the sides of March

Years ago the first week of March seemed like any other month. It was slightly overcast weather in Vancouver and Casey Butcher and I were playing a pretty serious tournament of Sega NHL. We still chanted "Blades of Steel" whenever the game started, because anyone that knows hockey video games, know where it all started. It was the late 90's and life was alright. It wasn't great but it was alright. I was in great shape, smoked and was in a casual relationship with three different girls. Alright.

 That night something happened. The phone rang. Back in the day nobody had call display, so you answered the call no matter what. It didn't have the luxury of today where you can see that it's a collection agency and you just don't answer.(no Mr.Johnson, I don't have any good faith money to put on my VISA) When I picked up the phone it was my sister. She'd moved back to Vancouver from....well somewhere because she was worried about my mother's health. Sure enough this was the call we'd all been waiting for. A suitable donor had been found for the double lung transplant my mother had been waiting for. A sense of panic, relief, and caution filled my voice. Casey and I threw down the half empty beers and headed off the to hospital.

Now, we'd gotten a few calls before about donors, but all had failed to make it past a preliminary test. It as going to be difficult regardless of the usual complications. My mother, Gerry, was 5'7" and under 100 lbs. The frail, petite body type was going to make matches hard. Not to mention that her illness was going to make the surgery extremely risky. Her body was weak. A1AD deteriorates the lungs and liver, and as the years passed, the option of transplant was becoming increasingly more dangerous. Of course, she had no faith in the process working out. In fact when I got to the hospital she was positive that we'd be leaving within the hour after being told it was false alarm. She was almost embarrassed that I made it there. She didn't want me to travel downtown if nothing was going to happen. We mulled around the halls and made predictions about the outcome. We joked around the way a normal family might around the mall.

About an hour into waiting a good looking older man entered out little room and started going over the process and procedures. The longer he talked the more nervous I became, sure enough this was happening. Gerry took a little bit longer than the rest of us to clue in, because she was skeptical about her health improving. She may have even said, "do you really need to tell me all this if you're just going to send me home?" When more nurses entered our room, clicked. Then came her turn to panic. She stared intently at me and my sister P, and cracked the slightest smile. We took off her nail polish, and her make up, she got prepped and we all went to the surgery floor. Gerry infamously broke us all into laughter when she asked the surgeon for a pair of big boobs as well as lungs. She figured that it would be a nice touch, then at least she could point them out when she told people she had a lung transplant.

It's hard to imagine that for someone to live another has to die. I didn't even put the two together until we were leaving the ICU prep area and there was a room on the left where doctors were telling a family that their loved one didn't make it. It dawned on me later, when I was in that same room, that their loved one gave my mother those few extra months. In prep there were other transplant recipients waiting. One lady was getting a liver, the other kidneys. One life was going to give another shot to all three. I almost wish that we'd gotten to know them, and even he transplantee's family. We were bound together forever whether we knew it or not.

After the most flattering, and favourable conversation my mother and I ever had they wheeled her away to surgery. Paula, Casey and I decided that alcohol would calm our nerves. We drank a few beers then slept on the floor of the ICU waiting room. Confident and sore, we awoke to find out the details of the surgery. It took just over 6 hours and after all our family had been through we were sure that this was the break we deserved. Unfortunately being a wonderful mother, a caring human, and loving friend, sister and daughter,  isn' the criteria for success in this world. That's hope, and hope doesn't count towards anything.  The complications came as huge surprise. I never even thought about things not working out, if we'd ever made it this far.It seemed as if all the hurdles til this point were enough. I felt that if she endured this much pain and suffering that we'd come to the easy part. Only I was wrong. Double lung transplants are one of the most complicated surgeries to begin with, but I still believed her strength to this point was much more impressive. I believed that the love we all had for her, and the idea that she earned the opportunity to live a normal life would out weigh the medical odds, fact and possibilities. It was the 5th of March and I was about to embark on two months of extreme ups and downs, surrounded by drunken benders, tattoos, piercings, hair-dos and the closest to rock bottom I'd ever been. Sometimes I'm not sure whether I've ever climbed out fully, or if I keep one foot in that hole as an excuse for my fucked up behavior.  Spring is the season of new life, of beginnings. This is mine, and it came at the expense of losing the most important person in my life.