The Saint of Lost Things: An Essay Written for Townsend Press

Photography and Writing by Angela Bracero

The Voice

      The first time I hear the voice, I am about four years old.  I have just taken off my life jacket, jumped into a hot tub, and grossly miscalculated its depth.  The bubbly blue water rises above my head as my body sinks down to the bottom.  I push my feet off the surface and kick my legs in an attempt to rise up and break the water’s surface, but I discover that I’m too short to reach the top.  Again, I sink, again, I try my hardest to reach the top but fall short.  I am suddenly very aware of my own heartbeat pounding inside my head and the hot, chlorinated water burning my eyes.  Panic rises in my chest, as I try again and again to reach the surface.  It is then that I hear the voice.  It is calm and soothing.  “Angela, relax.  Your mother is coming,” the voice tells me.  I listen to this voice.  I stop struggling and kicking, and my small body relaxes.  I instinctively know that I can trust and all I need to do is wait.  “Stay calm,” it says again.  Seconds later, my mother’s hand reaches down and pulls me out of the water.

       I hear the voice again many years later.  I am in college and driving by the university on a sunny spring day.  A friend and I sit in the car chatting and laughing.  The voice suddenly interrupts my mind mid-thought.  It is like someone has suddenly switched a radio station to a different channel inside my head.  The voice sounds urgent this time.  “Angela, slow down!” it commands.  My eyes immediately flick to the odometer on my car.  I’m driving the speed limit, but I don’t question, I listen.  My foot taps the brake lightly as I continue on.  Seconds later, a ball bounces into the street followed by a little boy.  Had I not listened to voice, I don’t think I would have been able to stop in time.

      The third time I hear the voice, it’s July 2018.  I have the day off from my job teaching at a non-profit in the city.  My little daughter Maya and I are shopping in Target.  I am in the middle of the produce section trying to decide what kind of salad to buy for dinner when the voice says, “Angela, your mother needs you.”  When I hear the voice this time, the hair on the back of my neck stands up and deep in my gut I know something is very wrong.  I ditch the shopping cart and quickly make my way out to the car with Maya.  I drive the ten minutes to my mother’s house while dialing her number over and over.  Not long after, I find her laying on the floor of her bedroom.  She is conscious but not making sense.  I call for an ambulance and later find out that my mom has suffered a massive stroke.  

      If you had asked me when I was a young child who the voice belonged to, I might have said it was an angel.  If you had asked me the same question in college during my atheist years, I might have shrugged and said, “I don’t know, just a lucky coincidence.”  If you ask me now who I think the voice belongs to, after thinking about all the times it has come to me during my times of need,  I’ll tell you that I believe the voice belongs to god.

The Saint of Lost Things

      "If you lose something you can always count on St. Anthony to help you,” my mother tells me one day when I am about seven years old.  I am sitting on the foot of her bed, rummaging through an old jewelry box filled with costume jewelry, photos, and a small plastic statue of St. Anthony.  

“How does he help?” I ask running my fingers over the worn out plastic.

“You have to ask him for help,” says my mother.  “You sit quietly and pray to him.  You ask him to help you find what you’ve lost.  My aunt Maria used to say that if you bury him upside down in the garden, he will help you faster.”  I laugh at this idea.  

      Now, I am sitting in the ICU at St. Anthony’s Hospital praying to St. Anthony himself to help bring my mother back to us.  Two blood clots have lodged themselves in my mother’s brain; another one made its way up to her lungs and has caused her to be put on life support.  A neurologist shows me scans of her battered brain.  “You see this dark spot right here? That’s the blood clot,” the neurologist tells me.  When I ask the doctor about her chances of survival, she tell me that it doesn’t look good and that we should get our affairs in order.  I go every day after work, sit by her side, and listen to the humming and whirring of all the machines she is hooked up to.  

      Days later, the doctor decides that it’s time for them to try taking my mom off life support to see if she can breathe on her own.  It is just me and a family friend in the hospital room.  I am nervous, if she can’t breath on her own, they’ll have to intubate her again.  If she goes into cardiac arrest, I have legally decided to let my mother go with god with a DNR.  The doctor comes in and pulls a long tube out of my mother’s mouth, she coughs and gags but she breathes.  Later in the afternoon, a nurse comes in to check her vitals.  The nurse asks her questions, “Do you know where you are? Your name? Your age? Do you know what year it is? Do you know who the current president is?  My mom can only answer half the questions correctly.  We discover later that she cannot properly swallow and the decision about whether or not to introduce a feeding tube is suddenly put on my shoulders.  

      "Do you think your mom would want a feeding tube?” a palliative care doctor asks me.  I don’t know what to say at first.  Part of me thinks that my mom would never have wanted to live with a feeding tube, but then I think back to that day in Target.  If my mom was meant to go with god that day, then I believe she would have gone, but she didn’t. The voice spoke to me and told me she needed me.  It wasn’t her time yet, and god made sure of it that day.  

“We’re going to go with the tube,” I tell the doctor firmly.  “I haven’t’ lost her yet.”

