I saw a mother die today...

I saw a mother die today. Her body didn't know she was dead when she rolled through the doors, and the paramedics and emergency department team pretended they didn't either, as they worked hard to resuscitate her. But in truth, we all knew that she had already died in the twisted and screaming metal wreckage that had once been her car. Her heart had just not learned the truth at that point...or maybe just refused to accept it.

I saw a mother die today. I think of those words, and it seems to affect me like few others among the many, many deaths I have seen. Maybe it was because she was young (only in her twenties), with what appeared to be a long life ahead of her. Maybe it was because she was a mother, and as she died, I stood with her four year old son. She might have seen her children grow up, finish school, get jobs. She might have celebrated many Christmases with them, and thrown them birthday parties. She might have been there at their weddings and watched as her grandchildren were born. But instead, I saw a mother die today.

I sat with her four year old son. He was in the car that killed his mother. He was scared, tied down on a hard board, blind...perhaps because of glass in his eyes, perhaps because he was scared to open his eyes after the visions he saw during the accident, who knows...(nothing was found later when we examined his eyes), in pain from his own injuries and calling out for his mother who would never again reply to his cries. There were many more qualified to sit with this frightened little child and comfort him, and they did. I did my part.

His father came and said that his mother had gone to heaven, and the little boy said, "no, mommy's in the next room". How do you tell a child his mother has died? How do you tell a child that his mother's head is almost severed from her body, that her internal organs have so many leaks that there simply is no blood left to circulate in the veins and arteries, and that her limbs have been crushed so badly that it almost seems there are no bones left in them? The father simply said he had to go live with him now and that he would not see his mother again.

"Bambi: Mother? Mother?
Great Prince of the Forest: Your mother can't be with you anymore."

How does a mother show her love? By properly restraining her son in the back seat, well secured in a car seat. He walks away from the accident that killed his mother.

I saw a mother die today, and I stood with her son.