A MOTHER’S LOVE
Gayle’s Sacrifice — Did She Know?
Valentine’s Day is more then just a Hallmark holiday for me. It was on 2/14/07 at 8:21pm that I was on the phone with my mom talking her out of her last twenty bucks so I could go get high. I had received the answer I wanted, “Yes, I have a little cash on me but twenty is all I got.”
That’s all I wanted to hear.
She finished by expressing some concern and reiterating to me how important I was to her, how much potential I had, and how much she truly loved me and only wanted me to be happy.
I replied with, “uh-huh, yeah, okay, see you in a few.” CLICK, and I was out the door. I did not reciprocate her show of affection, I didn’t even say I love you too, something I will forever regret.
At 8:23pm is when I dialed 911 having arrived down the street at my grandmother’s and finding my mother suffering a massive stroke, on the floor, and barely able to speak, barely alive! Within two minutes my life changed forever. The last time I spoke to my Mom and heard her normal voice she said, “I love you son,“ and I hung up the phone without saying a thing!
Years ago, when I read this post on Facebook, I figured that Gayle’s stroke must have been pivotal in Nate’s getting sober. And I couldn’t help but think that whether she was aware of it or not, Gayle had given up her life, at least life as she had known it. For him.
The stroke took out 80% of her right brain I read in a post from Gayle’s granddaughter. And the subsequent photos, heartbreaking. Gayle had been gorgeous: black hair, white skin, and the most striking blue eyes. She’d been active — a small business owner, coach for a softball team, and later, a great sales career and travel up and down the West coast.
Gayle had a big personality and a heart full of love for everyone.
Now she was in a wheelchair, the left half of her face, the left half of her body, out of her control.
Gayle was 56 when she had the stroke. She lived for another 17 years. In that time, Nate was completely devoted to her and lovingly wrote about and posted the events of her life subsequent to the stroke.
There’s the before. And there’s the after. For both of them.
I know Nate felt guilty. The situation reminded me of Ron, someone I knew from AA. Ron was at fault in a car accident in which three people died, a mother and her two daughters. In prison, he had a lot of time to think. And he couldn’t overcome the guilt.
He’d done everything he could do to amend his life: he got sober and attended AA meetings; he continued his formal education — when that was still offered in prison — and earned a degree. He had his job and he did volunteer work.
His transformation was so complete that the husband and grandfather of those he killed showed up for his parole meetings and spoke in favor of his release.
But years into his sentence, Ron couldn’t get over the guilt.
During a session with a grief counselor, she acknowledged his suffering and how he was looking at the situation. She said, “turn it around. Instead of seeing yourself as having killed them, perhaps you could see it as them having given up their lives for you.
“If you were Alaina, Heidi and Jane, what would you want? Wouldn’t you want whomever took your life to make something of his?”
And that is what struck me about Gayle: she’d given up her life for Nate. In turn, he’d transformed his.
Did she know it? Whether she knew it or not, I’m sure that given the choice, she’d have done it willingly, lovingly again.