The Jesus, the Buddha, the Koran, the Hindus, and the Chakras

      Almost seven years ago, I accepted a teaching position at a non-profit organization that provides outreach and resources to single parent homeless families.  The work I do is difficult but also very rewarding.  Since I was a young child, I have felt a calling to work with the homeless.  About two years into my job, a very dark and heavy depression crept into my life.  I was able to go to work, perform well, and function.  However, it soon became like I had two people living inside me.  One person was a teacher who had it together, someone who was able to advocate for students and families and stand up to adversity head on.  After work however, I was a mess.  My evenings were riddled with anxiety and unwanted dark thoughts.  It was like there was a demon living in my head, playing with my brain.  When it got to the point where I was waking up every morning with suicidal thoughts, I knew I had to do something or I was going to drown again, and this time no one would be there to pull me out.  I knew I had to help myself.   I first considered going to the doctor and getting antidepressants but instead, I had a strange desire to go to church.  I decided that maybe I needed to reconnect with god.  I wasn’t raised in a particularly religious home, but for some reason I felt like my lack of connection with the divine was causing me to feel so lost.  

      My mother-in-law was pleased with my desire to attend church. She promptly bought me a bible and invited me to her own church for Sunday services.  It was large and crowded and the building looked new.  I sat in the shiny pews and listened to the pastor preach for a couple Sundays in a row.  However, his words did not resonate with me.  Many of his sermons were centered around fear.  Fear of making god angry.  Fear of the devil.  Fear of those who love differently.  Fear of not being allowed to enter heaven and instead roasting in the fiery pits of hell for all eternity.  I decided I had enough fear in my life and went in search of something else.

      At my brother-in-law’s suggestion, I started to attend services at a different church near the city.  They held Tuesday night services in an old concert venue in Denver called The Gothic.  The crowd at this church seemed different, almost hippyish.  We sat in this dark theatre that looked ready for a Modest Mouse Concert, and talked about Jesus and his kind heart.  There was no preaching about fear but instead the pastor had sermons that centered around topics like: love and forgiveness, justice and prudence.  He spoke of serving the poor and the sick. He talked about opening our arms to refugees and those in need of shelter and unconditional love.  He didn’t scorn those who love differently, but instead invited them with open arms.

       I liked this church but I had to stop going.  Every time the pastor preached about helping the poor, and every time the band sang about Jesus and his tender soul, I would cry.  For some reason, all the hurt and sadness I take off other people’s shoulders and put on my own would come pouring right out without my wanting it to.  I prefer to do my mourning for humanity in private.  I became too embarrassed to go, and I was too embarrassed to explain. I however did feel a little closer to god, and the depression eased up a bit.

      Next, I decided to look for God in other places and religions.  I went to the library and checked out books.  I read about Buddha and Buddhism.  I read quotes that resonated with me like: “In the end, only three things matter: how gently you loved, how gently you lived, and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you.”  I checked out a book called “Feeding your Demons” written by a Tibetan Buddhist nun.  The book helps guide people in the process of facing and healing inner conflict using ancient Tibetan wisdom and mediation practices.  It is after I start meditating, that my depression begins to fade, still though; I searched for more pieces of god.

       I find god and words that resonate with me as I read the Koran.  “Humanity is but a single brotherhood: So make peace with your brethren,” I read one day.  The Hindus, I learn, believe in karma and reincarnation and this resonates with me because I know I have been a teacher before, many times before.  One day while visiting a metaphysical bookstore, I learn about the chakras.  The chakras are believed to be seven energy points found in specific places in the body.  Each chakra has a corresponding sound, color, and vibration.  After my mother’s stroke, and once I realized that she would never be the same again, I felt a deep pain for days within my stomach and chest, the chakra points where the esoteric religions believe we store our most painful hurts and grief.  

Little by little, my brain begins to heal.  Little by little, my mother’s brain begins to heal.  Slowly, we both begin to look at the world differently.  We look at god differently, and we both begin to question our lives and our purpose for being here. 

The Changeling 

      Hundreds of years ago, people believed in “changelings.”  Various cultures spoke of malevolent creatures that had the power to snatch away a loved one and leave a changeling in its place.  The changeling looked like the kidnapped adult or child but loved ones could tell the difference.   This was a time before humans had the capabilities to explain something like an incurred stroke or a child born with a disability.  I’m sure this folklore was used to explain ailments like late on-set mental illnesses or possibly autism.  All I know, is that I can understand where people are coming from.

      It's October 2018.  Three months have passed since my mother’s brain injury and she is residing full time in a care facility about thirty minutes away from my apartment.  Every other day, Maya and I drive to the facility to spend time with her.  Most evenings we arrive in time for dinner.  We sit amongst the other residents and staff; my mother is 65 years old and looks to be the youngest occupant.  She also seems to be the only person who receives regular visitors.  

We are seated in the dining hall waiting for dinner to be served.  My mother and I are sharing a plate of shrimp cocktail and Maya wanders around the dining hall visiting with the residents.  

“I can’t believe the kids are almost out on summer break,” my mom comments.

“Ma, it’s October the kids have about seven months to go.”  She furrows her brow in confusion.

