Please help me give my mom a celebration of life.

Hello and thank you for visiting this page that was created for us to put my mom to rest and bring her ashes home to us.

    My name is Kari Sharinus but my whole family is involved in trying to raise the funds we need to put my mom to rest. I am my mother's next of kin, so I am the one who is responsible for all my Mom's final arrangements but in all honesty, I wouldn't want it any other way. 

    Let me introduce my Mom. Her name was Lisa Sharinus and in my opinion, she was the most beautiful and selfless woman anyone has ever met. I am her only child. My mother and father divorced when I was 8 but they were never "separated" for long. I will let my dad, Dean Sharinus tell you in his own words

"My best friend Daryll and I decided to go to one of our favorite hangouts. It was a pizzeria in a strip mall near our neighborhood. I can't for the life of me remember the actual name of the place, we just called it Louie's because that was the owner's name. Louie knew us well so we were always welcome. Besides, I helped Louie by resurrecting his old dilapidated stereo system into something that was actually useful. So as we walked in, I saw two giggling girls sitting at a table. I just glanced at them briefly because whispering and giggling aren't my cup of tea. I went behind the counter, grabbed a slice of pizza and put it in the oven to warm it up.

I started to go back to the table that Daryll had chosen for us and decided to give the girls more than a glance. I remember seeing the most beautiful girl I had ever seen.

Daryll being Daryll had already started a conversation with them. I had learned that the more talkative one was named Ann and the slightly less talkative one was named Lisa. She was the one I had to know more about. We talked for a while then the most unusual thing happened. Ann, all of a sudden, took the gum she was chewing out of her mouth. She then handed it to Lisa and Lisa started chewing it. Lisa saw the look of confusion (or horror) on my face and proceeded to explain. 

She told me that she just found out that she was a diabetic and Ann chewed it first to get the sugar out. Now I'm not a doctor but that just didn't seem right to me but she was so pretty that I happily accepted the premise.

That was our first meeting. I was almost 14 at the time but I knew by the end of the day that she was the girl I wanted for the rest of my life and very shortly after we were a couple.

We had our ups and downs, our break-ups, reconciliations, even a divorce and reconciliation and I never lost sight that she was my one and only, my forever woman. 

This story is 47 years old and I consider that chance meeting at Louie's the luckiest day of my life.

By the way, I forgot about the slice of pizza I put in Louie's oven. It burned and I was no longer allowed behind the counter. A burnt slice of pizza for a soulmate? I see that as a pretty fair trade.

That's the way I remember it."

They were married on September 15, 1984, and I joined the family on December 31, 1986, and we lived in a cute little apartment in Jackson, New Jersey until I was 6 years old.

As a 6-year-old I cannot tell you all the details and decisions that were made but we moved with my Mom's parents to Florida.

My Mom was a very passionate woman about healthcare and she loved her job as a medical assistant. She sometimes worked more than one job at a time and I never remember hearing her complain about the actual work. She was a nurse that did it because she cared about the people she was taking care of.

Shortly after we moved to Florida my Grandpa (my Mother's dad) got very sick. So my Mom moved my grandparents into our 2 bedroom apartment so she could help my Grandma take care of my Grandpa all while still working 40 hours a week, keeping up with the household, and taking care of a young child. We all moved out of that little apartment into a house and shortly after my Grandpa passed away. A month after he had passed away we had a house fire and lost everything. My Mom is the one that kept the family together and worked her butt off together with my Dad to rebuild our lives because we lost everything.

I can say that even with the house fire and practically being homeless my mom always made sure I felt safe and content. She never made her worries mine when I was a child.

In 2000 my Mom and Dad bought our house and my Grandma, who was starting to get ill, moved in with us. For nine years it was the four of us and both of my parents worked their butts off to make sure that I never wanted for anything. Every friend I ever had always called my Mom "Mom" as well and they were always treated as one of the family.

