today

it's about 10 degrees in my bedroom right now, so my partly frozen fingertips are becoming a little warmer as i clack on the keys and type this.

today would have been my mom's 59th birthday. i remember when i was still living in rhode island, before i came back home to live with her, i gave her my laptop so she could go online. she learned fast, and was IM'ing me in no time. she also found a lot of breast cancer groups online that helped her, a lot of sites that informed her, and some that scared her. she talked about one site that she liked a lot, so if you have some spare change maybe you can donate it to the susan g. komen breast cancer foundation.

[there is more below, if you want to read it]

i eventually came back home to live with my mom. it really wasn't home though, i would never see the house i grew up in and called home for 24 years, again.

we had relocated into the finished basement of my grams house. my mom and dad lived downstairs in a one bedroom apartment that was always too hot or too cold. the smell of my grams cigarette smoke leaked in through the vents. she eventually quit, when she forgot what cigarettes were. i lived with her in her apartment upstairs, she had alzheimers. she didn't always know who i was, she tried to get into my bedroom at night not able to figure out why a door that had been left open for decades was now shut. i felt bad for her, being so confused - and for my mom, who had to take care of her while dealing with her own cancer.

i felt helpless. however, i believed my mom would be okay. i mean - that's what the doctors told us, and she didn't seem sick. but suddenly, one day, she wasn't okay - she was in the hospital. the doctors though, they still said she'd be alright. i believed them. i sat on her bed with her, reading magazines, and talking about what doctors we thought were cute. they told us she would get to go home soon, but this time they said it may be in a wheelchair. we may have to get a home nurse, they told us. ramps in place of stairs, that kind of thing. i refused to believe it, my mom was too strong for that.

then i got a birthday card from my mom, she gave it to me at the hospital. she had just been moved to a new room. the new room was darker, and the card - it looked like someone else had written it for her - her normally perfect script was hardly recognizable. the seizures had been coming more often at that point. but she was still going to be fine, is all we were told. i "celebrated" my 24th birthday that weekend out of town - she wanted me to have fun. i didn't want to go, but knew she wouldn't have it any other way. once i came back i went straight to the hospital. my mom was there joking around with my dad. she told me she would be home tomorrow, everything was going to be fine. the doctors had been right.

i went home and decided to save the birthday cake my dad had bought me for the next day, when the whole family was at home. i slept well that night. the next day i got up and went to work, where i promptly received a call. not really "a call", so much as "the call". i now had to drive my car about 20 miles. my car, which i was talking to my mom about the night before - telling her it was giving me a lot of problems, now had to get me 20 miles without breaking down. the car had to be strong for about 25 minutes, and so did the driver. i wasn't sure either of us would make it.

the cancer somehow got to the brain. she wasn't going to be fine, the doctors told us, but they were going to do everything in their power to prove themselves wrong. they would try to save my mom. but she couldn't even talk anymore. we sat with her, as she stared at the walls and the ceiling and us, knowing she had something to say - but no longer the ability to say it.

the next night she went brain dead. the state she was in was irreversible. she didn't want to be hooked up to machines, we all knew that. but we were at home with my grams, who was asking us where the lady who made her coffee was. she was in the hospital, being hooked up to machines, because the hospital didn't have our phone number written down correctly. they couldn't call to ask us what she wanted. they couldn't call us so that we could get there. and they did the one thing that she feared.

the next day my brother and i sat on the hospital floor, barely able to comprehend anything, as my dad held my mom's hand - and the plug was pulled. her life ended. we drove home listening to blink 182, not even realizing music was playing, and knowing our lives from that moment on wouldn't be the same as they would have been with her in it.

Comments

[lawrence]

This is the most touching thing you've ever written here. I can't even describe my reaction other than the feeling that something was lost in me, too.

[wes]

beautiful. thank you

I'm so sorry for your loss. My dad was just diagnosed with terminal lung cancer so I can relate.

When you lose a parent, does the pain ever get easier?

[Mo]

moving post.

Funny how important the music is. When my grandmother had the stroke that eventually killed her, Barry Manilow's Copacabana was playing. When my grandma died I could listen to nothing but Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska.

[Lee]

Losing a loved one is never easy. Cancer has taken grandma, grandad, my two uncles and just recently my mum's twin sister who died of lung cancer(she doesnt even smoke). My mum was diagnosed with breast cancer over 5 years ago and is still fighting fit.

Best we remember the good times and not the bad.

[erica]

completely moving. i hope you're coping well with the day. you never stop thinking about lost loved ones, but "milestone days" are sometimes especially difficult. you'll be in my thoughts...

[T4]

your mother was and always will be a beautiful soul Jenny.