A Mother’s Prayer

I WALKED ALONGSIDE THE GURNEY, gripping my 22-year-old son’s hand. The orderly stopped me at the operating room doors. “This is as far as you can go,” she said. I leaned over and kissed Spencer’s forehead. “I love you, Spoon.”

“I love you too,” he whispered back. I watched helplessly as he was wheeled away from me. Would I ever see my boy alive again?

Four weeks earlier, my strapping mountain biker son had suffered a stroke while he was camping with friends in Canada. He ended up being airlifted to Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, and I arrived from my home in San Diego the next morning. Spencer was asleep when I got there, his limbs anchored to the bed rails by restraints. When I touched his cheek, his eyes opened but he gave no sign of recognition.

That afternoon, Spencer would intermittently wake and talk gibberish. “I’m going to buy a goat farm,” he announced to his dad, Steve, who’d driven from Bellingham, Washington. Steve and I had divorced years ago.