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benswomanI thought I would post a personal essay that I wrote last fall around this time. It's not an easy thing to read, as it deals with the loss of my mother, but...if through sharing...I can get at least one woman to get over her fears and go to the doctor...it's worth it.
I've also included a picture that I made.
I stood at the graveside, the sun beating down on my head, the wind blowing my hair in my face, my mind taking me back in time to another day and another graveside. The day was five years ago; the graveside was my mother’s. That day I was the one under the protective tarp. I was the one sitting in tearful silence. I was the one alone, the words being spoken drifting around me, filling the unusually hot September air.
My mom had been diagnosed with breast cancer the year before, and because she waited so long, the cancer had spread. Surgery followed a few weeks after the diagnosis and then the waiting began.
I knew, from the moment I was told Mom had a lump on her breast, that this was it; that every day, every holiday, that followed would be the last. But I was the only one facing the truth other than Mom. Momma of course knew that she was going to lose this battle, and she knew that her baby had realized it too. We never talked about it; she just knew that I had faced the fact that I was going to lose her. Every day of that year is seared into my mind. I can remember how I felt when I learned that I had been kept in the dark about what was going on. I remember sitting in the waiting room, my head resting on a friend’s shoulder because I had worked all night, wondering if Mom would even make it through the surgery, and knowing that if she did, our lives were going to change even more than they already had. I remember seeing the doctor come out, and knowing by the look on his face that she’d made it, but that things hadn’t gone well. The feeling in my stomach that day, as I listened to him telling us how the surgery had gone and what would be happening next, was like I had someone using an old milk churn mixing my insides up and down. I didn’t cry, at least, not when anyone could see me. I cried at home, alone. When we took Mom home, I remember that all I wanted to do was curl up in her lap, like I did as a little girl, and hold her hand and trace the soft lines that graced her long slender fingers, an action that had comforted me even after I got older. I couldn’t do that, though, because I was no longer that little girl; I was a grown woman.
The following weeks were filled with making sure Momma was taken care of and trying to keep my head straight between working all night and going to visit Mom. The weeks were also filled with decisions, decisions that would change the course of how our last days would be spent with Mom. We were told the week after her surgery that the cancer had spread to the lymph nodes, but no decisions were made as to what course of treatment they would follow. Mom needed time to heal before any of those decisions were made because she was a diabetic which hampered the healing process.
Finally the day arrived for Mom to confer with her doctor about treatment. By that time, they had discovered that the cancer had spread which limited treatment options. Mom had always said that she would never take chemotherapy because she had watched what it did to her sister each time she had to take it. My siblings were pushing her to go through the chemo treatments while I was telling her that I didn’t want her to take chemotherapy because I didn’t want her to do something she had always swore she wouldn’t. I also didn’t want the last months that I had with her being spent with her so sick she couldn’t enjoy her grandchildren and the precious last moments she would have with them. As it turned out, chemotherapy wasn’t an option. The doctor recommended radiation therapy five days a week, for five to six weeks.
By February of two thousand, the cancer had spread so much that her diagnosis worsened. I remember that day as if it had happened just yesterday. I knew that she had a doctor’s appointment that day in Springfield, so I had taken a short nap after I got home from work and then made sure I was up so she could call. She didn’t call; she came to my apartment instead. I knew, when I looked out the peephole and saw her standing there with my brother, that things hadn’t gone well at the appointment. I let them in and waited. My brother sat in one of my chairs while my mom chose to sit in the window. I remember looking at her, her soft gray hair glowing from the sun, thinking that she didn’t look sick and that anyone just looking at her wouldn’t realize that death was making its way closer and closer, day by day. Momma finally told me what the doctor had said, and my brother with his, “stupid baby sister doesn’t understand”, big brother attitude, preceded to tell me what Mom had meant when she said she only had six to nine months to live. There is nothing like stating the obvious in a situation that didn’t need the obvious stated. I kind of glared at him and told him I knew what she meant. In my head I thought that he was the one that had no idea what was ahead for us. None of my siblings knew, only Mom, Dad, and I knew what lay ahead. We were the only three that had watched someone die from cancer. Out of the three of us, Mom and I were the only ones accepting the fact that she wasn’t going to make it without a miracle. The others would face it at different stages over the next few months. My oldest niece was the next one to face it and accept it; she was only fifteen at the time.