“No, it’s summer,” she insists.  I jut my chin towards a paper pumpkin tapped up on the window.

“Look there’s a pumpkin, it’s autumn now, not summer.”  My mother’s expression changes from confusion to anger.  “No, it’s summer Angela!”  

“Okay Ma, it’s summer,” I say with a sigh.  By now, I’m somewhat used to conversations like this. In a nutshell, the stroke has fried her poor brain.  My mother the day before the stroke and my mother the day after are two very different people.  The day before the stroke, my mom was a retired schoolteacher who was living independently and alone in the house of my childhood.  Now though, she requires lots of care to help her meet even her most basic needs.  She has a hard time with recognizing and understanding seasons and even the time of day.  When I visit her after work, she insists it’s breakfast time, even though I explain the school day has ended and we are going to eat dinner.  Walking and moving has become difficult so she spends most of her day in a wheel chair.  The vision in her left eye is shot, and she often auditory hallucinates.  The nurses tell me that she wanders the halls and sometimes goes into other resident’s bedrooms in search of me and Maya, insisting that she can hear our voices.  One day she tells me Maya comes to visit her at night in her bedroom and she uses a special little door in the wall, and I just nod and tell her how nice.  

For me, it’s like a changeling has snatched my mother away and left a strange doppelganger in her place.  She looks like my mom, but she doesn’t feel like my mom.  It’s a strange concept to wrap my head around.  For a few minutes, we sit and people watch.  Most of the residents are sitting contently at their tables.  There is an elderly gentleman whose wandering around the dining hall crying.  He wanders over to my table and whispers, “just tell me what to do, please just tell me what to do,” tears well up in his watery blue eyes and spill down his cheeks.  I spend a few minutes holding his hand, and I can tell that like my mother, he’s just “not quite there anymore”.  One of the caregivers comes over and gently leads him back to his table. There’s a woman sitting a few feet away and my mom and I listen to her complain about her soup.  “It’s too cold!” she snaps at one of the caregivers.  “I ordered chicken noodle not tomato, why can’t any of you do your damn jobs right!” she shouts.  My mother and I lock eyes.  “Cantankerous,” she says with a sly smile and we both giggle.  Just like old times.

After dinner, I wheel my mother into the recreation room.  I asked permission earlier in the week to host and facilitate a monster movie night.  I Amazon Primed a black and white version of Frankenstein, along with some pumpkin balloons, black streamers, popcorn balls, and other party favors.  The residents gather in the rec room while I decorate.  My daughter wanders over and hands my mom a ring in the shape of a skeleton.  “I don’t want that,” she tells her.  “Too scary.”   I start the movie and everyone settles in with treats in hand.  A few minutes into the film, I notice my mom has wandered away.  I find her down the hall sitting in front of a closed door that belongs to a bedroom of one of the residents.  

“Mom, what are you doing?” I ask gently.

“Sitting here, what does it look like,” she replies.

“Touché, but don’t you want to come watch the movie with us?”  She shakes her head.

“No, it’s too scary.”

“You used to love this movie and Halloween.”  She turns to me with a confused expression.

“I did?”  I nod my head.  “No, I want to sit here.  Leave me alone.”

“Mom, you can’t sit in front of someone’s door like this.  It’s creepy.”

“I said, leave me alone!” she shouts.  

“Okay, okay,” I tell her.  I kiss the top of her head and say goodbye.

       I grab Maya and head out into the crisp, autumn night.  I leave my mom sitting in front of the closed door, and drive home wondering if it’s possible to have a piece of your soul detach from your body and fly away.  If this can happen, where does the missing part go?  Back to god? Does it float around in the cosmos waiting for the rest of you to join?  Most of the ride home though, I spend time trying to forget that I too have experienced the changeling.

The Tithing of the Sacred Heart

      So it’s winter, and I’m sitting in a financial seminar and we’re talking about earning and saving, spending and flowing.  Some people talk about visualizations and vision boards and others speak of receiving “gifts from god” for helping other.  This is the first time I ever hear the word “tithing.”

“Have you ever heard of this term before?” I ask the woman sitting next to me.

“Of course!” she says to me with a smile. “It’s the holy practice of giving and receiving.”

“Hmmm,” I reply while Googling the definition on my phone. Tithing comes from the word Tithe. Old English. In a nutshell, it is 1/10 of money that is paid to a religious organization or it can be treated like a mandatory governmental tax. I scroll through a few more pages and read that this practice does in fact have some religious and ritualistic elements to it.

“I have no problem giving my money to those who need it, my problem is generating enough money in the first place,” I say casually.

“Well, let me ask you this, have you received Jesus yet?”  Her question catches me off guard.

“Um, err, no,” is all I can say.  She smiles again at me, there’s sympathy in her eyes. She digs in her purse for a second and then hands me a business card.  “Give me a call; I’d like to invite you to our church.  Until you receive Christ, you’ll never be able to successfully tithe.  You need god to be happy.” Her words produce an uncomfortable feeling deep within me.  Then the seminar ends, and we all go our separate ways and I drive home not quite sure what it is I’m feeling.  Jesus has a special place in my heart and all, but is one person and one religion the answer to financial well-being? What is god exactly anyways?

