Nothing and Everything

24 hours ago my mother suffered a heart attack.

It didn't look like a heart attack, she didn't shout out in pain and clutch her left arm to her chest. It was a quiet, gradual thing. It began as a slow building ache in her chest, just below her sternum, an ache that grew to a pain, which soon became a crushing weight. She could still breathe, but it was painful. She could still talk, though she was tearing up because of the burning feeling, still sitting squarely in her chest, just beneath her breastbone. She could feel the pain radiate to between her shoulder blades. Still, she did not cry out or clutch her arm in pain, she did not fall to the floor. We said that it was probably heartburn from the pepperoni pizza we'd had for dinner only a few hours before. She agreed.

She had a doctors appointment today, and she told him about the pain she'd had last night, hoping for some kind of super anti-acid. The doctor did an ECG and some blood work, just to be safe. They both came back testing positive for a heart attack.

My mother came home, still seemingly unfazed, she told my father and brother and I what the doctor had said. My father nodded solemnly and comforted her, my brother joked that it was crazy she hadn't realized she'd had a heart attack. I was silent, fighting back tears.

How could this have happened?

More than the shock, I felt guilt. I knew that heart attack's presented differently in women, that severe pain in between the shoulder blades was sign to go to the hospital. I'd had a teacher earlier that year who'd died of a heart attack because no one had recognized the signs.

And yet there I had been, standing in the hallway last night, watching my mother struggle to breathe with pain in her chest and her back, telling her that it was probably heartburn.

Now I stood in the dugout at an evening baseball game, in the cool early summer air, pretending that nothing was different. My mother sat in the stands, the flimsy metal bleachers that the school had erected behind the backstop. She looked like she always did. She didn't look like someone who could have died last night. She'd had a life changing event, a reminder that everything could end at any time, and she was smiling and chatting with the other moms like nothing was wrong.

My father too, had acted all day as though nothing was different, and my brother had hardly acknowledged it other than a couple of distasteful heart attack jokes. Meanwhile every time I looked at her I saw the way she was curled up in pain last night, and I remembered the way I just stood there and did nothing.

My grip on the bat I was holding turned my knuckles white. I felt the familiar ache in my jaw that came with fighting the urge to cry. My lips quivered.

The ball zipped past my teammate in her third strike at bat, it clanged against the metal of the chain-link as the catcher chased after it. A straight pitch that curved at the last second.

I was up.

The sun was low in the sky, early evening rays of gold slipped between the branches of the green summer maple leaves that rustled in the wind. The breeze was cool, carrying the smell of barbecue from a nearby neighbour to the park. It seemed so unfair that someone could be having such a nice evening while my world as I knew it was crumbling around me.

I took my place at the plate, and kicked some of the dirt off of the edges.

I lined myself up a bat's length from home base and took one measured practice swing. I tipped my hat to help block the shine of the setting sun.

The pitcher took a deep breath and wound up to throw. It sailed straight for the plate before veering off to the left at the last second. I swung just a little too late.

Another pitch, I'd reset myself, expecting the curve this time. I still missed.

I looked back at the audience behind the backstop. I met my mother's eyes. Kind, crinkled eyes encouraging me to keep playing. She looked so beautiful.

My heart ached.

How was I supposed to pretend that everything was ok?

I didn't even swing at the last pitch, I was already walking off of field as the umpire called the game-ending strike. I dropped the bat with a clang and ignored the protests of my teammates, practically running towards my mother, who was waiting at the edge of the dugout. Something I hadn't done since I was a child.

Tears blurred my vision as I threw my arms around her waist, she wrapped me in her embrace as I cried silent body, wracking sobs. I could barely breathe, everything I'd been feeling just came rushing out in a flood of tears and snot and child like devastation. My mother guided us away from the onlookers.

When I finally stopped crying, I looked up at her. The sun had set leaving the sky a sweet summer teal, she looked at me and petted my hair, she cooed that everything would be alright. She was doing everything she could to comfort me.

In her eyes, tears pooled, leaving the whites shiny in the dim light.

We stayed there for I don't know how long, not saying anything, but the soft shallow and shaking breaths between us also said everything.

In the end there was nothing that we could do about the heart attack. My mother would eat healthier, run more, and take a blood pressure medication for the rest of her life. She'd have routine check ups to monitor her heart.

The future was just as uncertain as it had always been.

In fact nothing had really changed, it wasn't like she'd died or anything, she could still walk across the street and get hit by a bus tomorrow, or any of us could, but somehow at the same time, everything had changed.