When my brother and Mom went home that day, I closed the door behind them, locked it, and then slid to the floor in tears. I don’t remember how long I sat there with my head on my knees; I really can’t remember anything after that until my alarm went off and I got up to get ready for work. Only, I didn’t go to work. That day was the day I finally broke completely. I broke a glass that Mom had given to me for Christmas a few years before while I was washing it, and I just lost it. I started shaking so bad I couldn’t stand up. I felt sick to my stomach from crying, and the fact that I was slightly hyperventilating at the same time only made me feel worse. I came into the living room, curled up on my bed and picked up the phone, dialing the only number I could remember at the moment, that of my office manager, who just happened to also be my lifeline throughout the nightmare I found myself walking around in. She calmed me down and told me she’d take care of everything and not to worry about it because I had a good reason. That would be the only time I called in to work until seven months later.
Those seven months held a lot of last moments, last birthdays, and last holidays. By this time our last Thanksgiving and Christmas had already passed and so had my youngest nephew’s first birthday. Mom loved every one of her grandchildren and spent every one of the days she was still feeling well enough, with them, doing things that they loved to do with their grandma. The baby just spent his days with grandma going to radiation treatments, being the best little boy he could be and wowing the nurses and doctors at the hospital. It didn’t wow me; the baby loved his grandma and was very perceptive for his age. He knew something was going on with grandma, even if he didn’t understand what it was. I had a birthday in those seven months and Mom surprised me by getting everyone to come out to my brother’s and then asked my sister in law to make her soup because it was my favorite. I haven’t had a happy birthday since because I always think back to Momma trying to make the last one she would have with me, special. It was, and it still is.
Exactly a year from the week she had her surgery, Momma passed away. I can’t forget that day, either. We knew it was coming because she’d been in the hospital with fluid on her lungs, and I had been around cancer enough over the years to know that when that happens it isn’t long until they’re gone. What we weren’t expecting was that she would only be home from the hospital for barely two weeks before slipping away from us. All of us, but Dad and my sister, had gone to church that first Sunday in September.
Our assistant pastor let the church know that if they wanted to see Mom it should probably be soon because her health was quickly declining. I had people asking me if it would be alright for them to go out that afternoon to see her, and I had said that it would as long as they took certain precautions due to Mom’s heightened sensitivity to strong smells. Only two couples made it, and both were there when she died. I wasn’t there, and I don’t regret it. Mom understood that I had let her go, that if she wanted to go ahead and just let go and rest, it was okay. It was another of those unspoken understandings between us. My siblings didn’t understand, I don’t think my father did, either. While Mom was breathing her last breaths, I was at home asleep. I had worked the night before, went home to change for church, and then came home after church to sleep before going back to work that night. None of us knew this would be the last day, not even my sister in law that just happens to be a nurse.
Being tired like I was that day, I was oblivious to the world when I finally went to bed. I had only been in bed an hour when a knock on my door woke me. I started to ignore it, a habit I’ve picked up due to living in an apartment building with unruly kids, but something told me that I couldn’t ignore it this time. The face of my brother on the other side of the door told me what had happened even before I opened the door and let him in. Those words were like a haze that spread over my world and everything after that. Even though I remember it clearly, I can only describe it as walking through a fog. I went into autopilot from that moment on and did what I had to. Again, I didn’t break down completely until I came home later that evening. I cried a little at the house, but not enough to let my siblings think that I was going to go a bit ballistic as they have the tendency to think I’ll do. I came home, still wondering if I would have to go to work that night because I hadn’t been able to reach anyone, but when I got home I finally managed to reach my manager. She left her home and husband and came and stayed with me for three hours. When she held me in her arms was when I finally let go and cried.
In the next weeks and months I would slip into a depression that no one knew about, save one person, the same person that had loved me through Momma’s battle with breast cancer. She worried over me, calmed me when I called her at six in the morning because I couldn’t calm myself down after crying for the entire night, and came by or called me periodically over the following two weeks. She, a lady that I had heard my mother describe as a very friendly and special lady from the time I was old enough to ask who she was, in essence became my other mother. She mothered me through something that always before my mother had mothered me through, this time she couldn’t do that so she picked a replacement.
It’s been five years now, since Momma died, and I still have bad days, especially during the autumn time of year. The experience of watching my aunt, Mother’s sister, die from cancer had left me mature beyond my years, but losing my mother left me with a hole in my heart and in my life that hasn’t healed with time; it’s still here and always will be. But the experience of losing Mom also left me with a very special person in my life, one that I had known, but didn’t really know as a friend. It left me with a maturity that one doesn’t see in the majority of my generation. It left me with a “come what may, let it fly” attitude toward things that normally have people getting upset and going ballistic with worry and stress.
