll take a couple of minutes. You can stay on the line or I can call you back when they get here, which ever works best for you.”
“I’ll hang up and you can call me back in a couple of minutes. Thanks bubby.”
“I’ll call you as soon as I know.”
It was over and hour before he called back. I picked the receiver up before the second tone rang. When I picked up the phone, I expected bad news, but was shocked by what I heard.
“Randy, that you?” came Alex’s voice through my earpiece.
“What took so long? I was beginning to get worried. I called you once, but it was busy.”
“I’ve been on the phone with mom.”
“She all right?”
“Yell, but I’ve got some bad news.”
My hand began to shake and I took a deep breath before I spoke. I had been expecting something like this, but was still shocked when it came. “Go on and tell me what it is.”
“It’s Jessi.”
“Sullivan?”
“She’s,” he paused and I could hear him sucking in air, “had a heart attack and it don’t look too good for her.”
“What? You’re kiddin’. I just spoke to her at the funeral.”
“Franklin just called mom looking for you. He said that Tim was on the road and they left messages at his hotel room and on his cell phone. They called mom because he couldn’t find your number.”
“How’s Jessi?”
“Bad, I reckon. Mom wants me to take her to see her. They’ve got her in Pikeville. She’s in good hands, but that don’t mean a lot.
“Franklin said she’s been asking about you. You going to go see her?”
“I’ve got to. Has the roads gotten any better?”
“Yeah, you know how it is here. You get three feet of snow on Monday and it has melted off by Wednesday. The roads are good as far as I know.”
“They’d better be. I’m coming home come Hell or high water.”
“She’s on the tenth floor over there. She’s in ICU. Veronica works on the O-B-G-Y-N floor and she knows more about it than I do.”
“I’ll call her. Thanks Alex.”
“I know what she means to you.”
I hung up the phone and collapsed onto the chair in the room. I buried my face into my hands and began to sob. As the tears flowed from me, my body began to shake as I fought to make sense out of life. I lowered my head and silently began to pray.
“God, what are you doing? How much more are you going to put on me? First my dad, then my mom and now this; what’s next? I can’t take this. I thought You were supposed to be a loving and tender God. Is this what You call being kind and loving. It sure doesn’t look that way to me.
“What have I done that has made You so angry with me? What sin have I committed that is so heinous that you personally have to destroy everything I love just so You can get Your jollies? How am I supposed to believe in a God that allows so much pain to be inflicted upon someone that doesn’t deserve it? If this is what You call being just, is it any wonder that billions of people don’t love You?”
I sat there over the next few minutes trying to understand why my world was caving in upon me. In the last week, I had lost my father, alienated my mother and was possibly on the verge of losing the only real mother figure I’d ever had.
As I sat there lost in self-pity, Jennifer opened the door. As she entered the room, I looked up and she could see the sorrow on my face.
“Is everything all right? Is your mother sick?”
“Jessi had a heart attack?”
“Jessi, Tim’s mom, Jessica?”
I nodded my head.
“Is she all right.”
I shrugged my shoulders, but still didn’t speak.
“Where is she at?”
I looked into my wife’s deep brown eyes and began to cry. She walked over, put her left hand on my head and began to caress me with her right.
“There, there,” she said. “God’ll take care of her.”
“God,” I spat. “He’ll take care of her by killing her.”
“If that is His will, then who are we to question…”
“His will! His will has done enough if you ask me! If He’s a God of love then bring on the god of hate, I say.”
“Don’t talk like that!”
“I’ll talk like I damn well please! If God is so good and loving, He’s yet to prove it to me. I believe He’s a vengeful and hateful god. I don’t believe He has my best interest in mind.”
“Romans 8:28, says, ‘For all things work to the good of those who love the Lord and are called for His purposes.’”
“Whyyyy, of course it does. It also says, ‘Vengeance is mine.’ So, which one is He, a god of love or a god of vengeance?”
“I like to see him as a God of love,” she said.
“And I know Him to be a god of vengeance.”
