We had just closed on our new home, Mom and I were searching for the “perfect” yellow. You know the one it is like fresh churned butter and the perfect fabric for the curtains…and all the little touches that would make this house a home. As much as she hated to shop she poured over every website and we made sooo many trips to home stores that I cannot begin to count. We had so much fun, so much laughter so many memories. It became a personal challenge to us to see how much we couldn’t spend and make the house beautiful. I had looked at so many houses, this was I believe the 69th one, mom looked at many of them with me. Don and I laid in bed talking about the plans we had for the house, hours spent talking about the plans for the deck. I know that I bored him to death with my obsession with wanting every little detail perfect. We basked in the joy of our grandsons, 3 and waiting on the 4th… I remember reassuring Ashley , I promised her the fears would dissolve, that God doesn’t make mistakes, and that what scared her the most would become her biggest blessing and that it would all be fine. That God had a plan…the worst was over, we had made it.
Life was good, a new year, a new start the worst was behind us. We had survived. Our lives had been filled with cancer and uncertainty. And we had survived. At least for a moment in time we thought we had. In that winter, in the snow the springtime loomed with its promise of rebirth and healing…
We had a great loss, my Aunt Dorothy passed away unexpectedly, I had gotten to know her again and had come to love taking her to the grocery store, out to have pancakes at IHOP and spending time with her while Mom recuperated. She was an amazing woman; she and my mom (her namesake) were very very close. I saw where my Mom had gotten her grace from. Two amazing women in a long line of amazing women. Aunt Dorothy and I had talked one time about old fashioned Italian cookies…and among her things was a hand written cookie recipe book. My mom took her loss very hard. Her heart was broken.
And then, everything changed, in a moment, in what was just another well check. In a routine appointment … in the waiting room mom mentioned there was a little spot and that she hoped that it wouldn’t interfere with them finally fitting her with dentures. We laughed and joked but my stomach dropped. We saw the doc…he scheduled a biopsy, he wasn’t concerned…cancer…again… but this time the doctor reassured us would be different, a couple days in the hospital and she would be home and back to traveling all over. It would be simple this time…it was scheduled for the Monday after her return from Florida.
Mom decided cancer could wait, and went and visited my Aunt Toni and Uncle David in Florida to check out “her” room in their new home, and she had an amazing time, she laughed she loved and she smiled in the sunshine. I am so glad she went. She got sick, a fluke really. I flew down to come back with her, praying the whole time she would make it for me to get there. Praying I could get her home safely. I did. We got back to St. Louis, and a few hectic weeks began, they were concerned that the issues that had come up in Florida would repeat and the surgery was postponed. Mom and I went to the doc thinking we would be setting up the surgery for the next week. Instead we found out that it had gone too far, that there was nothing they could do, it couldn’t be stopped this time. I held her hand…I fought back tears and anger and horror. I tried with every cell in my body to not collapse…and somehow I didn’t…somehow I managed to ask questions, and support her…to hold her hand…to try to ease her fears…
There is a doctor in St Louis at Sitemen Cancer Center his name is Dr. Atkins, and he loved my Mom…she was his fav patient, he set his coffee on the Obama button she gave him (it was in his cup holder in his car) and he would put on his republican pin when she came to his office and they would laugh and joke. I know he would have given his right arm to save my mom. So the treatments started, not to save her life but to give her more time…time to make more memories…time for more joy, more laughter…he and his nurse pulled me aside and told me how blessed she was to have me…how happy they were for her that she and I had spent the last months traveling and making memories…how they knew that I had made her very happy. How I had taken extraordinary care of her, how so few have that…how blessed she was. What they didn’t know was that I was the lucky one…I was the blessed one…I was the one who got to be with her, got to laugh with her and be loved by her. So the treatments began, and so did the memory making…
There were set backs and scares…and her strength was unbelievable…she was determined to live and love every day and she did. She would not talk about dying she only wanted to talk about living. And she endured the most horrible physical pain one can imagine. And I had the honor of loving and laughing with her. Of having her be my copilot … I watched her fight…and yet she always smiled, she always worried about everyone else. They said she had three to six months. She didn’t believe them and they were wrong, it was just shy of a year when she lost her battle. That year was filled with celebrations, laughter, tears, fears and joy…it was filled with pain and so many “lasts” … in the back of my mind I cherished each day…as winter passed into spring we planted flowers in my garden in my new home…flowers she would never see come up again. She was determined not to miss anything…she was there for Owens first birthday party…in pain and suffering but she was determined to be there…I remember waking up so often just to make sure she was okay…just to watch her breathe as I imagine she did when I was a baby. We took the boys to the zoo…we laughed and made memories…and yet we knew…
As summer turned into fall we celebrated her birthday…surrounded by friends and family…we celebrated holidays…and the treatments stopped working…and the pain increased…and yet she still smiled…and we made memories. We lost her in December and she fought back, I believe she didn’t want to die before Christmas. We spent her last Christmas in the hospital…she was in so much pain, so frail…and yet she smiled and joked and wrote notes a mile a minute…soon after Christmas we moved her to hospice, a place where she could be at peace…where with her family at her side she passed away on a winter night…she fought so hard, she didn’t want to give in…but the cancer won.
I remember that moment…that moment where she is gone and the world changed…
At that moment I didn’t know that my journey had just begun, that the road was going to get even harder…that the journey of life had another curve to throw at me. A year ago…365 days…
