Wanna Get Away?

On Thursday night, after a long day of work and taking care of a friend's children (and playing some volleyball with my college students), I came home and began reading to unwind before heading to bed. At about 1:30 am the house phone rang, and my mom answered. This is what the caller said:

"Mrs. Young, I'm so sorry to have to tell you that your father-in-law has expired."

I didn't hear the conversation, but my mom saw my light on and came and told me that basically she was just informed that my grandfather had died.

(I have to say this, the use of the word "expired" needs to be nixed. Not a good choice of terms to relate that someone has died. "Passed away" would be so much better. I'm sorry, but expired makes my grandfather sound like a can of beans or something.)

So my parents and I get dressed and get things ready to go up to the rehab center where my grandfather has been.

This would be a good time to explain some things. My grandfather is 98 years old. A few weeks ago, he feel and broke his leg from just below his hip to just above his knee in a spiral all the way around his leg. For a 98 year old, that's a really big deal. They had to do surgery to try and fix it, but during the procedure he lost about 8 units of blood, roughly 2 gallons, I believe. He was in ICU for a little less than a week, and after some strength tests, which he passed, was put into a rehab facility to start preparing to walk again! Amazing, really! He's doing so great!

So, as my parents and I got ready, they were both baffled by his sudden death, because he has been doing so well lately, both of them have had great conversations with him when they've visited, saw good improvement in his mental health since getting rid of all the drugs out of him from surgery. (Apparently anesthesia does wacky things to older people, he was hallucinating a lot after the surgery.) So anyways, it was kindof shocking that all of the sudden he was gone.

My parents were both mostly in a state of shock. I began grieving right away. Mostly out of guilt. I was planning on visiting him the next day. I'm not good with hospitals, and so I'd pretty much been procrastinating on going up there. I had had a busy week, and the only other day I could've gone was the Monday before all this. So I felt pretty awful that I hadn't taken the opportunities I had been given to go and see him. Also, before his surgery we had to remove personal items, like his watch and his wedding ring. I volunteered to hold on to his wedding ring, and wore it on my index finger to also serve as a reminder to pray for him. But of course because of his age and the situation, none of us were that optimistic that he'd survive the operation. So, in light of his awesome recovery, I felt especially bad that I had not gotten his ring back to him before this.

So these were the emotions welling up inside me as I tearfully and quietly got into the car and rode over to the hospital for whatever they needed the family to do. I was internally praying that somehow God would fix it. That somehow he'd give me that one more day, so I could see him like I intended. I just needed Friday, and God took him on Thursday. There is such regret in that - in being a day late, especially when it's because of selfishness.

About halfway there, my dad got a call on his cell phone. All my mom and I heard were "Uh huh", "Ok", "That's ok", "Alright" - kind of responses from my dad. When he hung up, he said, "That was the rehab center, Dad's alive, they made a mistake." Of course my mom and I just looked at him like he was crazy, "What?!" Dad said, "Apparently there was a mixup with the charts and they sent Dad's paperwork with someone else!" So as we waited for Dad to get more information out of the hospital, on the phone, we sat in stunned silence.

We decided to go to the rehab center just to be sure. When we got to the nurses' station everyone was in a frenzy, talking on the phone, looking through charts. When what seemed to be the head nurse on duty looked up and acknowledged us, my mom said pointedly, "We're the Young family."

So she began to recount how the other nurse involved had been handed the wrong chart. He only works there once every like 6 months. So he had no way of knowing that the chart didn't belong with the deceased patient. He followed procedure and called the family of the patient whose chart he held. Somehow, in the midst of all that they figured out the the chart belonged to a patient in a different room. Had checked on my grandfather, who was sleeping peacefully, perfectly alive and well!

The male nurse, who was taking the fall for all of this, was somewhere between tears and laughter. It seemed as though he had already done his share of both. We were in that same place. But both of them kept apologizing profusely, knowing the emotional rollercoaster they had just put us on.

When we got in the car, I said, "This would be a great "Wanna Get Away" commercial. Is it Southwest Airlines who does those? Can't you imagine the nurse going through all the standard procedures of notifying a family that there loved one has died, and then the end scene is him walking into the correct room, and seeing that patient sleeping peacefully, fully alive! Looking down at the chart with a horrified expression, and then "Wanna Get Away?" appears!

Well, good commercial material or not, it's an absolutely true story! Talk about crazy! But awesome at the same time. Because though I didn't expect it, God gave me a second chance to spend time with my grandpa. And to realize that I don't know the day or the hour that will be his last, so I need to take ahold of every opportunity to spend time with him. He's my last grandparent alive, so I better treasure these moments.