Thirty Eight Years

She was beautiful - with a winsome smile and enormous warm brown eyes which were marked with a hint of sadness. Her lovely voice sang the hymns at church with joy and the lullabies at night with tenderness. At times, I can still hear her words in my mind, admonishing her children to be good, be brave, and be strong. When I let my mind wander and I remember her embrace, I can still feel the love she had for me, her "baby girl."

I remember coming home from school on a cold October afternoon, and my mom was packing her bags. I was confused because I wasn't aware that a trip had been planned, so I asked her if she was going to go and visit her sister. She replied that no, that wasn't her plan, and she asked me to sit down with her. Mom explained to me that she had been to the doctor, and that they had discovered a lump on her breat which apparently had been there for quite some time, because it had grown to the size of a grapefruit. I was old enough (13) to know that this was a very grave situation, and I knew before she could even say the words that she had cancer. She was packing so that she could go to the hospital the following day for a mastectomy, followed by radiation treatments.

The radiation treatments burned her skin, and she was in a lot of pain. She was in the hospital more often than not over the next several months. In fact, she came home for a couple of days at Christmas, but then had to return to the hospital shortly thereafter. Eventually, the cancer spread to the bone, so we knew then that she was only going to be with us for only a very short time.

My family did not share our grief together. Two of my older brothers were already out on their own. My sister was married and pregnant. The two younger brothers still lived at home with me (the baby of the family) and my dad. Mom's illness was one of those subjects which was just not discussed, period. Dad coped by drinking. The brothers who were still at home argued with Dad and amongst themselves frequently, and they were often cruel to me. I stayed in my room a lot, reading and studying. The only time I felt "safe" was at school where I did well academically but where I was rather quiet and reserved, or at church,where the presence of God helped to comfort me and bring some sense of peace to my soul.

To this day, I still feel rather guilty that I didn't visit my mother more frequently while she was in the hospital for the last two and a half months of her life. I couldn't bear to see and hear the pain she was in. I remember vividly my last visit with her (about two weeks before she died), where instinctively I knew she was close to death. She held my hand tight, and told me she loved me more than I could ever know, and that she hoped that someday I would know the love a mother has for her child. I wasn't able to go back to see her because, in my 14 year old mind, I was hoping that the longer I stayed away from the her and the hospital, then the longer she would live because I knew she wanted to see me one more time before she died. Selfish logic on my part - and I can only imagine how much it hurt her to not see me again.

I found out she died from my brother, who told me in a very cold and brusque way. Nobody else was in the house when he walked in and told me she was dead, so there were no words to comfort me, no arms to embrace me to help take the pain away. I remember going into the bathroom, closing the door, crying for about 5 minutes, and then washing my face. I looked in the mirror and promised myself that I would never, ever cry again for losing my mother. It was at that exact point in time where I closed off my soul, and I became angry at God and at the world for a very long time. I turned off that Light in my life abruptly, and I withdrew into a deep and dark hole where I remained cold and lifeless for years.

I look at my daughters today, and I do know the kind of love that mothers have for their children. I know that Mom left me a wonderful legacy of love to pass on to my girls. But it took years and years of getting to that point of allowing that Light which had been extinguished by her death to find it's way and gently return to my soul. And that's another story for another day. . . In the meantime, the 38th anniversary of her death is this coming Sunday. Please say a prayer in rememberance of a beautiful woman whose faith in God never wavered, even until the end.