“What do you think the answer is?” asks the voice suddenly.  Yes, the voice is still around, and sometimes it likes to whisper thoughts and ideas in my head when I feel lost at sea in my own emotions.

“The answer to what?” I ask, as if I don’t know.

“What do you think god is?” the voice says patiently.  I have to think deeply for a few minutes.

“I don’t think god is necessarily a deity you’re supposed to devote yourself to.  I think god is seeing the holy in yourself and in your fellow man, and devoting yourself to serving others.”  The voice is quiet for several minutes.  

“Where have you seen god?”

“A couple weeks ago my mom had an appointment and I think a week prior to that she’d had another mini stroke.  I was noticing some of the post-injury symptoms.  We arrived at the hospital and she was having a very difficult time standing and pivoting her body into her wheel chair.  I was starting to feel a little stressed out that I wasn’t strong enough to lift her into her chair.  I asked god to please help me.  I went inside the office and asked if someone could assist me in helping my mother get into her wheel chair.  Medical assistants, like nurses, really are angels.  The woman who came to my rescue was very tall and strong.  She bent down and instructed my mom to wrap her arms around her.  Then, like my mom weighed nothing, she picked her up and hoisted her into the air.  For a split second, these two complete strangers were standing there pressed heart chakra to heart chakra in an embrace, and for that split second, I can see a piece of god.  This woman has no idea how much she’s helped me.”  

“Where else do you see god?” the voice presses on.

“When you give a homeless stranger your spare change and the breakfast burrito you bought for yourself, because you have a job waiting for you and something about seeing someone walking around with their whole life in a shopping cart just hurts your heart.”

“Indeed.”  

For a few minutes the voice and I sit in silence as I drive home, the sun begins to slip under the Rocky Mountains leaving a pale pink glow.  Back in my home I have a bible I keep tucked in my bookshelf, and inside is a laminated picture of Jesus.  The card belonged to my grandmother who was Catholic, there’s a Spanish version of The Lord’s Prayer printed in the back.  I can visualize the picture very clearly; Jesus in a red and blue robe, in the center of his chest sits his exposed heart, wrapped in a crown of sharp thorns and a spout of flames shooting out the top.  His left hand points to his flaming center. There’s schools and charities, parishes and feasts named after the sacred heart.  When we meet someone who is greedy and cruel we might describe their heart as cold.  You can’t love a stranger, your friends, your family, or yourself fully if you don’t have an open heart.  Yet, here is Jesus walking around with his heart outside his body, and I think to get to the point when you can show love to a homeless stranger, the "bad kids" at the school you teach at, you have to have an open heart, even if it means you make yourself vulnerable to heartache. It's dark when I pull up to my house, and I might not be rich, or fully understand tithing, or fully understand what god is.  I may not be happy all the time, but I have something cosmic that watches over me, and people who I love most in this world waiting for me inside, and I can see pieces of god in that too.

Fin

Drowning

My mother graduated from her long career as a school teacher the same year that I graduated college and started my own teaching career.  That was in 2010.  Eight years have gone by, and at some point during these eight years, my mother started to drown.

They say drowning is silent and it is, because I can’t tell you exactly when it started to happen, but it did.  She was drowning in too much free time and too many hours spent watching TV. She was drowning in anxiety.  She was drowning in old classroom materials and books, knick-knacks and trinkets, old video and cassette tapes, religious icons, and toiletries.   My mom right before her stroke was drowning in piles of dirty clothes and old food.  As I purged and cleaned her house out yesterday, I find my mom was drowning in boxes of sleeping pills and old expired prescriptions. My mom was drowning in her own depressions and every time I tried to hold my hand out to her and offer to help pull her out, she had refused, until refusing was no longer an option and she had no choice but to let me pull her back up to the surface. After a few sweaty hours of work, I have to leave my mom’s house for awhile. I have to leave behind the piles of things she bought in hopes that they’d bring her happiness.

They say grief hits in waves.  It does.  Some days I feel like I am drowning in our own collective sadness.

Saturday Demons

I actually wrote this last Saturday but didn't get around to doing anything with it until now...

It’s Saturday, late in the afternoon, and I’m on my way to the hospital to see my mother. The highway is empty and the sky cloudy and gray. I cruise down the freeway and make my way on to the highway exit. I can see the hospital in the distance. I stop at a red light and spot a man in a black t-shirt pan handling at the intersection up ahead. From where I’m sitting, I can’t read the sign he’s holding very well but I see the word PTSD written in heavy black marker. I pull a wad of ones out of my wallet and roll the window down. I tap the horn of my car lightly to get attention. He sees me and comes over.

“Thank you! Thank you!” he tells me as I hand him the cash. He stares at me through blood shot blue eyes. He leans in close to me, but I don’t back away.  His energy is not malicious, but I can feel the loneliness and need for human contact.  He leans in a little closer and in about thirty seconds he proceeds word vomit his life story to me.  Strangers and people in general have a tendency to do this to me, so I’m used to it.  There is so much information he’s trying to get out at once that I can’t quite comprehend everything he’s saying, but I piece together some of his story.  Something about the military, the war, the Middle East, something about prisoners and camps. Something about not sleeping anymore and a divorce. He smiles at Maya through the window. “How old?” He asks.

