My Deepest Hope is that We Will Be Reunited - by Pat Crowe (Kim's mom)
When Kim was born in 1964, we were told she wouldn't live beyond her first year. At that time the medical field knew practically nothing about Turner syndrome (TS) and she was diagnosed with a “fatal” chromosomal abnormality. I was only 19 years old, and trusting her doctors, spent the first year of her life waiting for her to stop breathing. I was also told that she might be so mentally deficient that she might have to be institutionalized.
But, lo and behold, she beat all the odds the doctors predicted. Kim grew and thrived! Interestingly, our "mentally defective" daughter, of our 3 children, was our one college graduate!
Because she was unable to have children, I worried she might not find a husband interested in marrying her. How wrong I was! She and Dan fell in love and were happily married for 30 years. Kim became a psychiatric technician, such a challenging career, but she always wanted to have a "secure" job. After retirement, her hope was to be able to travel with her husband and enjoy this newest time of their lives together.
Tragically, one day in February of 2023, she came home from a parttime job in the medical field only to find that the love of her life had died in bed. Though she was completely crushed, our strong and determined daughter somehow pulled herself together and every day would push through her grief. Unfortunately, it finally took a huge toll on her. In mid-July, I received a call saying she was having heart palpitations and felt she needed to be checked out at the closest hospital that had an excellent cardiac unit. I offered to pick her up and drive her to the hospital, but our independent daughter said she would be just fine to drive herself.
I must admit the trauma of what was going on with her has left a partial blank in my memory of what exactly ensued for the next 2 days. It was decided she needed more cardiac care than our local hospital could provide, so a middle-of-the-night call let me know she was being transferred to UCLA in Los Angeles. Because we received calls that Kim's condition was far more serious than any of us expected, our family immediately headed from our California Central Coast homes down south to UCLA where she was being transferred. My memory is that I received notice that our beloved daughter had "coded" in the ambulance for 4 to 5 minutes on her way to UCLA. What I didn't fully understand at that time was that with her heart having stopped, it deprived her brain of oxygen. It wasn't until we arrived at UCLA that the dire prognosis became completely clear to me.
The loving, incredibly professional care Kim received at UCLA was beyond anything our family could have expected, so when we were told the lack of oxygen she'd experienced created such a dire situation that she no longer had brain function, I as her mom made that hardest decision of my life. Kim could either have been kept alive indefinitely hooked up to life support machines, or, I as her mom, could give my permission to disconnect all life support. I had brought my precious child into this world, and I knew it was up to me to tell the doctors to disconnect Kim from all the machinery that was keeping her alive.
Thankfully, every family member who was with me at UCLA agreed that it was MY decision to make and with that, I gave my permission to disconnect Kim from life support. I leaned over her hospital bed, kissed her cheek, and told her how much I loved her. My beloved daughter passed away at 2:02 p.m. on July 4th, 2024. Although I'm not a religious person, I choose to believe that my daughter and her beloved husband are somehow reunited in another realm of existence. As I go through all the various stages of grief, that is the one thought that brings me comfort.
Recently, I saw a photo that perfectly exemplified how I feel. There were two hearts. One was broken in half and the second one was sewn up with large stitches, yet the scar was still so obvious. The symbolism was simply that we DO heal after such a tragic loss, but we're never completely the same. That's precisely how I feel. Kim will always be a part of who I was and who I am today. My deepest hope is that when it's time for me to leave this world, the two of us will somehow be reunited, simply in another realm of existence.
