If you knew my mom, you knew that she loved babies.
Her spider plants were no different. She always kept a handful of adult plants and a nursery (kitchen) full of babies. She delighted in helping them root and grow into adult plants themselves – and then she joyfully gave them away. I lost count on the number of years she said to me, “I’ll send a spider plant home with everyone who visits this Thanksgiving!” Her spider plants proved Solomon’s wisdom, because the more she gave away, the more babies her spideys gave her.
Cast your bread upon the waters, for you will find it after many days. (Ecc. 11:1)
In 2017, a few days after a beautiful family Thanksgiving filled with laughter and joy and all the good old Moore Family tales, Mom developed sudden and debilitating pain in her right hip. She was unable to walk on her own. She was unable to stand on her own. She was delusional in her pain. It wasn’t until the second week of January that someone finally figured out she’d acquired a staph infection that was brutally attacking her right hip. Almost seven weeks of uncontrolled pain, of repeat visits to the emergency department, of maxing out on acetaminophen and ibuprofen and any pain killer or muscle relaxer we could get our hands on, of literally lifting her up and down to the toilet because she had no ability to do so herself, of wondering if our mom would see another Thanksgiving, of sudden and severe kidney shut down because her body had experienced a “perfect storm” of meds and dehydration, and of wondering how modern medicine – with all its advances – couldn’t figure out how to help her except to call it “a touch of bursitis” that would “clear up on its own in a week to ten days.”
Seven long weeks.
Seven very long weeks.
If you know me, you know that I’m always prioritizing. Part of it has been my own health struggle. I only have so much energy, and if something needs my attention, that’s it – that one thing gets my attention. To the detriment of everything (and everyone) else. To the detriment, it turns out, of mom’s spider plants. During those seven weeks, I was so focused on being in and out of the hospital with mom that I didn’t give half a thought to her spider plants until mom’s discharge from the hospital in mid-January when she went to stay with my sister for several weeks. They had, in almost unanimous objection to my failure, died.
Almost unanimous.
There was one straggler – one little fighter who, though clearly distressed, refused to give up. Although it faced several moments of near-death in the coming years, still that stubborn spidey gave us many moments of life and love and beauty before its final rest.
And so we named her Momma Heidi.
From my heart to yours,