“She’s two,” I reply.

 “I have a six year old daughter,” he tells me. “I’m trying to do right by her I promise you I’m trying,” he tells me. I can feel this guy’s sadness and his grief, he makes my stomach ache a little bit.  I hold my hand out to him through my window, palm up. He takes it immediately and squeezes it, the way I wish my mother would when I hold a hand out to her.  He goes to pull his hand away but I hold it tighter. He stares at me in surprise. His grip loosens for a moment but then he holds on tighter too. I can see the haunted soldier in his blue eyes, I can glimpse a bit of his demons, and he knows I can too.

“I’m sorry you’re having a hard time” I tell him.  It’s a phrase I use with my preschoolers, but it also seems to be effective with adults.  I don’t know what else to say to him, so for a few seconds we don’t say anything at all.

 Then the light turns green.  I release my grip.  I stare at this dirty jeans and holy black Misfits t-shirt and wish I had more than a few wrinkly one dollar bills to give him.

“I have to go,” I tell him.  He makes the sign of the cross and waves at Maya.  I step on the accelerator and we are out of each other’s lives as fast as we entered.

The Weight of Emotions

My mother had a stroke recently, and the repercussions of this brain injury have rocked my world to the core, as our relationship has been turned upside down.  She is now the child.  I am now the parent.  Today is August 9^th and she is trying to argue with me that it’s Christmas Eve.  She can’t tell the nurse if  my students are big or small, but she tells her that she taught English as a Second Language for many years.  She’s shocked when I inform the nurse that she can speak Spanish.  “I can?” she asks me with a furrowed brow. Traumatic brain injuries are very tricky.

Seeing the deterioration of my mother has been an emotional trauma in itself.  If I could reflect how I feel on the inside on my outside, I’d look like I spent a few rounds in the ring with a prize winning boxing champ.  I feel like I got my emotional ass handed to me.  I spent the first two week hiding from my two-year-old every time I felt like crying.  I’d get her situated on the couch with a package of gummies and Netflix and then escape to the bathroom to fall apart for a few minutes, before sucking it up and going back out to pretend that everything is fine.  Everything is not fine.  Maybe it simply took time to come to that conclusion, but my attitude towards showing my emotions around my young daughter has definitely changed.

Two weeks ago I would have said the I just wanted her to see me be strong, to know that everything is okay, and that the world isn’t going to fall apart.  You want to know what I’ve learned in two weeks?  That yes, your world can fall apart, but at a rate in which you can pick up the pieces and put them back together again.  I’m her mom, and even though I’m recovering from my own trauma, I haven’t let her world fall apart. 

Emotions are a form of energy.  They are energy in motion, and they are not meant to stay stuck in us.  We have to acknowledge their presence, receive the message they are trying to deliver, feel the message, and then let it go.  So now, when I feel like crying, I do.  When she stares at me with toddler concern, I tell her the truth.  “Mommy feels sad right now, can I have a hug?” Sometimes she obliges and gives me a tender hug, and sometimes she seems unconcerned and indifferent to my sadness.  That’s okay, if she’s content then the kid is doing okay, and that's what matters most to me.  Don’t hide your emotions from your children.  Show them that you can be strong and vulnerable all at the same time.  They love you unconditionally and to them, you are the world, and sometimes the world can be a sad place to be in, but we all have the power to simply get through it.

Code Blue

August 2018

I’m sitting by my mother’s bedside when a voice breaks out through the hospital speakers and says.

                “Code Blue, Room 511…Code Blue.” I've never heard them announce a Code Blue before.  We are on the third floor, my eyes travel upwards towards the ceiling.  I don’t know what Code Blue means, but I can imagine it means someone has suddenly fallen close to death.  My mom stares at me, and then she mimics me, and she too stares at the ceiling.  My toddler Maya then copies both of us and throws he head back, staring intently at the ceiling tiles.  I suddenly realize I am probably the only one who cognitively understands what a Code Blue might mean.  I wonder if someone two floor up is about to die.  I wonder if they’re scared, or if they’re ready.  My daughter hands my mother a fake, plastic cell phone and it takes a few tries, but she manages to open it and pretends to hold it to her ear.  Maya giggles.  We sit in silence for a few minutes and then the voice on the speaker returns and says, “Code Blue canceled.”  I let out a sigh of relief. 

                My mother then suddenly looks at me wide-eyed.  She does it a lot, it’s a new mannerism I’m still getting used to.  She asks me a question.  It takes three tries before I understand. 

“You want your purse I ask?”  She nods her head, and I go to the closet and then bring it to her.  I open it up and set it on her lap.  She just stares at it.  Long seconds tick by.  “What are you looking for?” I ask gently.  “Your wallet?”  She nods at me with her wide-eyed stare again.  I pull out her wallet and then take her driver’s license from the bill fold.  “You want to look at this?”  I ask holding it out to her.  She glances it and then pushes my hand away.

