Coming to the Realization that Indeed Your Mother was Always Right

Loosing your mother is one of the oddest experiences you can have, especially when you are young and have so many big moments you expected your mom to be apart of.  When my mother called me at work March 16, 2011 to tell me about her doctor's appointment, I innocently answered the phone given that only the day before we had discussed the fact it was expected to yield a positive result from the doctor.  Instead, my mother very calmly informed me that despite weekly chemo, the cat scan revealed her tumors in her liver, spine and lymph nodes between her heart and lungs had grown.  Treatment was not working.  The only options at this point was to decide to try a more aggressive form of chemo, that at best would buy a few more very sick months and never eliminate the cancer, or let her live out the remainder of her life comfortably and spending it with family.  She decided to take the latter of the options and had been told she should have 6 months to a year.

At that point I am not hearing her, I am barely standing or seeing.  She said to drive home safe and to call her tonight.  I am in the middle of discharging a kid at my work and looked at my coworker and asked her to stay.  Breathing is becoming increasingly difficult, my throat felt like it was swelling and I could not feel my legs.  I take off down the hall to find my boss to tell her I have to leave and I have to leave now.  I don't do emotions well, even less so in public, in less than that at work in front of coworkers.  I find it embarressing and unprofessional and I know there is no hope of my holding it together so I have to leave.  Luckily I am able to locate her and take off.  It was my boyfriend's (at that time) 30th birthday and he was scheduled to work.  I call him on my drive home, asking him to just talk to me so I can focus long enough to drive to his house.  He is sweetly waiting with wine and lots of comfort food, doesn't say anything (and thank god for that) and just sits with me.  I am angry, I am scared and I don't want this to be my reality.  I don't want it to be her reality.  I am scared it'll one day be my own reality. 

The thing about my mother is that she has lived an incredibly hard life and yet nothing seemed to break her of having such light and a strong belief that everyone gets their happy ending.  I am angry that her happy ending involves her dying at 57 after battling breast cancer for 10 years.  That her whole life was her over-coming one difficult experience after another to amount to her losing.  I am terrified that so much of my life has mimicked hers, that despite my own perserverence and life-long dedication to reaching normalcy, that I too will end up in a body I can't recognize that now more resembles a jigsaw than a human and will one day die at a young age.  Makes you question whether the journey is worth it when the ending just sucks so much.

I wasn't given the time I was promised, by May 22 she passed away.  In the time she was learning to come to terms with her own death, we spent hours talking on the phone about it, her making sure I would be ok when she finally passed.  Her reassuring me that even though her life has often been turmoil, it's focusing on the turmoil that has me missing the beautiful moments she would never give up.  She emphasized that dying was one of the strangest experiences she had ever had.  Moments when she was angry she would never see me graduate from grad school, get married or have children, and other moments when she was at peace, ready to take on the next journey at hand.  Mostly, she said, she felt love.  All around her she felt love and supported and it was in her dying that she was able to realize what it means to be human and to accept the love that is all around you on a daily basis.  A message she missed during her entire life as she took on the world as a one man army.

After her passing I just pulled away from anyone who wanted to talk to me about her, or the funeral.  I was so used up after spending a week having people tell me how amazing my mom was (as if I didn't know), how much she'd be missed (duh), and how they just feel like they were robbed (sorry for your loss, must be difficult for you, clearly I am still bitter and angry about the responses but bare with me).  Everyone just stared at me, had to hug me and approach me.  You see, I look just like her.  Have my whole life.  I sound like her, I have her mannerism and ability to communicate in a way that people can hear easily.  So everyone needed to be near me to say goodbye to her.  After the 30th or so death hug (what I called people hugging me, they weren't hugging for comfort, it was a totally different experience where it felt like it was their last hug with her), I was just done with people and being supportive of others, I needed to hide out and avoid anyone who insisted on bringing up what I just couldn't do anymore.  I spent the summer avoiding phone calls and talking to anyone who loved and supported me and instead found myself seeking out those who didn't know me or her who could help me in my avoidance.

Now, I find I think of her all the time.  I miss her all the time.  I feel her around me all the time.  I find myself thinking of her, the things she said and did and realizing how amazing my mom was.  How well she did teaching me everything I need to know and in ways I never could have imagined.  So why am I starting a blog about all this?  Not entirely sure.  I was driving to class tonight and was thinking about the random stories and memories and about how she had aspirations of one day publishing a book, impacting people in the world but she never quite had the energy to do so.  I wanted to honor that about her but also honor everything she had to share.  There's also the selfish reason of this being about me and dealing with grief in a more productive way as I don't like to "talk it out" or journal.  I find I get far too annoyed with either of those options for them to be beneficial.  I guess this is my journey in grief and finding myself now that my guide in life is no longer here.  I will post as I remember things and share her tidbits and stories.  Feel free to contact me or post as you want as this doesn't have be all about me (but lets be totally honest here, everything in this world is all about me :) )

Happy Reading!
Jackie