In 2007 my Grandma started to get very sick. Shortly after we realized she was getting worse instead of better my Mom left her job and became my Grandma's full-time caregiver. At the beginning of 2009, my Grandma made the decision that she no longer wanted treatment for her illnesses. She wanted comfort instead and to be home with the ones she loved instead of constantly having to be in the hospital to receive care. My Mom stayed by her side the whole time and did so much to care for my dying Grandma that there wasn't much for the hospice nurses that started to come to my house to care for her to do. She spent every waking hour tending to my Grandma and dinner was still always on the table every day at 5:30 pm. We held my Grandma's hand on September 9th, 2009 as she took her last breath and left this world. 

The entire time my Mom was caring for her mother, she was dealing with substantial health issues of her own. She had been a type one diabetic since she was 12 and it was starting to affect her body. She got to the point where simple things like getting up off the floor were not only painful but difficult for her. She came to the gut-wrenching realization that physically she could no longer do the job she loved. Her diabetes was starting to take control over her life instead of her having to control her diabetes. I watched my Mom cry as she sat in her doctor's office and he told her she could no longer safely be in the workforce. The woman who had had a job since she was 16 had to apply for complete disability because her health had made it impossible for her to ever be able to go back. 

Despite her health declining she still always tried to make the best of every day and keep a smile on her face when she was first declared 100℅ disabled. But she had to start seeing more and more specialists and her list of ailments just seemed to get longer and longer no matter how well she listened to her doctors.

Slowly she was losing her ability to be the superwoman I had always seen her be. She had over 9 eye surgeries in one of her eyes and at one point was completely blind in her left eye and because of that, she lost her independence because she could no longer drive. Her body was starting to become the enemy. It was attacking her from the inside. Her diabetes, despite the doctor's best efforts, was unpredictable and she was told by an endocrinologist of 20-plus years that she was the most brittle diabetic he had ever met and told her he could no longer care for her because he didn't know how. Her diabetes also attacked her nerves and she was in constant pain in her arms and legs. The pain and numbness got so bad that she was starting to fall on a regular basis. One of her falls in the living room resulted in her breaking her femur and turned into an over two-year stent of hospitals and rehabilitation centers. Also during that time, she broke her hip and her femur again and had to have 2 hip replacements on the same hip. She lost the ability to be able to walk without assistance from a cane and then the cane became a walker. 

Then her body attacked her again and she was no longer able to breathe. She now had COPD and emphysema and became dependent on inhalers and nebulizer treatments throughout the day just so she could feel like she wasn't constantly panting and trying to catch her breath. 

Then we got the worse news of all. Mom had lung cancer. She fought her ass off and went through radiation like a champ and she beat that cancer. We thought we could finally be at a place where she was sick but we knew all of her ailments and could work with her doctors and knowing she wasn't curable she could fight the illnesses and start to figure out how to live what would be a normal life for her. 

That did not happen. Mom was ending up in the hospital and rehabs more than she was at home. She suffered strokes that changed her personality and made her already nearly impossible ability to walk and function even worse. Despite all of it my Mom still would put a smile on her face when we would go out (which would result in her having to spend days in bed afterward just to go out to lunch.) 

My Mom's smile slowly started to fade away figuratively and literally. She was lied to by a doctor and thousands of dollars were spent to "fix her teeth that we're in good enough condition to repair and not remove." Not six months later her teeth started to rapidly decay and cause abscesses and infections. I would watch my frail mother try to eat

something and chunks of her teeth would come out as she tried to get the nourishment her body required. The dentists we spoke with wanted 10s of thousands of dollars to pull the pieces of teeth that were all that was left in her mouth. At this point, my dad had been hurt at his job and he was also not working. There was no feasible way that the money could be come up with to help her mouth. She began to only be able to eat soft foods and still, she would lose pieces of her teeth as she ate. Physically her body was frail and weak. She no longer could get around with a walker. In the house to walk to the bathroom someone had to walk her there with her rescue inhaler so she could also make sure she could breathe. Leaving the house for her was so taxing on her body that the only reason she would agree to leave the house was to go to one of the many many doctors she saw and she was forced by her body to have to use a wheelchair that she was not physically strong enough to move around herself. She couldn't go to the store and chose what aisle she wanted to go down and do it. She had to ask whoever was pushing her wheelchair to take her to where she wanted to go. 