“No!” she says sharply.  I nod and put it away.  I hand her the wallet and she just stares.  I watch her eyes move back and forth very quickly.  I know her brain is trying to retrieve information, it’s trying to re-route itself past damaged tissue.  My heart hurts a little watching her, watching her struggle, watching her try to remember things she can’t.  Eventually I put the purse away, and I ask my mom if she is sleeping okay at night.

“Yeah, I sleep great with the dogs,” she tells me.  I nod and smile.  She’s talking about her dogs who are staying currently at my sister’s house.  My mom stares at me for a long moment.  Sometimes it’s like she’s seeing me for the first time, and I wish I could know what she’s thinking.  Her eyes widen, and she suddenly turns her head away from me, she even skootches a little bit away.  I reach my hand out and rest it on her shoulder, “Love you ma,” I whisper.  She doesn’t respond. 

The Saint of Lost Things

St. Anthony is my friend, and I’ve come to known him well this past week.  He is the patron saint of lost things, which is almost fitting since the intensive care unit is where many people experience loss.  I haven’t lost my mother exactly, since she was brought in, St. Anthony and modern medicine have been looking out for her.  Stroke and blood clots have been kept at bay.  There’s been a variety of breathing equipment, a CT scan, MRI, an umbrella in an artery, and something about a bubble and her heart, the medical terminology has begun to blur.  While my mother’s stroke was “out of the blue,” the reality is, my mom had started to deteriorate at a frighteningly rapid pace over the past two years.  She had lost interest in things that once made her happy, she struggled to care for the large house she insisted on residing in alone, and I noticed that her ability to simply care for herself had begun to decline.  The two weeks leading up to her stroke had been particularly worrisome.  She missed three flights to Albany on three separate occasions, with each flight missed my anxiety heightened, because deep down I knew two things: something was wrong, and getting my mom to admit and receive the help she needed would be like pulling teeth, it already had been the few times I tried to gently broach the subject. I knew at some point I was going to need to face reality, but I did what most humans do when they aren’t ready to, I avoided it.  My mother is only 64, I’m only 32, and I am not ready for the decent of my mother’s mental and physical health, but like a buried splinter, the truth finally worked its way out.

There are only three things that cannot be hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.  I think I saw that on an artsy plaque at Hobby Lobby, it’s a Buddhist quote, and it’s a piece of sagely wisdom that’s been rattling around in my brain since my days have become absorbed by long hospital visits.  Today, after spending a few hours by her bedside, the doctor decided it was time to try taking my mom off life supporting breathing machines and see if she could manage with an oxygen mask.  The procedure was a success and little by little I’m watching this tough lady crawl away from the grim reaper.  As I sat next to her, wiping her face with a damp wash cloth an idea suddenly hit me.  It was more like reality hitting. You see, the esoteric religions believe that we have seven chakras, seven energy points in our body.  They believe that we hold our grief and emotional pain in the solar-plexus chakra in our stomach, and in our heart chakra which corresponds with lungs and chest.  As I gently smoothed back strains of grey hair I suddenly realized that even if my mom pulls through, even if she recovers, she won’t ever be the same and she honestly hasn’t been for a long time.  That sudden revelation was like a punch, and whether you believe in chakras or not, I felt that pain deep in my chest, down in my stomach, deep down to the place where I have stored all my old hurts.  As I literally doubled over, I came to understand that a part of my mother, the part that was with me when I was younger had to some degree died.  There was a point in time when my mother had hit her peak and had begun her decent towards the end of the cycle of life, and I didn’t notice when it had happened.  All of this rocked my damn world. 

Tonight I am having what could be referred to as a “dark night of soul.”  It’s one of those nights when you have to flush out all that buried hurt and grieve your losses and heart breaks.  My boss lost her mom just a few weeks ago, and I know if anyone knows the pain I’m feeling tonight, it’s Maggie.  We text, and I cry, and in the end she leaves me with words that calm me down a little bit.  “The only thing you can do is love her and be here for her journey,” she tells me.  When she says, “you miss the person they were, the person you hoped for them to be longer.” I lose it.  She gets it, and now I understand the pain she was going through herself, the pain every person who loves there parent will also feel.  It’s okay to fall apart sometimes, to hit the bottom, because once you’re there the only other direction to go is up.  Tonight I will grieve the loss of the mom that I loved, and little by little I’ll accept that our journey together is going to come to an end sooner rather than later.  Until that day comes, I’ll dig deep for the grit that lives deep within me, it’s the grit and perseverance that’s been passed down to me from my mom and grandmother, it lives in my DNA, and I know that I’ll get through this, and so will my mom.  “I’m not scared to die,” she told me a few weeks ago when we were having a casual conversation at her favorite Greek diner.  “When it’s time to go to god, it’s time to,” she had said matter of fact while sipping her coffee, and I know she’s right.  When she’s ready, I’ll be ready, and I like to think that maybe St. Anthony, the saint who watched over the sick and poor, will go to my mother’s side when she’s ready. He’ll smile his kind smile and help my mom walk home.

An Article About CHIP

What the CHIP is Going On?

