Unconditional Love

On February 14th, 1985, I died.

Not too many things come easy for me. I’ve pretty much had to work hard to get what I want and fight even harder for the things that I really want.

I guess that’s pretty much the same for me carrying and giving birth to my children.
I had extremely difficult pregnancies with both my boys and while carrying my first son, Hootie, I died.
I had gone into premature labor during my sixth month. I don’t quite remember exactly how many weeks along I was. My due date was April 18th. I had gone grocery shopping that morning and was looking forward to a romantic Valentine’s Day, but instead, I died.

After carrying groceries up two flights of stairs, I felt a funny cramping feeling and called my doctor, who told me to come to his office. He gave me a pelvic exam and told me that I was in labor and already three centimeters dilated. He ordered me straight to the hospital.
That’s where I died.

The hospital gave me a medication to stop my contractions. They told me that there were risks with the treatment to stop my labor, but never would I have thought what happened next.
A nurse checked my blood pressure every few minutes as I lay silently in a sterile room by myself.
I was alone.
There was just me, the medical equipment and the sound of my baby’s heartbeat coming from the fetal monitor strapped to my abdomen.
There was an occasional whoosh as Hootie, who at the time I called Gertrude because I didn’t want to know the sex of my baby, rumbled around in my uterus. The nurse returned to check me again and this time she asked me how I was feeling. I think I told her that I was cold and she said that she would be right back and before she left the room she asked me not to go to sleep.
The next thing I remember was the sound of bells ringing and doctors rushing into the room, each doing different things.
It was weird because I lay there calmly as the doctors and nurses moved about the room with a sense of urgency. I watched, but hadn’t really realized that I was watching from a different perspective.
I had coded.
I had a full view of the doctors and nurses, frantically working to save the life of a young, unwed mother and her fetus, but I was watching from a corner of the room.
The doctors managed to revive and stabilize me and I was packed up and shipped off to a hospital that was better equipped to care for a high-risk pregnancy.

After several weeks in the hospital, at-home bed rest and another extended stay in the hospital, Hootie was born by cesarean section, five weeks early.
He was such a beautiful baby boy. His skin was smooth and caramel colored. His hair was jet black and lay flat on his head. He didn’t have a wrinkle or a flake anywhere on his body.
He was perfect.

I remember visiting him in the nursery one evening. It was dark and Hootie had been placed in an isolette. No one had told me and I was surprised, angry and a bit protective of my helpless child. I took him out of the isolette, sat down in the rocking chair in the corner of the room, held my baby and cried. It was just me and him, against the world.

Nearly seven years later I went into premature labor around the same mark as my first pregnancy. This high-risk pregnancy included mandatory home bed rest, a month long hospitalization, home bed rest again ( this time with a home health aide) and my own personal prenatal unit in my living room equipped with a fetal monitor, Terbutaline pump, Sharps container, electronic blood pressure pump and all the supplies I needed.

Labor was just as difficult. I developed preeclampsia and after several hours of pushing and “weighing all of our options”, I had an emergency c-section.

I love both of my boys dearly and as children I didn’t have many problems with them. They both live with ADD and ADHD and I was always their biggest advocate; meeting with teachers, counselors, school psychologists and administrators to make sure my children did not fall through the cracks and received the quality education they deserved.
My boys are equally smart and both test very well (they didn’t get that from me). They each have their own strengths and their cognitive tests are off the charts. I am so proud of my boys and their potential, but it disappoints me sometimes that they don’t live up to their potential.

They are both grown now and I can’t say that my relationship with my children is the best. They made up for being such perfect babies and children by giving me hell in their late teens. Hootie sometimes talks to me and treats me more as his peer than his mother. Rick sometimes speaks to me in a condescending and petulant tone.

I don’t believe either of them truly gives me the respect that I deserve.
I have sacrificed for my boys in so many ways that they don’t know. I have fought for them, defended them, protected them and would have even given up my life for them.
I haven’t heard from Hootie in several weeks and generally when I do it’s because he wants or needs something from me.
Rick has turned 18 and recently graduated high school.
We haven’t been getting along lately because he refuses to abide by the simple rules I have in place for him. He has consistently broken the rules and lied to me on several occasions.
I can’t tolerate liars and it hurts even more when I’m being deceived by my own child.
I’d had enough and told Rick that we couldn’t continue living like this.
His solution to the problem was to move in with his father and spring this news on me without any warning. Instead of being mature and addressing his problems at home, he opted to go where he figured things would be easier for him; to live with the man that never played an active role in his upbringing or education.

I was crushed and I still am. I think about everything I’ve done to ensure my child’s welfare and happiness.
I don’t have the happiest childhood memories and I did my best to make sure my children did, but I realize that no matter what you do or how much you give, your child will determine his or her own happiness.

My house is empty.
I have a hard time going home after work and I’ve been doing things to occupy my time. Once spring broke I began walking around my neighborhood to get a little exercise. With Rick being gone now, my walks have gotten longer.

My house is quiet.
I try to fill my house with noise. I turn on the television, the radio, talk on the phone… But sometimes I just sit. I listen to the sounds of silence. There is no rap music seeping through the bedroom wall, no basketball bouncing in the driveway, no video games blaring from the three season room. There are just the nighttime sounds of crickets, an occasional dog barking on the street behind my home or an airplane flying above.

I worked so hard to get my house and make it a home and now it’s empty to me. I wasn’t prepared for Rick’s sudden departure.
The plan was for him to attend community college for two years and then, hopefully transfer to Morehouse.

We as mothers devote so much of our lives and our time to our children and once they’re gone, there’s a void.

Esmerelda joked with me the other day about being an empty-nester and I immediately told her that wasn’t funny.
She quickly apologized.

They say that the ones you love the most, hurt you the most and I truly am in pain. I don’t think my boys will ever realize how much their mother loves them or how much they’ve hurt me, but I will love them until the day I die… A mother’s love is unconditional.