There will be Joy in the Mourning.

May 17, 2023

My biological mother passed away in June 2014, and it was a very traumatizing event for me. I remember being at home in my room, which was in the basement at the time, and hearing my dad yelling at my mom to please wake up. Let me back up a bit; I was fortunate enough to live in a house with my grandmother, both of my biological parents, and my son. Four generations living in one house! It was awesome! I wasn't raised by my biological parents, so that was the best thing ever for me.

The day was June 18, 2014. I was woken by a loud thump on the ceiling (the floor from upstairs), and my dad yelling "Ebony please get up! Come on Ebony wake up!". At first, I thought she fell or something, but something told me to get upstairs fast. That something was the Holy Spirit. I ran upstairs to my parents' room and there she was, laying on the floor and my dad was hysterically trying to talk to a 911 dispatcher. He handed me the phone and I quickly began to perform CPR. I want to point out that I 1) was half asleep, and 2) had never performed CPR in my life. I was terrified and detached at the same time; the moment didn't seem real to me, but my brain knew it was very real.

I was on the phone with the dispatcher, and she told me to start chest compressions and count to 100. I had a hard time following that step because my brain was still trying to process what was happening. I lost count a bunch of times, but I still kept pushing on my mom's chest. It wasn't working though. No matter how many times I pushed down, she wasn't waking up. I pushed and pushed until the EMS came in and moved me out of the way. I was in a complete daze at this point, I didn't even realize my son was upstairs with my grandmother. Thank God for her, because that would've been awful for him to see.

The EMS started working on my mom, and the last thing I remember hearing them say is "she's in full cardiac arrest", I had no idea what that meant but I do now.

Full cardiac arrest occurs when the heart suddenly and unexpectedly stops pumping.

So, my mom's heart had stopped pumping blood throughout her body, and she was basically on her way to being dead. The EMS got her up on the stretcher and wheeled her into the ambulance, one of the paramedics let me know what hospital they were taking her to so we could follow them. That's exactly what we did. Once we got to the hospital it was literally like any movie or hospital drama. The nurse leads you to a room to wait, and you sit there while they work on your loved one. I knew in the back of my mind that once the doctor came out, it was going to be bad news. My family and I sat there waiting for what felt like forever. My son Johnathon was blissfully ignorant of what was happening as he played Angry Birds on his tablet, while I was contemplating if I wanted to go snort a Percocet before the docs came in. I decided to wait. Then, five to ten minutes later the doctors came in with the worst news I've ever received in my life. The doctor said, "Ebony has passed away, there is nothing more we could do", my soul left my body, and I immediately became dissociated from the entire experience. It was a slap in the face for me; I spent my entire childhood wanting my mother and now she was gone forever.

After my mom died, I spent the next two weeks with full PTSD with flashbacks and all. It was a living nightmare. I snorted as many pills as I could in that time to get rid of the replaying visions of failing my mother on the day she died. But nothing worked. Following the initial shock of my mother dying, I spent more time drugging and drinking myself into oblivion, all in the name of forgetting and "healing". I didn't heal though; I buried the pain so deep that only God could fix me. And that's exactly what He did. It took me 7 years to fully heal from losing my mother. I mean, I had gone to therapy within those 7 years but that only dulled the pain. It wasn't until a sunny Saturday morning in the spring of 2022 that I experienced true healing for my grieving soul. When my mother was still alive, she wrote me a letter; I will insert it into this post for you to read, and I read this letter shortly after she died and many times over the years of her being gone. It wasn't until God illuminated the letter that I actually received joy from it. My mother asked for my forgiveness and was so happy that we reconnected.

Like I said, I read this letter many times before and it didn't do much for my spirit. Then the day came that God decided it was time for me to stop mourning and finally have joy. I read the letter again, and this time my mother's words spoke to me. The Holy Spirit showed me that I got to spend my mom's last days on this Earth with her. I was by her side while she took her last breath. I didn't get to spend my early years with her, but I got to spend her last years with her. A relationship that was filled with guilt and resentment, ended in forgiveness and peace. The last words I said to my mother the night before she died was "I love you beautiful". God allowed me the opportunity to be with my mother in her final moments. I didn't realize that on my own, it was only God. I spent 7 years feeling like it was my fault that she died instead of seeing the bigger picture. God allowed me to spend the very last minutes of my mom's life embracing her, loving her, and forgiving her. It was the glory of God shining through that letter while I sat on my bathroom floor bawling my eyes out because for the first time in 7 years, I finally had joy and peace about my mother dying. I give God the glory in this situation because I know it was Him. Thank you, Jesus.

God will always turn mourning into joy.