Angela Bracero
Written in December of 2017

When I was about twenty-five years old, I felt the need to travel south for just one year.  I found myself a continent away in the giant metropolis that is Buenos Aires, Argentina.  It was during our stay in the city, when my ex-husband tripped and fell down the spiral staircase that led to our seventh-floor apartment.  The fell resulted in a twisted ankle that I thought warranted a trip to the hospital.  We sat in the tiny living room of our apartment trying to decide what to do, when our Uruguayan roommate Fernando consulted a worn out address book, and wrote a phone number down for me.  “Call this number, they’ll send a doctor,” he said handing me the slip of paper. 

             “A doctor will come here?” I asked quizzically. 

             “Of course,” replied Fernando

Feeling a bit skeptical, we called the number, gave our address, and we waited.   Sure enough, about a half hour later, a young doctor arrived on a motorcycle, dressed in white scrubs and carrying a black leather medical bag.  He gently examined the injured ankle, wrapped it up, and prescribed ibuprofen for the pain.  We sighed with relief and I can’t tell you for sure how many Argentine pesos we paid him, but it equated to something like fifteen dollars.

I later marveled about how convenient and stress-free it was to be able to receive medical care from your own home.  The idea of a “house-call doctor” made me think of “Little House on the Prairie times.”  The idea seemed both brilliant but for some reason antiquated.  The closest thing we had back home to quick but efficient medical care was The Little Clinic in our neighborhood grocery store.

“Does the home-doctor charge about the same price for everyone?” I asked Fernando later that evening.

              “Depends on your insurance,” he replied, “a lot of times it’s free.”

              “And if you don’t have insurance?” I inquired again.

              “Then you pay, but like you saw, it wasn’t much.”

              “What about if you’re too poor to pay?”

                Fernando shrugged his shoulders and smiled, “then you simply don’t pay.”

             “I wonder why we can’t have that back home?” I replied.  Those words are still ringing in my ears seven years later.

I am not in my twenties anymore.  I am not a free-spirited globetrotter, with the privilege of being on my parent’s insurance plan.  I haven’t felt anything close to free-spiritedness since I leveled up in the adult world, became a full-time teacher, and a mother to a toddler.  Back in December 2015, I was faced with the task of finding affordable health insurance for a baby due April 2016.  To be perfectly honest, it was my first foray into the complicated and ugly world of health insurance.  Since resettling back in the US from my year of Latin American adventures, I settled into a teaching job at an incredible Denver non-profit that provides its employees with quality health care benefits.  They cover a large portion of the cost for each employee, and the care we’ve received has always been quality.  However, they don’t have the funds to cover health insurance for employee dependents.  When I discovered that adding a baby to my health plan would cost me an extra $300 a month, I understood why.  There are many employees in our non-profit that have children, especially in our learning center, covering all employee dependents at $300 each dependent a month, could cost around $136,000 a year.

   By January, I had started to get very nervous.  I had already looked into Medicaid, but salary wise, I did not meet the requirements.  I simply make too much.  My partner’s insurance plan had a similar price for adding a dependent.  It wasn’t until about a month later, while watching a commercial ad at a local movie theatre, did I first hear about the Children’s Health Plan Plus, better known as CHP+.  In retrospect it’s crazy that I had never heard of its existence since it’s been around since 1997, but everything in life happens in divine time.  I immediately looked into the program and discovered that it’s designed to meet the needs of working families who don’t financially qualify for Medicaid, but can’t afford the exorbitant cost of private health insurance.  Better known as “Us Middle Folk.”  To date, there are about 75,000 children and 800 pregnant mothers who use CHP+ in Colorado.  My own daughter is included.   I enrolled my baby in the program when she was three days old.  For the past 18 months, I have paid a yearly fee, and have utilized the health insurance plan when taking my child for routine check-ups and to the dentist.  For 18 months, I got to breathe a sigh of relief and relish the fact that my child had quality health care that was within my budget.  For 18 months, the anxiety and worry I carry around about getting my child’s needs met was put to rest. 

            Then, on November 2, 2017, I received an automated text from CHP+ informing me that my daughter’s benefits would be ending January 31, 2018, unless congress passes a law to renew federal funding.  The anxiety that was laid to rest just 18 months ago crawled back up into my stomach. My first reaction was panic, “What am I going to do? Should I be shopping around for another option? There are no other options! Do I wait?” My anxiety got the best of me and I chatted online with a CHP+ representative.  The outcome of our conversation ended in a simple phrase, “we just have to wait and see…”

            This response did not quell my anxiety, in a way the uncertainty of the situation has caused it to worsen. It’s now always in the back of my mind. When something involves my kiddo, I take it personally, and I know I’m not the only parent losing sleep over this issue.  There are parents of 75,000 children wondering what to do.  There are about 800 pregnant women waiting too, and it hit me one day, during my solemn, winter dive home, I decided that on behalf of these thousands of people, I was going to find out what was going on.

