There are so many things in life we take for granted. We seem to forget that life itself is not owed or guaranteed to us on this earth. In the same vein, we take people for granted. As a child I used to hear and sing “count your blessings, name them one by one. Count your blessings see what God has done. Count your many blessings. Name them one by one. Count your many blessings, see what God has done.” That song seems forgotten with age, until some setback is overcome and we remember.

Last Wednesday, April 6th I nearly lost my mother to a heart attack. My mother is 38 years old and had not had any history with heart related issues. She had in fact had a clean bill of health as far as we knew. Needless to say, the news came as a shock to me and my family. I was with friends at the time. My father and siblings were at school.  At around 3 o’clock in the afternoon, I received a call from my dad telling me that my mother was not feeling well, which I took to mean that as a result he would be picking me up from school. About two minutes later my phone began to ring again and when I looked at the caller id which read “mom”, I expected her to tell me the same thing. I picked up. Said hello, and was surprise to hear a male voice on the other end. “Are you Moriah Georges?” he said, mispronouncing my name. I was thinking whoa this is not mom. Who is this? I quickly learned that it was a paramedic from Richardson Methodist Hospital, that they were with my mom, she had just had a heart attack, and that they were in the ER.

By the time I had arrived at the hospital they had called a code blue and mother actually left us for about five to ten seconds. An artery in hear heart had been blocked, causing the heart attack. The doctors tried to use a stint to get past it, but were unable to, and in the process three other veins were torn or ruptured. By that point it was determined that she would need a quadruple bypass surgery.

The rest of the story is long, personal, and detailed. The point of it is this: you really never know what you’ve got until it’s gone. My mother’s life was spared.  Today she was released from the hospital and is back in the comfort of our home, where she will finish out her recovery process. I have come to realize today, that home is where the mom is.

My father chose gifts appropriate gifts for her, which we presented to her yesterday. The first was a pillow, which will help with her recovery. The seconds was a stuffed animal, which brought back memories. My mother recalled that the last time she received a stuffed animal from my dad was when she was in the hospital after giving birth to my little brother Isaiah in 2001. At that time, it was a little pink kangaroo with a baby kangaroo in its pouch. This time around it was a bear. Last, but certainly not least, was a plaque that said “When I count my blessings, I count you twice.”

Twice, because she was given to us not once, but twice, since God had spared her life and brought her back to us. God has brought our family through many things and we recall them as memorials. When we recall this one, we will remember to count our blessings, to take nothing for granted, and to live like we’re dying.