Can't Wait to Get to Heaven

Saying a Final Good-bye

2:46 PM

When Norma looked up and saw her daughter, Linda, walking down the hall, she burst into tears all over again. After they had pulled themselves together a bit, they discussed the matter of the autopsy and agreed not to have it done. As Linda said, if it couldn’t bring her back, then what was the point? The harsh reality of death was so damned final, so irreversible. They would just let her go in peace and not prolong the inevitable. They would follow Aunt Elner’s wishes and go ahead and arrange for the remains to be picked up for cremation. Norma burst into tears again. When she heard the word remains, she couldn’t bear to think of someone who had been so alive just this morning as just “remains.” Reverend Susie Hill said, “I know it’s hard, Norma, but I think it’s what she would have wanted.” Macky and Linda agreed. After a while, Macky got up and told the young nurse who was waiting that they were ready to go and see their aunt and say good-bye. Norma asked Susie if she would like to come, but Susie said, “No, this is family, I think it’s best that just the three of you go, I’ll be right here in the hall waiting.”

The three of them walked down to Elner’s room, and the young nurse opened the door, and they all stepped into the room, and quietly walked over to the side of the bed. Macky put his arm around Norma and held Linda’s hand and they stood there together looking down at Aunt Elner. The young nurse stood back from the bed as the family had their last moment with the woman before she was to be taken downstairs. Seeing her was not as frightening as Linda had thought it would be. Just as her daddy had said, Aunt Elner looked as if she had just gone to sleep. Norma leaned on Macky as tears welled up in her eyes. Elner looked so sweet and peaceful, it was hard for her to realize she was actually dead. They did not speak and the room was so quiet all they could hear was their own breathing. They were standing there in dead silence, each mentally telling her good-bye in their own way, when Elner said, “I know you’re mad at me, Norma, but I wouldn’t have fallen if those wasps hadn’t gone after me.”

Macky literally jumped back a foot from the bed. “Jesus Christ!”

Upon seeing Elner open her eyes, the young nurse at the foot of the bed let out a bloodcurdling scream and ran out of the room, shrieking at the top of her lungs. Linda screamed at the same time, threw her purse up in the air, and ran out right behind the nurse. Macky’s feet were glued to the floor and he could not get them to move or he would have gone out the door with them. But for once in her life Norma, who was far too stunned to faint, said, “Aunt Elner? What in the world do you call yourself doing, pretending you’re dead? Do you have any idea what you have put us through? We called Linda and everything!” Elner looked over and was about to answer, but before she had a chance, a woman’s hysterical voice came blaring out over the hospital intercom.

“Stat! Stat! Room 212, Stat!”

And the next moment, sounding like a herd of wild buffalo, doctors and nurses came thundering down the hall at breakneck speed and stampeded through the door, pushing machines and three or four IV stands before them, knocking Macky and Norma back against the wall. When the young doctor from the emergency room came running into the room, he turned as white as a sheet when he saw Elner sitting up on her elbows in bed and talking, and he began frantically barking orders. As the room filled up with more staff and machines, Macky and Norma were shoved outside into the hall, and it wasn’t until then that Norma realized what had just happened, and fainted again.

Back in the room, Elner was now surrounded by screaming and yelling doctors and nurses, and being hooked up to several machines all at once, and lifted out of bed, rushed down the hall on a gurney. As Elner, traveling at least forty miles an hour, sped by Linda, who was leaning against the wall still in a state of shock, she called out, “Hey, that’s my niece! Hey, Linda!” By this time the young nurse who had been the first to run out of the room had made it all the way down six flights of stairs, and she ran screaming past Nurse Boots Carroll, almost knocking her down, through the lobby, out the double glass doors, and was now past the parking lot headed down the block, still running as fast as she could. Within five minutes the entire hospital was alive and buzzing with the news. Dead woman talking! As Elner whizzed by Reverend Susie Hill standing down at the end of the hall, she called out, “Hey, Susie, what are you doing here?” “That’s my niece’s lady preacher,” she said to a nurse, who was running alongside her. After they had run all the way down to the end of the hall with her, turned the corner, and rolled her into a waiting elevator, Elner asked, “Where am I going now?”

A male nurse barked at her, “Just relax, Mrs. Shimfissle, calm down.”

Elner said to herself, “I am calm, you’re the one who’s huffing and puffing.”

Once the elevator doors opened again, they ran down another hall and then right through the open door of the intensive care unit. Once inside they quickly sat her up, removed her robe, and started hooking her up to different machines a mile a minute. As they were doing this, Elner was not happy about it, and said, “You know what, I need to get on home. Norma and them are here to get me, and I don’t think I fed Sonny yet.” But the doctor and the nurses completely ignored her and acted like she wasn’t even there. They just kept talking about her vital signs, looking at screens, and shouting out numbers. Elner figured she must be all right, though, because in between the numbers, they kept answering “Stable” and “Normal” to the doctor’s questions. Elner made a vow right then and there that if she ever got out of there, she would never come back to a hospital, because once they get you, you can’t get away. “Does this hurt?” the doctor asked as he pushed all over her body. But he did not wait for an answer, and said, “Let’s get her downstairs. I need an MRI right away.” And off she went again…being pushed down another hall, and pushed onto another elevator.

When they got downstairs, they rolled Elner into a large room that had what looked to Elner like a big washing machine.

As they lifted her from one gurney to another one, she asked, “Am I going in that thing?”

“Just for a little while,” said a nice new nurse she had not seen before.

“Is it going to hurt?”

“No, you won’t feel a thing, Mrs. Shimfissle.”

“What’s it for?”

“We just want to look and make sure you don’t have any broken bones or anything. It won’t take long. Are you claustrophobic?”

“I don’t think so…never had been.”

“I can give you headphones, if you like. Is there any special kind of music you prefer?”

“That might be nice. Do you have any good gospel music? I like Minnie Oatman.”

The nurse shook her head. “No, I don’t think so. I could try to get a radio station.”

“Oh, do you get Bud and Jay?”

“Who? I can try, do you know the station?”

“No, that’s all right, they are probably off the air by now, I don’t need to listen to anything.”

“All right, Mrs. Shimfissle, I’m going to be right in the next room,” the nurse said. “And I’ll come back as soon as we are finished, OK?”

As she started heading into the machine, Elner realized she had no idea what time it was. The last time she had looked at a clock, it was eight in the morning, and now Linda was here all the way from St. Louis. “Where had the day gone?” she wondered.