By Ricky Doc Sauceda
Losing my dad seemed like a walk in the park compared to my mom’s passing. After all, she had been ever-present in my life constantly. Unlike my dad, who had departed a couple of times for lengthy periods of time. I learned all about the goodness of a person from my mom: she instilled a deep faith in me about God.
Mom always talked about prayer and faith and she exemplified it. She was always reading a book, magazine or newspaper. She cooked good meals and I pattern myself after her in that area. I used to read through her Better Homes and Gardens and Betty Crocker cookbooks regularly.
At an early age I mastered pancakes and crepes – I was always cooking crepes and sharing them with my sisters. I was self-reliant when it came to cooking and cleaning because mom had me learn those skills. As a modern day bachelor, I am able to do these things now.
Mom told me about her days in high school where she was a member of the Pep Squad and Girls Basketball Team. She played basketball with me a few times in our yard back home in the countryside. She had a good jump shot.
After dad and her separated for the final time, she began to focus on getting healthy. She lost a lot of weight and was doing really well. The picture you see of us next to each other is from that time in her life. I too was on a health kick – cleaning out all of the junk I had put in my young body with booze and drugs. Standing next to each other, you can see the work of the Lord.
Years passed and both of us had a toll put on us by them. Stress and bouts with diabetes would cause both of us to deal with its effects. When I was diagnosed with it in October of 1992, I was thirty years old – the same age she was diagnosed with it. This disease would claim her life on February 5, 2004.
Mom had lost her eyesight and had part of a foot amputated. The doctor wanted to remove the foot but she refused. This would be a costly error in the end, as the foot would cause an infection that would spread throughout her legs. The left leg was amputated above the knee in the last hospital stay, but it was too late. The infection had spread all over and there was no way to save her. The other component was another type of infection that spread throughout her body and infected all of her organs.
She died in a hospice with my sisters and their families around her. I couldn’t bear to see her in that state and was elsewhere with my family at the time of her death. The doctor injected a lethal dose of morphine into her to stop her heart. (To alleviate her misery; an act of mercy.)
As a young boy, I dreamed a repetitive dream. Men with long white lab coats surrounding mom as she tried to escape them. They shot her with tranquilizer guns and brought her down. She called out to me to run…to escape them. In my dream I cried out for her as they drug her away into the building. I would then wake up…I had this dream a lot as a child. I never shared this with anyone.
I did not attend her funeral. I just didn’t want to see her put into the ground and covered up. I would rather remember her alive. I still don’t know where it is that she is buried. I have never visited her grave.
If you have read my stories, you know that I occasionally hear from her. I even saw the image of her face once…the night that I moved into my one bedroom apartment. I put that in one of my stories.
Father Frank tells me she is alive. He is right. We never die. We live for eternity.