My Mom's life became her being in bed constantly and her only contact with the outside world was through her cell phone. She was unable to even get up and walk across the room to flip the light switch. She still tried to keep aa positive as-she-could attitude.

On July 13th my Mom stated she could not breathe and none of her medications and methods were working, so she asked us to call an ambulance. When she got there her oxygen sats were low and her blood sugars were through the roof so she was put in the medical ICU so she could get the care she needed and be closely monitored. She was in the ICU for a couple of days but the doctors believed she was ok enough to be taken to the palliative care unit and continue her treatment there. Unfortunately, she was not getting better and in the early hours of July 19th, she began to rapidly decline. She had been in a state of confusion throughout her stay in the hospital so it was decided that I as her next of kin needed to be her medical surrogate and make decisions for her. They tried non-evasive measures to bring up her oxygen levels but they could not and I made the very difficult decision to put her on a ventilator to breathe for her while we figured out why she had declined so quickly and what could be done. I called her brother, my Uncle Eric, and informed him that the situation we were in was quite dire and that I would be keeping him closely informed as to what was going on. She was of course moved to the medical ICU and I had to sit in a waiting room for what felt like forever while they hooked my Mom up to what seemed like every machine in the hospital. Once they were done the ICU doctor came to speak to me. He told me that my Mom was being kept alive by the ventilator breathing for her and several medications that were keeping her blood pressure up high enough so that her heart would beat. He told me they did not know why she declined so quickly and they did not know what was wrong with her. They told me her blood work showed she had an infection and he believed she had become septic. He was putting her on broad-spectrum antibiotics and told me that they had to work today or she would not survive. I called my Uncle Eric and told him he needed to get to Florida right away. He got to Florida that night and at that point, Mom was no better but she was not worse. The morning of the 20th me, my dad, my Uncle Eric and his wife Di were at my mom's bedside (which I never left once she was retransferred to the ICU) when the doctor came in. The tests and bloodwork they had done that morning were not good. Her kidneys and liver were now failing and he believed she had severe brain damage. My family made the difficult decision to not let her suffer anymore and take her off of the machines and medicines that were what were keeping her alive. My mother was no longer there and we were not going to let her be kept alive on machines to meet our selfish needs. Lisa Sharinus officially left this world on Thursday, July 20th at 8:28 pm.

Although she was quite sick and we were in the process of finding out if her cancer had returned we were not expecting to lose her any time soon. This was sudden and absolutely devastating for my family. My mother was on disability every month and that barely covered the mortgage. My dad has been on worker's comp for about 4 years now after falling off of a roof and makes less than 60% of his normal pay. I work full time but with medical issues of my own have not been able to put in 40-hour weeks in quite a few months. Our utilities get shut off regularly and bank accounts go negative so we can pay to have them turned back on. We have had to ask wonderful helpful people online for help with food and gone to food banks to eat. Now, we will not have my mom or her monthly social security. There is no possible way we can afford to pay for my Mom's final expenses. We have found an AMAZING funeral home that will work with us but we cannot bring her ashes home until we pay them off in full. I am begging you to please find it in your hearts to help us bring my Mommy home to us. Her final wishes were to be cremated and to "live" next to her Mom and Dad who are on the mantle at my house already. She also despised the idea of a funeral. She couldn't stand to think of people getting together and being sad for her. She wanted a "party" or as most call it a celebration of life.

I had the greatest Mom in the world and I just want to honor her by carrying out her final wishes. She is no longer in pain or suffering and that is what gets me out of bed every day because I miss her with every single fiber of my being and I know the ones that love her feel the same. Every person she met she liked and would do whatever she could for them. She would help her friend of 20 years and someone she had just met 20 seconds ago.

Thank you for reading this and thank you to anyone who donates to help me bring my Mom back home to me where she belongs. Your kindness means the world to my family.

Also, we have not set a date for her celebration of life yet. We are hoping to do it in a couple of weeks and have a date for everyone as soon as possible. This being so sudden there is a lot to be done before we can get to celebrating her.