- Amber Rebecca Lynn Smith
- Born: November 14, 1979
- Died: April 13, 2014
- Cause of Death: Pending Autopsy Results
I will begin this story on the last day that I spoke with Amber. She left my house early that morning with two "friends Angel Bledsoe and Dusty Neely at around 9:30 that morning. I asked her not to go, to spend the day with me and her children, but she said she would be back the next morning to go with me and the children to the Easter egg hunt at the park. The two older children were at school and the youngest child and myself went with my ex husband to purchase clothes for the children for summer. I called my daughter on her cell around lunch time and told her we were on our way home. We talked a bit about the kids clothes and the egg hunt. She asked would eight thirty be OK to be here. I told her yes that we were going to leave at about nine. She told me she had to go she was with some friends and that she loved me. I told her I love her too. I am so thankful for this because we had been arguing over her some of her behavior for a few days. This was to be the last time that I had a conversation with my daughter and it was a good one. She wasn't aware that I planned to try to force her to go back to a rehab when I saw her again, but that was not meant to be. Amber messaged numerous people through Facebook and called some on her cell from what I am told trying to get a ride to my house. For whatever reason because I am unclear on this she never made it here, Instead she stayed the night at Shane Horne's home.
As me and the kids awoke and began to get ready to go to the egg hunt, we waited for my daughter. I told the oldest grand child we would give her to about nine to come home and then we would have to leave without her. Sometime after nine I received a phone call from a detective with the police dept asking if I had a daughter named Amber. I was then told that she was at the local hospital and not in good shape. I headed to the hospital where I directed to a room in the er. There lay my daughter with a vent and hooked to machines that were breathing for her and keeping her heart going. Her eyes were neither open or closed the lids were halfway and the whites of her eyes were very bloodshot her pupils were focused straight ahead and were glassy looking. Her mouth was half open and her tongue was protruding from the side below the tube.To some this may sound odd, but I couldn't feel her presence, I just couldn't feel her there, and I felt that my daughter would not be coming home with me no time soon if at all. The doctor told me that it did not look good and that I might have some tough decisions to make. They were moving her to another hospital in a close by town that was better equipped to treat her. The EMT told me that they had picked her up at a house earlier that morning and there was no pulse or respiration and that they were able to get her breathing again. I have never felt so alone and without words as I did at this time. And although, I couldn't feel her presence with me there I held onto hope, because I know that God can answer even the weakest prayer. I still believe this, my faith is not shaken. At the other hospital Amber went threw a battery of test to assess her situation and even was able to breathe over the respirator twice. She fought, she tried so hard to come back, but God had other plans. I don't know why, I will not allow myself to ask God that, I do not blame God. The last time Amber tried to over ride the ventilator her blood pressure shot up and they gave her medication to bring it down. She never tried to over ride it again.
When I arrived at the hospital they were running a battery of test to determine if my daughter was brain dead and be in a vegetative state or if she was brain dead with no hope of living. Amber's brain had been swelling this whole time since Friday and they had no way to relieve the swelling. When I got there they were doing a test to check for brain activity and while they did this test I opened her eyes, I pinched her, I shouted her name told her I loved her and touched her face. Nothing there was no brain activity. I watched as they used flashing lights to stimulate her brain and when the test was over I watched as they removed the probe from her head and took the electrodes off of her face. I was shown pictures of a normal brain and then pictures of Amber's traumatized brain. In a normal brain there is a butterfly shape in the center and light and dark patches are around it. In Amber's swollen brain there was no butterfly and only darkness with a thin white outline. The next test was a breathing test which I was asked to leave the room for. Then she was taken down to x ray for a MRI. The family was taken into a room to wait for the results. A doctor came in, and told me what they had been trying to determine and Amber was dead. They told me she died in a way that her heart and breathing were still working but was only a matter of time before they realized that the brain was not and they too would stop. The swelling in Ambers brain had prevented any blood flow to that area causing the blood to pool at the base of her neck and eventually crush that stem from the pressure. A lady who works with the program called Life Share sat with me beside Amber's bed and explained this to me, the first thing they do is check to see if a patient is a donor, Amber was. So she was to remain on life support until the time that her organs would be harvested. She then prayed with me over my daughter and started asking me many questions related to my daughter's lifestyle because of the organ donations. Somewhere along the way, I guess I missed the fact that my daughter had been pronounced dead because I still had hope. Call me foolish dumb whatever, I guess I was just in denial. Although Amber was a donor another permission has to be given for them to take bone and tissue, I did not give this permission, I probably should have but I didn't. I couldn't, they were taking enough in my mind. I was informed that once everything was in place they would reap the organs and that her body would then be taken to Raleigh for an autopsy which had been ordered by Rutherford County Medical Examiner.
