I may have shared this personal anecdote before, so apologies if this is a duplication. I share it a lot because I am still so bowled over by it, and I have found that it gives a lot of people a lot of joy, comfort, and peace. If you never read another post from me again, read this one.
You all know me well enough to know that I am not exactly a fairies and unicorns sort. Every last detail of this account true. It will take a few minutes, but I promise it’s worth the read:
Background:
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I lost my brilliant dad in 2019. He was an incredible man - a genius in many ways, a bit of a skeptic, a problem solver, humorous, and just a generally good guy.
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There are as many as a million words in the English language and about several hundred thousand in regular use.
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My mom’s name was Janice, but her parents soon nicknamed her “Janky,” which she was called throughout her childhood in Oklahoma. When my mom first took my dad home to meet her family, they both received a fair amount of teasing about her bringing a Yankee into the family.
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In our part of the world, a Yankee remains as a slightly disparaging term used for someone from the north, a reference back to our civil war in the 1860s. As my American forum members will confirm, the word “Yankee” is rarely used, and the only time we hear it is by our Commonwealth friends or regarding a New York baseball team with the same name." “Yank,” of course, means to pull something quickly with force. Not to be outdone during the family introductions, my very funny dad immediately corrupted “Janky” and started calling her “Yanky.” Well, the nickname stuck, and my dad would shorten it and call her “Yank.” It was his go-to affectionate nickname for her, and other than her parents and siblings, who had died many years ago, no one ever heard her called “Yank” except my brother, sister, and me.
Fast forward to 2022:
My mother fell forward one early morning in her assisted living apartment while trying to stand without her walker. I received a frantic call from the director of the facility that she was unconscious and a helicopter ambulance had been called. I was not allowed to fly with her, and they did not know to which of three hospitals she would go, but they thought she would go to the closest one. If the hospital trauma unit was full, she would be sent to one of the others. I would get a call when that decision was made. It took forever because they couldn’t round up her identifying paperwork, so I decided to get a head start and raced off in my car, gambling that she would indeed go to the closest hospital.
I made the hour drive and as I pulled into the hospital parking lot, I saw a helicopter leave the hospital roof, leaving me confident that I was in the right place. I parked and raced to the counter to enquire as to where she was. The receptionist looked through the admitted trauma patients, but could not find her name. After another search, she asked me to take a seat in the waiting area so she could sort it out. A polite rule follower, I complied, but after a few minutes that felt like an eternity, I decided to press.
I returned to the counter, and while I explained the urgency of the situation, a nurse manager figured out what was going on and confirmed that my mom was indeed there. Since she did not have any identifying paperwork with her, her name hadn’t popped up on the list. I would find out later that the life-flight nurse had made the unusual decision to take off without her paperwork because of the extent of her injury. Apologetically, the nurse hurried me back to the trauma room. There my mom lay, hooked up to an assortment of monitors with a devastating image of her MRI. I knew I was losing her. Processing the overwhelming amount of information that I was seeing and hearing in a barrage of questions, all I could think about was - her.
I reached for her hand, and in doing so, I noticed her wristband that would typically hold her name, birthdate, and other identifying information. In the chaos and questions, I noticed something and thought I wasn’t quite right in how I had processed it, I asked, “What is going on with this wristband?” The nurse was confused and walked over to look at her wristband and explained, “Oh I am so sorry about that. Since we didn’t have her paperwork, the computer just generated it for the year 1900. The software generated her last name as the unit she was in (pediatric, emergency, cardiac, etc.) and her first name is just some randomly generated word.” Still in a little fog, I replied, “But how did you know?”
It suddenly came together in a rush, and out loud, I explained my mom’s background. With all the clarity I have ever had, I realized that my mom was dying, but my dad was there too - and he had made it known right there on her wristband. Incredibly, or what I now know as credibly, he had let me know using the one and only word in the English language that would be relevant and that my siblings and I would know - and that he was the one sending the message. If ever there was a secret word, this was it! As I continued to process what was happening aloud, Mike, the nurse replied, “Oh, that makes perfect sense. I don’t tell people this very often, but I’ve been a trauma nurse for thirty years and these rooms are sometimes so crowded with souls, that I have caught myself unconsciously saying, “Excuse me,” while rushing around the room.”
My mom was ok, and so was my dad. He had come to fetch her, and he had figured out how to let me know (at what I sense is at some cost) using one irrefutable one-in-a-million word.
I no longer believe the people we love still exist and that they are ok. I no longer believe that we will be ok too.
I know it.
