Remember my amazing mom

How often this past year, with my own ordeal of breast cancer, did I hear her voice in my head, motivating me to be strong, to stay the course, to get through it. Many times I thought of her and how bad it was for her, in the 70s, before anti-emetics existed, on the chemo.

I am not my mother. That’s my mantra. In many ways, I wish I were more like my mom (she was patient, and extremely popular…everyone loved her.) but even though I did not have the BRCA genes for cancer, it’s hard not to think that your own progression will be just like what you’ve seen happen to your own loved ones.

“You are not your mother. Your mother’s cancer is not your cancer.” I keep hearing. And I know that.

I know it in my head. But in my soul, it feels like I’m counting down now, to a possible end. And what that might be like.

I can hear my mom’s voice, just before I wake up some mornings. When I go to sleep in a complete quandry, and not knowing how to make a decisions (for example, when I was trying to decide between mastectomy and radiation) and I learned in my teens that your mom is always right. When I heard her tell me not to mutilate myself, I knew that’s how she would have felt my drastic decision to have mastectomy and no reconstruction would have been. She had to have a radical mastectomy, AND radiation, so she got the worst of both worlds. She did not have a reconstruction until the procedures for autologous donation were perfected in the 1990s.

I’ve walked this whole path, last year, of breast cancer, and thought about my mom with each step. I was 11 when she was diagnosed, and 38 when she died. She held out for me—she was stubborn like that. When they told her she had maybe a year to live, she defiantly told the white coats “no, you’re wrong.”

And they were.

So, I have much to learn from her still, and I’m trying to, but to no avail yet. She was like a zen master with her confidence and assuredness. I’m a bug that cowers in the dark corner feeling self-pity and seeing the worst of everything.

Where she had a 1% chance, and a 99% danger, she took the 1% and ran with it, whereas I have a 99% chance, and a 1% danger, and it scares me to death.

I’m thankful for those nearly 3 decades she was given, for her to protect me and take care of me from the age of 11 to 38, but more—for the role model of how to “be” and gracefully grow old and be her own woman.

She was quite a woman.

Working in my garden and anticipating (hoping) having some tomatoes to can this summer, brings back memories of the first time I remember mom canning (except for maybe jelly). We had always had a garden, but not a large one, as we lived in the suburbs and then on 2-acres, and with a large family, there wasn’t a lot left over to can. What extra produce there was, or what we went and picked from orchards, etc., went into the freezer.

The summer before I turned 10 we moved to Maryland (and a farm). When we first moved in (after several weeks of camping and hotel living while we looked for a house) it was August (with no air conditioning) and our furniture, etc. had not arrived from Indiana. So there was my mom, with six kids ranging in age from 13 – 2, no stove, no beds, no nothing (I don’t remember if we had a refrigerator or not). We were literally camping out in our tents and cooking over an open fire and a camp stove.

Some neighbors offered mom a bunch of tomatoes. Raised on a farm during the depression (and having six hungry kids and a husband to feed), Mom wasn’t one to pass up such a bounty. So armed with our Coleman camp stove, a large pan and some canning jars (I assume she went out and bought those), she set to work (outside in the yard), canning tomatoes.

When our furniture arrived, we still didn’t have a stove (our stove in Indiana was built in, so I guess we had to go buy one and they were waiting for something). But we did have our freezer. More bounty was offered from the neighbors in the form of all the Silver Queen sweet corn we wanted to pick. Mom was deterred at first, because she didn’t have a stove to blanch the corn before freezing it, but the neighbor told her she never blanched her corn and it always turned out great. So Dad took us down to pick corn, and what we didn’t devour at the supper table, Mom set about putting in the freezer for winter enjoyment.

_{P.S. I still refuse to plant anything but Silver Queen. :-D}

This is one of my favorite pictures of my mom, mostly because it’s one of the few (informal ones) of her with all of her kids together. It was taken Easter morning as we went out the door to church. Actually, now that I think about it, it was probably taken when we got home from church – I can’t imagine that we were ready early enough to pose for a picture before church.

My youngest sister was 3 weeks old in this picture. I was looking at it last night amazed at how Mom managed to get all 6 of us all dressed up for Easter while taking care of a newborn. (To give my dad the credit due him, it did help that he was the kind of dad that helped, rather than expecting her to do it all.)

Mom made the white coat that I have on (I’m the one in the middle at the back), the lavender coat my sister E has on, and possibly the navy coat that J is wearing. I can’t say for sure, but I remember her making my coat, and I think she made it for me (rather than for my older sister), which meant that she made it that year, which adds to my amazement.

I still have that coat, and a lot of other things that she made for me/us.

I think this was my mom’s favorite time of year. then again she gave all year round like it was christmas everyday. Why does it seem harder now than it did when she first passed? I am having our first ever xmas party at our house for myside of the family and i am excited and sad at the same time… Christmas is getting harder and harder to be excited for. Mom I miss you so much and miss the chance at knowing and learning so much more, the chance of the friendship that could have been.

day, I think of something you have done or said. It is getting harder sometimes i think i’ve lost you. Then something happens and i feel your presence. Iknow you would have been mad at me for the tears i shed at missing you, i still cry because it is hard but then i try to think of something you would say or just that touch you would have and in some small way iam comforted.

I don’t care how old i am, i still want my mom, and it is with that want that i hold onto, to somehow find a way to keep crawling out of my hole that the depression digs. I know that everyone needs a mothers love, biological or not, and it is with that i will always be here for my kids.

Is coming up. 7 years, 3 more babies and a dog. So much life has gone on and yet I am still missing you more than ever. I shed tears of sadness at not getting to know you more, even more tears are shed because my sons missed meeting the most loving and humble soul ever and having her arms wrapped tightly around them and being embraced in her sweetness. Sometimes i think I hear you whispering to me, sometimes i smell you. The thing i miss the most is just being able to sit next to you and not say a word and yet you still comforted me. I wish you were here.

with my sister from New Jersey.

She would be 81 now, had she lived past 68. If I live as long as she did, I have 12 years and change to go. Carpe diem, Bill.

The beard must go soon.

I went out in the back yard and hacked down some of the overgrowth that had occured while I was in NY.

I’m lucky my hubby remembered to water the plants at all…he had no idea how to cut back and prune.

So today, I went out there with the saw and fiskars and cut back some of the jungle.

My lemon tree had gotten about 14 feet high, and no lemons (bastard…make with the lemons!) and my rosemary bush had turned into a 7 foot high, 6 foot wide monster. (They say it grows well in a house where the woman is stubborn. I’ll say!)

I thought about my mom quite frequently. That back yard was hers, and I seldom did anything in it. She knew so much about plants and roses and all these neat mom things. I just go out and trim when it gets out of control, and pull weeds before they get too big.

Sometimes, when I’m working out there, I wonder that a 75 year old woman could maintain it as much as she did. It wears me out (granted, I have MS and have zero energy, especially in the hot sun) but she was on chemo for years, and never complained once. I think it comes down to her love of actual gardening…I just love the garden for leisurely activities, reading a book, etc. I like it to be orderly, but I don’t like getting it there.

She’s somehow with me, in mind, when I’m out there working on that yard.
So strange.

Today you would have been 62.

I’ll be bringing you flowers later.

I miss you very much…

_{As an aside: Dad will be 59 in October.
Kudos to Mom for bagging a younger man way back when!}

We miss you.