Warning: happy ending ahead!
So I'm on the phone with my brother, who lives with his family in my hometown. He tells me he'd been invited to stop by and visit some friends, who live out in the country, when his cell rings. It's my aunt. The town ambulance, staffed by remarkable volunteers, is at Mom's.
This isn't a first. When it comes to heart attacks, she and Cheney are tied; the similarities begin and end there. Various ambulance volunteers know their way around our family home. The last time they were there ... it was Dad.
My brother departs his friends' home quickly, a sense of dread growing with each mile of country roads until he gets to Mom's. Where she is watching "Wheel of Fortune." No ambulance.
Rewind: Picture another widow in my hometown, chain-smoking and with Tammy Faye Bakker-scale mascara and eye-liner, listening faithfully to her police scanner in her senior citizen apartment. She hears the ambulance being alerted to Mom's and promptly gets on the horn to my aunt, who calls my brother.
It was the monthly test of Mom's medical alert system, designed to ensure the proper connections are all working.
Sometimes, I think of Mom as a "tough old bird," as one of her cardiologists once described her. Sometimes, I think of her as fragile--alone and missing Dad terribly.
It's just nice to think of her watching "Wheel of Fortune," the TV volume turned up loud as she calls out the answers well before the contestants.