We didn’t speak a word for the next few minutes. I sat there in my chair and wrapped my arms around my wife’s waist. She ran her fingers through my hair with one hand and gently rubbed me on the back with the other.
A few minutes later, Kieran entered the room. He was holding a juice box in each hand.
“Dad, I need you.”
“Daddy’s kinda sad at the moment,” replied my wife.
“But I need him. We’re going to play sharkaroonie. I can’t play it by myself. The Great White needs the Bull Shark to help chase off the bad guy fishes. Besides, I got us both a juice and some animal crackers.”
“I’ll be right up,” I said as I hid my face in my wife’s belly.
“Are you listening for the baby?” asked my son. “Can I listen to momma’s belly too?”
“No,” replied my wife.
I looked up at my wife and tried to smile. “Let him, please.”
“Please momma,” parroted Kieran.
“All right, but just for a minute.”
He cautiously approached his mother. As he neared her, I cupped his chin in my hand. “Look at me,” I said. He hesitated as he usually does when he thinks he’s in trouble, but he finally looked at me.
“Kieran, I want you to know that I am so proud to be your dad. I want to thank you for picking momma and me as your parents. When God made you, he said that you could have any parents in the world and you chose us. That makes me feel awfully special.”
His eyes beamed at me. “You are special and so is momma.”
As I pulled him close to me, he shouted, “Group hug,” and we all three embraced each other for a few seconds.
I held on a bit longer than I should have but I couldn’t let them go. They were the only things in this world that I truly loved. Without them, I had no reason to exist. I fought to hide my tears from them and held on just a little longer hoping that the additional time would give me the opportunity to compose myself.
As I let go and we began to separate from each other, my wife whispered, “Told you He was a God of love.”
I looked at my son and winked at him. “Go on up to your room and I’ll be up there in a minute.”
“Can we play sharkaroonie?”
“Yep.”
He raised his hand and shouted, “I get to be the Great White.”
I followed his lead. “I get to be the Bull Shark.”
He looked at his mother and asked, “Do you want to play? You can be the Short-Finned Mako.”
“No, thanks,” replied Jennifer. “I’ll be packing daddy some clothes what time you two are playing.”
Kieran turned and without saying another word, he ran out the room, through the hall and up the flight of stairs.
“Aren’t you two going?” I asked.
“No, somebody needs to stay here.”
“What if something happens to the baby?”
“Autie and Brett are just down the street. I’ll have them to check in on me.”
“What if they’re gone when something happens?”
“God will take care of us.”
“I’ve seen how He handles things and quiet frankly, that bothers me even more than the thought of you being alone.”
“We’ll be fine. Now go up and play with your son. You’ve got to get on the road or you’ll never get there before dark.”
I stood up, snapped to attention, saluted and shouted, “Aye, Aye captain.” I tried to smile at my own attempt at humor but failed. She kissed me and I hugged her just to let her know how much she meant to me.
I spent the next hour or so with my child. We played sharks and ate animal crackers. It amazes me the number of ways my son can invent in order to win. He’ll change rules on you, declares your moves totally illegal and then two minutes later will try to do the exact same thing. On more than one occasion that afternoon, I had to call him down for cheating. Of course, he denied every one of them, but that didn’t stop him from continuing to bamboozle me.
Somewhere during our tenth or eleventh game, Jennifer called for me.
“Randy, I’ve got your stuff packed and have made you a couple of sandwiches for the road.”
“Be right down,” I answered. “I’m about to beat Kieran for the first time.
“Yeah, that’ll happen,” he said.
I looked at him, smiled, and then proceeded to roll a pair of fives with the game dice. When he saw that I had rolled a ten, he began to shout, “You cheated. You cheated!”
“No I didn’t. I beat you fair and square.”
He began to cry and demanded that I roll again. I refused. “He needs to lose every now and then,” I thought to myself. We usually let him win when we played with him, but I would occasionally beat him just so that he’d learn to be a gracious winner.
“I don’t want to play any more,” he said as he got up and left the room.
“I have to go away.”