In order to understand the history of CHIP, I am going to take you back to the 90s when the Children’s Health Insurance Program, better known as CHIP first started.  CHIP was passed by congress in 1997.  President Clinton’s failed proposal for comprehensive health care reform in 1993 (yes it’s been almost 25 years and we still haven’t figured out healthcare) led to the creation of CHIP five years later.  The insurance program was brought forth by Senator Orin Hatch, Edward Kennedy, and Hilary Clinton.  It ended up being the largest addition and expansion of taxpayer funded healthcare since the start of Medicaid back in 1965.  This new program started a sort of partnership amongst both US states and the federal government.  Using funding both from the government, and the state, Colorado created its own branch from CHIP and called it the Children’s Health Plan Plus, CHP+.  Currently, Colorado spends about $128 million on its CHP+ program.  Yes, that number sounds huge, but it is also 1.4% of the state’s $9 billion dollar budget.  All in all, if you break it all down, for every $100 the state of Colorado spends on CHP+ the federal government spends $88.  We call this a federal match.  To date, over 75,000 children and 800 pregnant women rely on this insurance program.  The highest numbers are seen in rural areas of Colorado.  CHP+ differs from Medicaid, as families are still responsible for paying enrollment premiums and out-of-pocket costs for medical services.  Remember, this insurance program supports working families.  The State of Colorado has seen a large increase in the cost of living.  Jobs in the education field, especially early childhood are both essential and low paying.  Many other teachers at the non-profit I work for have children on this plan.  Due to the rise of the cost of living in Colorado, the income and eligibility requirements were adjusted in 2009, and as a result, Colorado has seen a historically low number of uninsured children.

Since the birth of CHIP, debate about its funding has been brought forth to the political dinner table every two years.  In 2009, the program was extended to include migrant children living in the United States legally.  In 2010, the Affordable Care Act of the President Obama era provided additional financial support. The program was then supported by the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act aka MACRA, which increased the federal match to 88% and extended funding only through September 30, 2017.  Which brings us back to when I received the dark text message of November 2, 2017.

For the first time in 21 years Congress failed to fund a Health Program that serves nine-million children nationwide, a program that nearly eradicated un-insurance amongst American children.  We may have spent the last 21 years unable to come to a bipartisan agreement about the operation of health care in this country, but why is the health of this nation’s children not being made a priority? I can’t tell you for certain what is going on in congress because of the obvious, I’m a simple teacher in Denver. However, my investigation took me back to September 2017, almost four months ago. 

September was a hot month for Congress.  The main focus in September was the repealing of the Affordable Care Act created by President Obama.  The efforts were unsuccessful and it seems as though the expiration date for CHIP was not placed at the top of the political totem pole.  Congress who is made up of both Democrats and Republicans allowed the health plan to expire.  This means that Colorado stopped receiving the federal funding it needs to keep the program running and was forced to foot the bill.  It was forecasted that Colorado would have enough money to keep the program running until January. 

            I can’t say for sure how much money this country has, or how it should be spent.  I’m not a politician, but I can see that this country has a budget of about $597 billion dollars for the military and the $15 billion for CHIP, and it makes me wonder.  I think back to the fifteen or so bucks we spent on the house-doctor in Buenos Aires, and how Argentina has seen its own sometimes bloody waves of political unrest, but yet still manages to make education and healthcare accessible to its citizens.  It makes me wonder how one of the richest and most powerful nations in the world can’t quite seem to get it together.   I wonder if greed is at the root of this strife.  I consider that a simple disconnect between congress and the needs of the American people could be at fault.  What I do know is that change needs to happen and it needs to happen this year.

            As far as what the future for CHIP holds, I cannot say for certain.  There have been talks about expanding Medicaid to absorb the families who use the program.  Colorado is looking into financial options of how to keep the program running if federal support fails to come through.  Personally I think Colorado should look into using funds from recreational Marijuana, or even simply increasing the yearly enrollment fee that families pay, but I’m not sure if these are viable options, and will result in a call or letter to our state’s representatives.  My investigation left me here, in the unknown, which millions of parents can tell you is a very scary place to be.

            This is what I do know.  I know that I will continue to wake up every morning and go to work.  I will continue to support and advocate our non-profit that helps single-parent homeless families, and my little preschool students who come to me having experienced trauma that sometimes keeps me up at night.  That’s okay though, because I choose to do this wok everyday because I see the positive impact it has on my hometown, and that in itself is the fuel I need to keep going.  The teachers, and social workers, and all the other hard-working Americans in this beautiful state, this amazing country, will continue to hold up this world that lately seems to be turned upside down.         

            Last weekend I was sitting on the couch with my little girl and we were watching a goofy Christmas cartoon on Netflix.  In the cartoon, the villain of the story says to the heroine something like, “Don’t you know that there is no hope in this town.  No Hope!”  The heroine wisely smiles and retorts, “but you see, there are children, and if there are children, there is always hope.”  That simple cartoon made a statement that I have since been holding on to during the times I need it the most.  During the times when I watch congress unable to come to an agreement about the importance of the health of our nation’s children.  However, I do have hope, because this is a strong country, I think a lot of people still hold on to strong core values, and I do believe there are congressmen and senators who want to make the health of this nation’s children a priority.  Time will tell, change will happen, and I hope that together we will figure out a way to come together during this brand-new year, and as a nation I hope we can thrive.