I wouldn’t say that I’m thankful, because only someone without a soul rejoices over the loss of a parent or loved one. I can say that the experience taught me life isn’t worth sweating the small stuff because there are too many things that are more important, and in the end, only those important things matter.
I've also included a picture that I made.
I stood at the graveside, the sun beating down on my head, the wind blowing my hair in my face, my mind taking me back in time to another day and another graveside. The day was five years ago; the graveside was my mother’s. That day I was the one under the protective tarp. I was the one sitting in tearful silence. I was the one alone, the words being spoken drifting around me, filling the unusually hot September air.My mom had been diagnosed with breast cancer the year before, and because she waited so long, the cancer had spread. Surgery followed a few weeks after the diagnosis and then the waiting began.
I knew, from the moment I was told Mom had a lump on her breast, that this was it; that every day, every holiday, that followed would be the last. But I was the only one facing the truth other than Mom. Momma of course knew that she was going to lose this battle, and she knew that her baby had realized it too. We never talked about it; she just knew that I had faced the fact that I was going to lose her. Every day of that year is seared into my mind. I can remember how I felt when I learned that I had been kept in the dark about what was going on. I remember sitting in the waiting room, my head resting on a friend’s shoulder because I had worked all night, wondering if Mom would even make it through the surgery, and knowing that if she did, our lives were going to change even more than they already had. I remember seeing the doctor come out, and knowing by the look on his face that she’d made it, but that things hadn’t gone well. The feeling in my stomach that day, as I listened to him telling us how the surgery had gone and what would be happening next, was like I had someone using an old milk churn mixing my insides up and down. I didn’t cry, at least, not when anyone could see me. I cried at home, alone. When we took Mom home, I remember that all I wanted to do was curl up in her lap, like I did as a little girl, and hold her hand and trace the soft lines that graced her long slender fingers, an action that had comforted me even after I got older. I couldn’t do that, though, because I was no longer that little girl; I was a grown woman.
The following weeks were filled with making sure Momma was taken care of and trying to keep my head straight between working all night and going to visit Mom. The weeks were also filled with decisions, decisions that would change the course of how our last days would be spent with Mom. We were told the week after her surgery that the cancer had spread to the lymph nodes, but no decisions were made as to what course of treatment they would follow. Mom needed time to heal before any of those decisions were made because she was a diabetic which hampered the healing process.
Finally the day arrived for Mom to confer with her doctor about treatment. By that time, they had discovered that the cancer had spread which limited treatment options. Mom had always said that she would never take chemotherapy because she had watched what it did to her sister each time she had to take it. My siblings were pushing her to go through the chemo treatments while I was telling her that I didn’t want her to take chemotherapy because I didn’t want her to do something she had always swore she wouldn’t. I also didn’t want the last months that I had with her being spent with her so sick she couldn’t enjoy her grandchildren and the precious last moments she would have with them. As it turned out, chemotherapy wasn’t an option. The doctor recommended radiation therapy five days a week, for five to six weeks.
By February of two thousand, the cancer had spread so much that her diagnosis worsened. I remember that day as if it had happened just yesterday. I knew that she had a doctor’s appointment that day in Springfield, so I had taken a short nap after I got home from work and then made sure I was up so she could call. She didn’t call; she came to my apartment instead. I knew, when I looked out the peephole and saw her standing there with my brother, that things hadn’t gone well at the appointment. I let them in and waited. My brother sat in one of my chairs while my mom chose to sit in the window. I remember looking at her, her soft gray hair glowing from the sun, thinking that she didn’t look sick and that anyone just looking at her wouldn’t realize that death was making its way closer and closer, day by day. Momma finally told me what the doctor had said, and my brother with his, “stupid baby sister doesn’t understand”, big brother attitude, preceded to tell me what Mom had meant when she said she only had six to nine months to live. There is nothing like stating the obvious in a situation that didn’t need the obvious stated. I kind of glared at him and told him I knew what she meant. In my head I thought that he was the one that had no idea what was ahead for us. None of my siblings knew, only Mom, Dad, and I knew what lay ahead. We were the only three that had watched someone die from cancer. Out of the three of us, Mom and I were the only ones accepting the fact that she wasn’t going to make it without a miracle. The others would face it at different stages over the next few months. My oldest niece was the next one to face it and accept it; she was only fifteen at the time.