As I entered the hallway, I noticed an over night case and a garment bag sitting on the floor next to the door that leads to the garage. My wife was standing next to them. She looked up as I approached. There were tears in her eyes even though she smiled at me.
“You be careful. Those roads may be tricky.”
“I’ll be fine. Besides, Eastern Kentucky has probably already melted off.”
“I’ve packed enough for four days. I wish you didn’t have to go.”
“That makes two of us. Still, she loves me like one of her own and I feel the same about her.”
“I know. I’d do the same. This weather has me worried. I know what Alex said, but I still worry about it. I’ve had a strange feeling all day.”
I’d been around my wife long enough to listen to her when she talked about those “witchy feelings” she has occasionally. She possesses a unique knack for predicting big events. It isn’t like a psychic that predicts major disasters. Hers works only on the people she loves. She starts by having either a good or a bad feeling about something, and then it gains more clarity. After that, she knows that a major event is about to take place and she also knows to whom it is going to happen. She usually calls them up and tells them how she feels and within three days to a week, her suspicions usually come true.
She definitely has a gift for this and that bothers her. She is a devoutly religious woman and thus believes that her “feelings” are unholy and are to be ignored, but on the other hand, she knows they are uncanny in their accuracy.
“Are you having a good feeling or bad feeling about it?” I asked.
“Both. I can’t explain it. But, I believe something bad is about to happen to you. And, I believe you are going to go through a terrible ordeal. But, I can’t help but to believe you’re going to come out of this a better man than you are now.”
“When is this” – I held up my hands and winked bunny ears with my fingers – “’ordeal’ supposed to start?”
“It already has. Please be careful.”
I was startled by her response, but I pretended not to be troubled by it. I waved her words off with a flick of my hand.
“I’ll be all right.” I said that more for myself than I did for her.
She stared at me and smiled. “I believe you will.”
With that, I winked at her and hugged both of them before I opened the door to the garage. I then picked up my bags and hit the overhead door switch.
“Bye, I love you,” I whispered as the door slowly ambled up the wall.
“Bye dada,” returned Kieran as he waved to me.
“Be careful baby, I want my husband back in one piece.”
“I’ll do my best,” I said as I made my way to my Jeep. I threw my bags in the back, turned on the vehicle, walked over, and kissed them a second time.
Without saying another word, I hopped in the Liberty and began to back out of the driveway. They followed to the door of the garage and waved to me. I tooted the horn and slowly made my way out of the subdivision.
The trip to Pikeville was long and uneventful. My brother was right about the snow. It seemed as though over half of it had disappeared since the day of the funeral. Even though it made for an easier drive, I wasn’t that happy about the situation because the beautiful white snow had been replaced by dirty brown, sloshing puddles of mud.
I arrived at the front desk of the hospital just before dark. A fashionably dressed elderly woman was setting at the help desk. As I approached, she smiled and asked, “May I help you?”
“I’m looking for a patient. Her name is Jessica Sullivan.”
“Sullivan, is it?”
“Yes ma’am. Jessica.”
As the woman began typing the name in the computer, I heard a voice down the corridor. “Randy, is that you?”
I looked to my right and noticed Tim coming directly towards me. I began to run towards him. As I neared him, he stopped and waited for me. I swept my arms around him and he followed suit. We embraced for just a second and then parted.
“How is she doing?” I asked.
“It’s bad.”
“What, you’re lying?”
“I wish I was.”
“How bad?”
“Real bad.”
“Is she going to make it?”
“Maybe, but even if she does, she ain’t got very long.”
I stopped and my knees nearly buckled under me. As I began to slip, Tim grabbed me and helped to steady me. Leading me to a chair, my friend held on until I was able to take a seat.
“You all right?” he asked.
“What happened?”
“You went pale and then began to stumble. I caught you and brought you here.”
“The last thing I remember was asking you how she was.”
“You’ll see. She’s been asking about you. She’s been worried that you wouldn’t make it in time.”
“In time, what the hell does that mean? In time?”
