The last time I saw her was the day before she passed away, in the living room at my uncles house. She was sitting on the couch eating steak, corn and potatoes (three things we eat often in my family). At that point in her struggle with cancer, and cancer related illnesses, she was long past the point where she knew she was going to die. She had known for some time by then, we all knew.
In the fall of 2001 she was diagnosed with cancer and endured the struggle with chemotherapy and radiation for less than one short year. I remember that year profoundly, as it was one of the defining years of my development. I was in 8th grade and only 13 years old. Going to middle school with a dying mother was a struggle. I acted out, was constantly restless, but I went because it was a safe place. I went because the men and women of Great Brook Middle School made it better in their small ways, and each small way added up to a big feeling of love. No one cared when I got kicked out of (or left) spanish class because I hated the teacher, because at least I was at school. No one cared when I wanted to stay late to help me get through the day, because they knew where I was. They knew and they cared. Countless days and evenings I spent in and out of the office that year, doing good and not so good things. But what do you expect from a 13 year old girl who couldn't even go see her own mother because she could have gotten her sick with the common cold?
December and January of that year were particularly cold, or maybe I just remember it that way. I didn't get to see her a lot, and when I did her blue winter hat never left her bald head, inside or outside. I remember my sisters and I had the idea of all of us shaving our heads together, to help us all with the pain. We never did, we never had the time.
Less than a year was all we had from when we knew to when she was gone, less than a year of my adolescence and my childhood. My life was altered on that day, the last day I saw her, more than any other day of that year. Sure I remember the times I couldn't function or feel, the days when spanish, science, math and humanities didn't matter much. The days when my advisor Mrs. Gnade would let me sit in the corner of the library by myself. I read all four of the first Harry Potter books in one month that spring. But that day we had a connection, my mom and I. I couldn't take my eyes off of her, I couldn't stop looking. I stared at her for a long time, in that single moment, sitting on the couch with her side to me as she ate and watched television. I knew it would be the last time I would ever see her, and I didn't want it to end. I couldn't let it end as long as I was sitting there. No one else knew it was her last day on earth, no one else felt it like I did.
I remember leaving that afternoon, after I looked at her for the final time, with my three sisters and my father. As we walked up the hill in the driveway I told them that she was going to die the next day, I just knew. They didn't, or didn't want to, believe me. Everyone else in the family was talking about weeks, maybe a month, left. But I knew. I always knew things like that. I'm the different one in the family. The eerie one who can feel something before it happens, or tell you where you left your watch. But I knew, and I was right.
At 7:07am I woke up the next morning. It was a monday in August, my first day of high school was only a few weeks away, so it was strange to be up at 7:07am. I rolled over and the phone rang at 7:27am. My dad was at work, so my older sister answered the phone. Someone asked if our dad was home, I can't remember who called but it was either our uncle or step-father, and he wasn't - he had already gone into work. They said okay, and hung up - but we knew. We knew what it was before our father came home from work with tears in his eyes to tell us. We sat in the living room and it was as if nothing moved. She had died at 7:07 that morning. She was at peace, with our uncle telling her it was okay to go. Everything in the room was still. She was gone and it all stopped. There were no wails of crying or break-downs of devastation, we just stopped. Sat together, the three of us. It had always been the three of us, my sister, dad and I, since my parents divorce when I was 2. The actual divorce was more like 4 or 5, but I could see the divide when I was 2, I could feel it had happened.
And so we sat. I think we went school shopping later that day to get our minds off of it and out of the house. We had known it was coming. We knew it was going to happen. None of us expected it to happen that fast, least of all me - the baby of the family. I was the one who spent the least amount of my life with her, and I hate it, I can't stand it. But every perspective has it's pain, for if I knew her as long as my other sisters I would be feeling a different kind of pain. But mine is all mine.
She never saw me go to high school, or drive a car. She didn't know me past the age of 14, and she didn't get the chance to see me go to any of the proms I went to (4). She didn't see me graduate from high school, or move to college, and she wasn't there when I got my degrees last May. She didn't watch me get on a plane for Africa, and she doesn't have the the arduous task of worrying about me from 8,000 miles away like my dad does.
My mother didn't watch me grow up, she wasn't here with me, and that's the hardest part of all. That as time passes more of my life will be without her than with her, this will never be easier, just harder. But, everything comes with grace, and I do not remember her in vain. The small amount of time that we had together was good, and it was real, because much like myself my mother was never anything she was not. She never pretended to be someone different. She was who she was, flaws and all. And for that I remember her fondly, and I aspire to be like her. To be strong enough to be true to myself, regardless of how others perceive me. I want to be strong like her, and to make mistakes and have regrets, because that means you lived.
That day, one afternoon, we clicked and connected. I knew it was her time to go, and she knew I knew. She was in a state of mind all her own at that point, but I knew she knew. She saw me looking at her, looking through her, into the person she was inside, and that person looked back. That person was scared, scared for her children and for herself, but she knew it was time, and she stayed true to who she was, death and all.
I am fierce and feisty, just like her. Strong and argumentative. Opinionated, brilliantly smart and capable. I have in me the same fire that lived in her. The fire that pushed her to the edge and brought her back. The thing that put her in control of her own life and drove her to start her own businesses. She never took no for an answer, she got the things she wanted in this life.
She was a fighter, a survivor and a warrior. Sure, she pissed a lot of people off and let her kids down more often than we like to admit, but she lived. She worked her ass off and was there when she wanted to be. She wasn't perfect, no one is. She hurt me more times than she will ever know, but she is still a person I want to be like, a person I want to become. Fearless and on the path of her own life, and she didn't give a shit if anyone liked it or not, she did what she wanted to do, bottom line. She knew what she wanted and how to get it.
I haven't thought about all this for a really long time. I guess I try not to, because of the overwhelming devastation it makes me feel. How do you expect someone so young to process and cope with something so hard, something so big that they watch happen and unfold right in front of their eyes? You can't. It's impossible at such a time of transition and growth. And so now, almost 10 years later, I think of these moments, these fragments of time that have come to define me so well, and I understand. I wasnt' ready, didn't have it in me, to face this until now. To face the pain, the reality, and the peace of accepting this. To let go of that day and to know that yes, my mother is gone, but she lives through me. And let me tell you, I am my mother's daughter. I do what I want and go after my dreams. I walk through this life with a different rhythm in my step, I am different, just like she was.
So maybe I'll stop running, running away from all of this. Avoiding it and dodging it like a train. I don't like to be in one place for too long, and it's because this catches up with me. But it should, it's time. Time to let go, to turn and face what I have been running from for a decade. Time to learn I have been running from peace, not pain, as I accept and forgive more and more. As I look at my mother not with the "you let me down" attitude I have had in previous years, but with the "you were so much more than I knew" one, I am glad for this change in heart, this growth and change. I want to remember my mother the way she was, not the way my pain tells me she was. And the more I see her for who she really was the more proud I am to have had her as my mother. She was an incredible woman, in her own very unique way. I think that's where I got it.
Beautiful, Renee. I love you xoxo
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