Up til this day, Amber's eye makeup was still intact and not smudged, you could still smell the scent of the body works cologne that she loved, behind all the tubes and machines she still looked and smelt like Amber, but I still could not feel her presence. I still had hope.
I returned to the hospital still not realizing they considered her dead. I went over touched her, kissed her and was immediately struck by the warmth of her body, the first time it had been warm since being at the hospital. They were keeping her on a heated bed now. and every little bit her body was put into motion being rotated. They were doing test to determine the viability of her organs and great care was being taken to preserve her body, fluids were being administered which were causing her to swell but they were preserving the organs. I watched as they did an ultra sound of her heart and I thought it is so strong, it beats so even and who ever gets this is gonna be lucky, the screen of her heart was almost mesmerizing as it beat, and moved almost to its own melody. They told me that around ten that night they would be taking her heart, liver and kidneys for transplant and her lungs for study. Her eyes were not viable because of drug use. It is both amazing and sickening to me at the same time, the care that is taken in preserving a body once it is going to be used for transplant. I chose not to be there when they harvested the organs. Although like I said it was suppose to happen around ten but at ten that night they called to tell me it would be 2 in the morning. One of Amber's friends spent over an hour on the phone with me during this time. They reached out to me and offered words of comfort and a little bit of laughter to me and never realized they were helping me get through this. I had never spoke to this person before this, never met them and have not spoken to them since; but they were there to help pick me up when I faced the fact that there was no more hope. I thank them.
So begins the long process of planning her funeral. These are things I will spare you from having to read, mostly because this time was just a blur to me, I was running on little sleep and pure adrenaline, and still trying to process exactly what had happened.
I would like to clear up a couple of things, first off Amber was not in a church yard, a grave yard or anything like that when the paramedics were called. Second, she was not raped. According to the doctor there was no physical trauma to my daughter's body. I asked.
It has been voiced that this is what Amber chose, that we all make choices in life. Believe me when I tell you Amber made no choice to leave this earth, to leave her children or to stop living. Even to assume that she did, was this a choice that she could have carried out by herself? NO, she had no money, no transportation, she didn't manufacture drugs so tell me how was this a decision she made alone?
Somewhere along the time that she left my house and was found the next morning someone helped her get the drugs, they bought them and they provided transportation and they also got high their-selves. Who these people were I could only speculate and I won't do that. There are messages that Amber sent through Facebook and on her cell phone asking numerous people if they had this or they had that and the quantities that she was asking for were large and would have taken way more cash than the sixteen dollars that she got at the pawn shop. Some people have stepped forward and offered information which has been useful. But really, when you are friends with someone do you stand by and watch that person travel a destructive path, not only watch but join in with them. These were not friends.
Someone or a lot of people I am not sure sold Amber drugs. This is where ultimately the responsibility lies. Drug Dealers pray on the weakness of the addict and are only too willing to oblige them and help them get that next high all under the facade of being their buddy. They act with no morals and no regard for human life. These are the very ones, who cry out that people only care when its someone they know who succumbs to an overdose and dies. That is where you are wrong, people care but when it is someone who you know it makes it personal, it puts a name with the death. They are identifiable. A drug dealer is the worst kind of evil that I know, they fool insecure people into a false friendship and offer them things to make their life better. Once they have them hooked they take their money to line their own pockets. They prosper from the weak, the desperate, and the vulnerable which they created in the first place. I doubt they ever say, no that's too much I can't sell you that. These are people who are unwilling to work, to sacrifice to establish their selves.
Some have inadvertently made the assumption that I took Amber off life support. This was not my choice to make. I never and I would never have gave up on her. I loved Amber for 34 years, I gave her life, and I could not have made the decision to take it from her. Sometimes I was hard on her, sometimes I turned my back on her, but what ever I did, I did out of love. I used what little resources were available to me and I did the best that I could. Did I fail her? You bet I did. That is something that I will spend the rest of my life dealing with. But never make the assumption that I gave up on her, or that I didn't love her. Maybe I loved her too much, maybe I recognized her vulnerability and knew that she had weakness in her judgement. Maybe I tried to hold on too tight, in hopes of saving her. I don't know, but knowing how this turned out, yes I failed my child.
I would like you to know what kind of person my daughter was. She was compassionate, loyal, quick to forgive. She possessed one of the most giving and unselfish hearts that I have ever known. She had a quirky sense of humor and she enjoyed life immensely. Small, simple things brought her great pleasure. She was a child, a sister, a grand daughter, cousin, aunt and a mother. She was the kind of person you wanted around, not for what she could do for you, but for the way she made you feel. Where she was, emptiness now resides.
I would like for all who played any role in her death to be held accountable. Justice for all the people who have been wrote off as just another overdose has to start somewhere. I would like for this to touch home with someone, for someone, anyone to identify with her, to recognize their self in her; for them to recognize that they do not have to wind up like she did, to place value upon their self and get help. That is what I would like to see happen.