When my brother and Mom went home that day, I closed the door behind them, locked it, and then slid to the floor in tears. I don’t remember how long I sat there with my head on my knees; I really can’t remember anything after that until my alarm went off and I got up to get ready for work. Only, I didn’t go to work. That day was the day I finally broke completely. I broke a glass that Mom had given to me for Christmas a few years before while I was washing it, and I just lost it. I started shaking so bad I couldn’t stand up. I felt sick to my stomach from crying, and the fact that I was slightly hyperventilating at the same time only made me feel worse. I came into the living room, curled up on my bed and picked up the phone, dialing the only number I could remember at the moment, that of my office manager, who just happened to also be my lifeline throughout the nightmare I found myself walking around in. She calmed me down and told me she’d take care of everything and not to worry about it because I had a good reason. That would be the only time I called in to work until seven months later.
Those seven months held a lot of last moments, last birthdays, and last holidays. By this time our last Thanksgiving and Christmas had already passed and so had my youngest nephew’s first birthday. Mom loved every one of her grandchildren and spent every one of the days she was still feeling well enough, with them, doing things that they loved to do with their grandma. The baby just spent his days with grandma going to radiation treatments, being the best little boy he could be and wowing the nurses and doctors at the hospital. It didn’t wow me; the baby loved his grandma and was very perceptive for his age. He knew something was going on with grandma, even if he didn’t understand what it was. I had a birthday in those seven months and Mom surprised me by getting everyone to come out to my brother’s and then asked my sister in law to make her soup because it was my favorite. I haven’t had a happy birthday since because I always think back to Momma trying to make the last one she would have with me, special. It was, and it still is.
Exactly a year from the week she had her surgery, Momma passed away. I can’t forget that day, either. We knew it was coming because she’d been in the hospital with fluid on her lungs, and I had been around cancer enough over the years to know that when that happens it isn’t long until they’re gone. What we weren’t expecting was that she would only be home from the hospital for barely two weeks before slipping away from us. All of us, but Dad and my sister, had gone to church that first Sunday in September.
Our assistant pastor let the church know that if they wanted to see Mom it should probably be soon because her health was quickly declining. I had people asking me if it would be alright for them to go out that afternoon to see her, and I had said that it would as long as they took certain precautions due to Mom’s heightened sensitivity to strong smells. Only two couples made it, and both were there when she died. I wasn’t there, and I don’t regret it. Mom understood that I had let her go, that if she wanted to go ahead and just let go and rest, it was okay. It was another of those unspoken understandings between us. My siblings didn’t understand, I don’t think my father did, either. While Mom was breathing her last breaths, I was at home asleep. I had worked the night before, went home to change for church, and then came home after church to sleep before going back to work that night. None of us knew this would be the last day, not even my sister in law that just happens to be a nurse.
Being tired like I was that day, I was oblivious to the world when I finally went to bed. I had only been in bed an hour when a knock on my door woke me. I started to ignore it, a habit I’ve picked up due to living in an apartment building with unruly kids, but something told me that I couldn’t ignore it this time. The face of my brother on the other side of the door told me what had happened even before I opened the door and let him in. Those words were like a haze that spread over my world and everything after that. Even though I remember it clearly, I can only describe it as walking through a fog. I went into autopilot from that moment on and did what I had to. Again, I didn’t break down completely until I came home later that evening. I cried a little at the house, but not enough to let my siblings think that I was going to go a bit ballistic as they have the tendency to think I’ll do. I came home, still wondering if I would have to go to work that night because I hadn’t been able to reach anyone, but when I got home I finally managed to reach my manager. She left her home and husband and came and stayed with me for three hours. When she held me in her arms was when I finally let go and cried.
In the next weeks and months I would slip into a depression that no one knew about, save one person, the same person that had loved me through Momma’s battle with breast cancer. She worried over me, calmed me when I called her at six in the morning because I couldn’t calm myself down after crying for the entire night, and came by or called me periodically over the following two weeks. She, a lady that I had heard my mother describe as a very friendly and special lady from the time I was old enough to ask who she was, in essence became my other mother. She mothered me through something that always before my mother had mothered me through, this time she couldn’t do that so she picked a replacement.
It’s been five years now, since Momma died, and I still have bad days, especially during the autumn time of year. The experience of watching my aunt, Mother’s sister, die from cancer had left me mature beyond my years, but losing my mother left me with a hole in my heart and in my life that hasn’t healed with time; it’s still here and always will be. But the experience of losing Mom also left me with a very special person in my life, one that I had known, but didn’t really know as a friend. It left me with a maturity that one doesn’t see in the majority of my generation. It left me with a “come what may, let it fly” attitude toward things that normally have people getting upset and going ballistic with worry and stress.
I wouldn’t say that I’m thankful, because only someone without a soul rejoices over the loss of a parent or loved one. I can say that the experience taught me life isn’t worth sweating the small stuff because there are too many things that are more important, and in the end, only those important things matter.