I looked at him and felt my insides wretch. I ran to a nearby garbage can and emptied the contents of my stomach into it.
“Pull your self together!” he snapped. “Mommy needs you and you’d better get a grip on things or…”
His voice trailed off at that point. I looked up and I could see the tears in his eyes. I watched as a single tear meandered its way down his cheek. He looked like a frightened little boy. Forgetting my own pain, I stood up and walked over to embrace him. At first, he resisted, but I refused to let go. After a few seconds of hesitation, he relented.
I could feel the tension in his back. He tried to put up a good front and he did manage to control his pain for a few seconds, but he eventually let go and began sobbing like a two year-old child. As his body began quaking, I held on even tighter.
“Let it out,” I whispered. “You can’t keep this bottled up in you like that. Let it out.”
We stood there locked in our embrace for several minutes without saying a word. Once his body quit trembling, he let go of his embrace and I did likewise. Looking in my eyes, he began to speak.
“I certainly chose well when I chose you as my best friend.”
“You mean brother, don’t you?”
He smiled at me. “That’s exactly what I mean. I chose you as my brother.”
I shook my head in agreement with him. He smiled a second time and motioned for me to follow him. Not wanting to spoil the moment, I remained silent and followed. We took the elevator up to the Cardiac Care Unit. When we got there, we turned left and entered the fourth room on our right.
As I entered the room, I heard Frankie say, “Good, I’m glad you made. Mommy’s been asking about you for the last hour.”
“I’m here now.”
“And not a moment too soon,” replied Frankie. He then slapped me on the shoulder and motioned for Tim to leave the room. He then looked at me. “She wants some time to be a lone with her babies and you’re the last one to get here.” My body convulsed from both the pain of the love associated with those words.
He then leaned in and whispered to me, “Can you handle this?”
I replied in kind. “I have to.”
He patted me on the shoulders and left the room.
“Hello,” croaked Jessi. Her voice sounded like she was calling from the inside of a cave.
“Hello, Jessi,” I squeaked like a tiny mouse.
“Is that you, Randy?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Get over here and let me have a look at you.”
I walked over to a chair sitting beside her bed. She reached out to me with both hands and I took them into mine. We embraced for a long minute and then she began to speak.
“Doctors say that I don’t have long to live. They say I won’t see another Christmas.”
“What do they know? Your heart may get even stronger after this.”
She tried to laugh but it came out a cackle.
“My heart ain’t the problem. I’m eat up with cancer. It comes from smoking nearly fifty year.”
“Cancer, but I thought you had a heart attack.”
“I did, but that’s not what’s killing me. I’ve had cancer for some time now.”
She must have seen the shock on my face because she began answering questions I hadn’t even asked.
“I’ve been battling this for a while. The only person who knew about it was my brother Kenny. I swore him to secrecy. We’ve been hiding it from you kids because we didn’t want you to worry.”
“Don’t you think we had a right to know?” I exploded. I hadn’t meant to shout at her but I did. The shock of hearing her telling me that she was dying was too much for me to handle at this time.
“How could you do this?” I shouted.
Before I could say another word, she waved her hand to stop me. “I didn’t want to be treated any differently. I’ve seen how people get treated when they’re dying. They’re treated like they’re helpless and I don’t want to be treated like that.”
She flashed me an iron smile. “The odd thing about it was as skinny as I am, I didn’t have to worry about rapid weight loss and nobody noticed I was sick until this happened.”
I thought about saying something, but for the life of me couldn’t come up with the words to express how I felt. I stood there knitting my eyebrows trying to think of some nugget of wisdom but was interrupted by her laughter.
I looked at her and she was trying to laugh through a hacking cough. I could hear death choking the life out of her with each of those hollow gags.
“This is the first time I’ve ever seen you speechless,” she said during one of the brief periods she had between coughs. “I don’t know if I should be flattered or insulted.”
The hacking cough began anew and I waited for her to catch her breath before I spoke. “Both,” I said. “You should be both.”
