As most people close to me know, I lost my Mom to Stage 4 breast cancer on 12/9/13. I have written about it a little in my post Wasn't Supposed to Happen but nothing at length publicly. I have thought a lot about it: life, death, my Mom, other people who have passed, cancer, womanhood, the past, the present, the future and all that could have been. It's been about 9 months since my Mom died and I am finally ready to put the experience in words. Even now, writing the words "...since my Mom died" is strange to me, even uncomfortable. While trying to figure out how to put the experience on paper, I've also been trying to figure out where to start. Some advice about losing a loved one? Advice about having a loved one with terminal cancer? Let me just start by detailing her life with cancer and our life with her cancer.
My Mom was first diagnosed with breast cancer in the Fall of 2008. As was typical of my Mom, she told me about about it in a phone conversation in a kind of matter-of-fact way: I have Stage 1 breast cancer. Shortly after my Mom turned 61 in August of that year, she decided on a whim to have a mammogram; she wasn't scheduled for it, she just decided that it would be a good idea. Sure enough, they found a tumor about the size of a chickpea that turned out to be malignant. Her doctors removed the mass and she went through radiation over the course of several weeks. It's difficult to remember because, as was also typical of my Mom, she didn't make a big deal out of it. Phone conversations during that time probably went something like "Today I got my nails done, got radiation, went grocery shoppping, came home and took a nap and made dinner": the radiation was just another errand on her list. The treatment worked and she was in remission not too long after that.
Mom was in remission from about the beginning of 2009 until May of 2013. During that time, all of us except for Mom really forgot about her cancer. I never identitified with the various breast cancer-awareness paraphrenilia or events. I often forgot that my Mom was a breast cancer survivor. It was always like "oh, yeah, Mom had cancer once." I guess we took it for granted that cancer was no longer a part of our lives. But, Mom did not forget. She did buy us pink ribbon paraphenalia. She also bought my sister and I the same book for Christmas in 2008: Things I Want My Daughters to Know. The book is about a woman dying of cancer and her relationship with her daughters during her life and after her death. My Mom each wrote personal messages to Whitney and I in the front covers of our books. At the time, I kind of put it aside as I thought there was no way my Mom would die of cancer, especially since her treatment seemed to be going so well. Little did I know that I would come to treasure that book and her inscription 5 years down the road.
My Mom was first diagnosed with breast cancer in the Fall of 2008. As was typical of my Mom, she told me about about it in a phone conversation in a kind of matter-of-fact way: I have Stage 1 breast cancer. Shortly after my Mom turned 61 in August of that year, she decided on a whim to have a mammogram; she wasn't scheduled for it, she just decided that it would be a good idea. Sure enough, they found a tumor about the size of a chickpea that turned out to be malignant. Her doctors removed the mass and she went through radiation over the course of several weeks. It's difficult to remember because, as was also typical of my Mom, she didn't make a big deal out of it. Phone conversations during that time probably went something like "Today I got my nails done, got radiation, went grocery shoppping, came home and took a nap and made dinner": the radiation was just another errand on her list. The treatment worked and she was in remission not too long after that.
Mom was in remission from about the beginning of 2009 until May of 2013. During that time, all of us except for Mom really forgot about her cancer. I never identitified with the various breast cancer-awareness paraphrenilia or events. I often forgot that my Mom was a breast cancer survivor. It was always like "oh, yeah, Mom had cancer once." I guess we took it for granted that cancer was no longer a part of our lives. But, Mom did not forget. She did buy us pink ribbon paraphenalia. She also bought my sister and I the same book for Christmas in 2008: Things I Want My Daughters to Know. The book is about a woman dying of cancer and her relationship with her daughters during her life and after her death. My Mom each wrote personal messages to Whitney and I in the front covers of our books. At the time, I kind of put it aside as I thought there was no way my Mom would die of cancer, especially since her treatment seemed to be going so well. Little did I know that I would come to treasure that book and her inscription 5 years down the road.
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