Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Maya Journey: The Turnaround

Maya Journey: The Turnaround

Does anyone else feel like they have been in a trustfall 24/7?!!

Shneikies has it ever been a rough week...at least that's what Maya just whispered to me. I'm not going to hold anyone in suspense, Maya is doing great, I'm holding her in my lap as I type this one-handed.

I have been able to hang on to this quote on this scrap of paper for over 10 years.  This certainly is referring to Maya, our Mighty Girl!


We have seen this girl battle hard this week.  Maya had a drastic decline starting last Monday.  Wednesday morning Nate's sister Diana who is also a nurse (a.k.a Aunt WonderWoman) dashed up from Virginia to rescue us and boy did we ever need her.  Our nurse on Tuesday morning asked if we could have family come help us and first of all I didn't really know what was ahead of us but we were all sick and I didn't want to put any of my local friends or faraway family at risk and I just told my nurse that we would be ok and that life is just hard sometimes and you have to just deal with it.  SO Tuesday evening Diana offers to help...cue Wednesday morning, me asking her to ditch her kids and save us. (probably within an hour she was in the car on her way up).

This was DD all weekend, at the bus stop, at soccer, grocery shopping at 5am, not to mention doing 1000 loads of laundry and hanging out with the boys at Chuck E Cheese. (I also want to recognize that everyone wished they could help too).

With all that Maya was going through on Friday I spoke with the cardiologist and asked her if I should be gathering my family from school and work (Maya started having seizures on top of a bunch of other stuff) and she told us she could possibly only have a couple days.  

Well Maya got worse quickly and I held her as she would stop breathing and the nurses would say, "come on Maya...come on baby girl" and then she would breathe again.  So Nate rushed home and Diana picked George up from school and we all just loved on her, and waited, and got sinus infections from crying, and loved on her some more.  Saturday morning I gathered pictures of some of our loved ones who had passed on before Maya and put them on our counter where we could all see them.  It was giving me strength to think about the reunion they would all be having with Maya and part of me was jealous.  We believe that the veil becomes very thin when someone is born and when someone dies.  A social worker came to our home and Diana explained why the pictures and the social worker exclaimed, "I totally believe that" and that she had experienced that many times (deceased family members being present for the passing of a loved one).  So it brought me strength to think of my Dad being close.  I also put on jewelry from some of those loved ones and joked about trying to summon my ancestors:)  Sometimes jokes are good.


So then, Saturday night, Maya totally snaps out of it.  I mean she was as close to death's door as I imagined she could get and then....she opens her eyes.


This is what she looked like on Sunday.

She seriously seemed to do an almost immediate 180.  As of yesterday's hospice visit her heart rate is back up, respirations are at her normal and she is eating very well.  She is not quite back up to where she was before her life got crazy but she is doing amazingly well.  I must say I am learning a lot and I am changed from this experience, still trying to really understand God's will and hope I am doing what He wants of me. The nurse did say that with her adult heart patients they often will have an "event" and deteriorate and then have another "event" and so on until God calls them home.  You can probably imagine the intense feelings that come with that prospect but I am learning to take things as they come.  Gosh we just love our Maya baby so much.





There is a talk by Elder Wirthlin called Sunday will Come, about the darkness of the Friday when the Savior was crucified and then how on the following Sunday, tears were dried with the knowledge of the resurrection of the Lord.

"Each of us will have our own Fridays—those days when the universe itself seems shattered and the shards of our world lie littered about us in pieces. We all will experience those broken times when it seems we can never be put together again. We will all have our Fridays.
But I testify to you in the name of the One who conquered death—Sunday will come. In the darkness of our sorrow, Sunday will come."
Maya wearing the Sunday dress I thought I had bought to then only cry over.

Thank you all for your prayers, love, tears, casseroles, and innumerable acts of service for our crazy family.  Oh, and welcome to our roller coaster.

Much Love.



Saturday, October 22, 2016

Maya Journey: The Good Fight

I am sitting at the computer staring at a keyboard and I am not seeing any words.

Maya's earthly journey is coming to a close.

Probably 20 times in the past 3 and a half months I have seen that look in the doctors' or nurses' eyes, that "it's happening" look.  It is a look that turns your stomach and makes you realize you had almost forgotten it could happen.  Well up until now that look was never right and I stopped paying attention to it, and I tried very hard to stay in the moment. I was reminded that all any of us really have is today and so lets make today pretty great.


So I went last weekend on a trip to see my great uncle Martin for his 97th birthday, which turned into his funeral.  We were teasing how the thought of all my siblings and I going to visit him was just too much:)  Since my uncle Martin was the last of his generation it kind of felt like we were losing all of them again and so it was pretty poignant.  I sat at the table with my siblings and I cried talking about what it will be like to see everyone again and to all be together.  Its one thing to think that is nice and another to really believe it and picture how amazing it will be to all be together again.  I even cried thinking about how Maya would join them sooner than I would like.

I returned home and Maya's decline began.  I cannot begin to express how intensely we are all feeling every emotion.

We just love her so much and it has been an honor and a sacred privilege to have her in our family and with us even for this short time.  Soon she will be free from her little body and return home having fought the good fight.  Certainly she can do so saying:

"I have fought a good fight
I have finished my course
I have kept the faith"


More later. Love to you all.