She laughed again and I saw some of the old Jessica come into her eyes. I reached out and began to rub my hand over her face. After about the third or fourth stroke, she grasped my hand in hers, pulled to her lips, and kissed it.
“When I die…”
“Don’t talk like that.”
“Baby, it’s going to happen whether we like it or not. God’s got His own way of doing things and He’s not taking orders from me.”
“God,” I snapped. “What’s He got to do with this?”
“Everything. He made me and I guess He’s ready to call me home.”
“Why you? Why not someone who deserves it?”
“Don’t you think I deserve it?”
I could hear the honesty in her voice. I trembled as I thought about it. No, she didn’t deserve this. If ever there was a good and true woman, I was looking at her. What good did that do her? She was barely sixty-five and God was willing to snuff her out like a candle flame burning against a strong wind.
“No, you don’t deserve it.”
“I’ve sinned and am deserving of this. We’ve all sinned, even you.”
I shot her blank look and she smiled. “Even you,” she repeated.
“I find your sin hard to believe.”
“I’ve committed more than my share of sins, but they’ve been forgiven. Of that, I’m one hundred percent sure.”
“I wish I could be sure.”
“It’s easy. Trust in God and He’ll do the rest.”
“But, I don’t trust Him. He’s been nothing but a nuisance in my life. All He wants to do is to interfere where He’s not wanted and to hurt those that don’t deserve it.”
“I’m going to a better place. You’re not going to begrudge me my reward are you?”
Unsure of how to answer, I remained silent. She took my silence as an answer to the affirmative.
“I don’t know why you don’t believe in God, but I know He loves you…”
“Loves me?” I began to laugh but it was one born of frustration and not mirth. “Is that why He allowed me to be treated like a dog by my own family? Is that why I feel as though I don’t belong to the very people that are supposed to love me? Is that why He allows my own mother to hate me?”
“She doesn’t hate you. She just…” Her voice trailed off and she began to cough and shake violently. The spasm only lasted a few seconds.
“You all right?”
She nodded her head to indicate that she was. After a couple more hacks, she began to speak.
“You were loved. I loved you like my very own. I made not a speck of difference between you and my own.”
“I know that and I love you as well. You were the mother I always wanted.”
“And you think God had nothing to do with that? You’re loved and loved dearly. You were lucky. You had two mothers.”
“That were polar opposites.”
“And look how you turned out. You’re the child every mother dreams about.”
“What a guy so screwed up in the head he actually contemplates chucking everything and just ending it all?”
“No, the son that over came incredible odds to make something of himself. You don’t know how special you really are. I wish that you could see that God has great plans for you.”
“God? Plans? I’d laugh if anyone else said that to me!”
“Why not me?”
“Because, I love you more than life itself. I wish I could be like you and believe, but I can’t.”
“Why the doubt? Why the anger?”
I shrugged. “I wish I knew. If only He could prove Himself to me, you know, where I couldn’t doubt it; where it couldn’t be explained away?”
“You’ve never had a prayer answered?”
“Once, but I believe that it was only a coincidence.”
“No such thing. That was God, but you refused to listen.”
“If He proves to me He’s real, I’ll follow.”
“I’ll pray for you and I know He’ll answer it. He’s got a plan for you. I just know it.”
I started to say something, but she put her finger to her lips in order to silence me.
“Don’t spoil it,” she whispered as she gently pulled me into a hug.
I sat there with her for the next hour or so. I was still holding her hand when a nurse entered the room to check on her.
“How are we doing?” asked the nurse.
“I’m ready,” returned Jessica. “The Lord can take me any time He pleases.”
The nurse looked at me and smiled politely. “Can we have a few minutes alone?”
Embarrassed, I smiled and said, “Forgive me. Yes, you may.”
As I exited the room, Jessica called to me. “Randy, I look forward to seeing you in Heaven. God wants you to know that He loves you and that you belong to Him even if you don’t realize it. I love you.”
“I love you too,” I said as I pulled the door behind me.
She died before I got to speak with her again. Her death hurt worst than my own father’s because with her, I had lost the best part of who I am.