The organ music played sadly in the background. I looked down into the coffin at my mother. I touched her cold, dead hands. The tears were flowed freely and unashamedly from my eyes.
She was eighty five just last month. Now a stroke had taken her from the world and from me. A seventy year old man shouldn't weep so hard, but I already missed her terribly. The procession to the cemetery was a trial in itself. By the time we got to the grave site, I was completely distraught. My son and daughter saved me from total collapse. The preacher spoke the well rehearsed words and then she was gone, buried. I felt that part of me had died. My kids drove me home.
I sat in the TV room drinking a brandy and remembered what we had when I was quite young. Mother had become pregnant at fifteen. Dad, the rat, left right after conception. I have never met him. By the time I was eighteen, she was only thirty three and she was drop dead gorgeous.
I was kind of a wild kid and, with no dad, I was left to my own devices. Hot rods and young girls were my passion. Since I was fairly good looking, at six foot two and two hundred pounds, I never wanted for female companionship.
My world came crashing down during my nineteenth summer. The car I was street dragging suddenly lost control and flipped across the road right in front of me. I was doing close to a hundred and had no where to go. I slammed into the other car, killing the driver and sending me end over end down a steep embankment. It took the emergency crew an hour to dig me out of the wreck.
I woke up in the emergency ward. I knew the situation wasn't good, because there was a priest by my bed. He was giving me the last rites. I saw my mother weeping her heart out by my side. As I slipped from worldly awareness, I thought, "This is it. I'm done."
I woke up thirty days later in the intensive care ward. I heard my mother call for a doctor as soon as my eyes opened. "What happened? Where am I?" I tried to ask, but nothing came out of my mouth..
"You're in the hospital, son," the doctor said. "You've had a really nasty crash. We didn't think you were going to make it."
My mother's arms worked their way through the myriad tubes and wires to embrace me. "We thought we lost you, Alan. I love you, son."
I tried to talk some more, but my mouth didn't seem to work right. I just lay there like a gutted trout, unmoving and unable to perform even small everyday deeds. I tried to pee, but I couldn't. I noticed the catheter sticking out of my cock. How did that get there? Two tubes came from my thorax. What were they for? I couldn't even ask these questions. My mind went numb and once again, I passed out.
After that, I would wake up occasionally. Performance was not in my lexicon. There was an oxygen tube under my nose. I tried to get up and rip out all the invading tubes, but my arms didn't want to work. Time drifted on. I found I could speak a couple of days later.
"What happened mom?"
"You totaled your car drag racing with Merl Peterson. He didn't make it. You almost didn't. You've been on the edge of death for almost two months."
Merl dead? Car gone? It was like listening to a foreign language. Nothing made sense. I looked around the room for the first time. There were no windows. I had a great view of the nurse's station. The walls were all white and there was no telephone. My mother sat in a chair beside my bed. She was holding my hand and crying softly.
"I can't move very well mom."
"You will be able to after a while. The intravenous tubes are feeding you and supplying medicine. The tubes in your chest are for drainage. The doctors say you will recover but it'll be a long time. It will be two weeks before you leave the intensive care, if all goes well. You have some big hurdles ahead of you son. I'll be right here with you to help you, but you've got to try hard."
"Mom, I'm so sorry. You warned me about this but I was too stupid to listen. That won't be a problem from now on!"
Sure enough, in two weeks they wheeled me out of the ICU and got me a bed in the high risk ward. I had to learn how to eat. My arms still didn't work right so mom had to feed me. On the tenth day, they removed the catheter, took me away to an operating room and plugged all the holes. All I had left was one intravenous tube attached to my right hand.
My favorite nurse, Jessica, appeared one day and told me it was time to learn how to walk again. She summoned a couple of big physical therapists and together they got me on my feet.
"Well, it looks like your legs have healed nicely," Jessica remarked.
"What do you mean? There was nothing wrong with my legs!"
"Aside from both of them being broken and full of glass slivers, there was nothing wrong," Jessica laughed. "You must have slept through most of that. I thought you would remember the casts for sure."
I looked down at my weakened legs and sure enough, there were scars all over them. Live and learn.
It took two more weeks of daily exercise before I could walk again. I learned to feed myself, although I did miss letting mom do it for me. At last, they led me to a departure ward. "Just one more week and if you do well, we'll let you go home." The doctor said.
