A Wonderful Easter with Mom

Easter 2001 was the last holiday I spent with my mother and entire family. Mom spent the previous year fighting lung cancer and after receiving the wonderful news of remission in January of 2001 the cancer came back four months later. This time the cancer had spread to her liver and brain and mom had maybe a year left to live. After mom found out the cancer was not in remission anymore, she decided we would celebrate Easter and she went all out to make this holiday memorable.

All of us were surprised that mom was able to cook the Easter feast. The cancer was debilitating, but the steroids gave mom energy and a false sense of hope that the disease was not going to kill her. Mom's Easter meal was delicious with ham, mashed potatoes, corn casserole, green bean casserole, baked beans, pistachio and mandarin orange salads, and pies. Plus, mom made her famous meatballs made of pork, hamburger, and sausage. They were my favorite and extremely delicious.

Thinking about this Easter meal, I can smell the scrumptious aromas that filled my mother's house as she prepared the holiday feast. The brown sugar on the ham and the sweet, tangy sauce of the meatballs filled our noses making our stomachs grumble in anticipation. Mom wasn't a gourmet chef, but her meals were tasty and home-cooked. She always made sure we had well-balanced dinners with meat, potatoes and vegetables. During the ten years since her death and around the holidays, I've often thought about how much I miss mom and her cooking and will recall the last Easter with her.

The whole family came to mom's house to celebrate the holiday. There were family members I had not seen for many years and who drove long distances to see my mother before she died. We reminisced about funny family memories. My dad always thought his ideas were brilliant and it provided many laughs for numerous years. One of dad's illustrious ideas was blindfolding my sister and me after we were too old to hunt for Easter eggs. My sister and I would search for the eggs with the help of mom and dad yelling, "You're getting cold,' or 'You're getting warmer." Mom and dad laughed hysterically as my sister and I stumbled around the backyard looking for those darn Easter eggs.

This brilliant idea to have a blindfolded Easter egg hunt was memorialized in pictures and the photo albums were brought out. Everyone got a laugh at the pictures of my sister and I amusing our parents as we searched for decorated boiled eggs in a backyard filled with many objects to bump and trip over. Along with the Easter pictures, there were photos of the many vacations we took as a family and the numerous trips to Hawaii that my parents took. Mom shared the fun times her and dad had in Hawaii. My sister and I talked about the trips in the different campers dad tried out.

Mom died July 30, 2001. She tried to fight the cancer by trying an experimental chemotherapy, but the treatments made her very sick. We didn't know if the cancer treatment was going to help her live longer or make her die sooner, but mom decided to stop the chemotherapy due to how ill it made her. After the chemotherapy was discontinued, the cancer spread quickly and mom only survived a month.

Watching mom struggle with cancer and taking care of her, this was not easy. During the year that cancer took over our lives, it was a living hell. But among all the pain and sadness that was created by the cancer, Easter 2001 was a special and happy time. It was our last holiday with mom and it will always be a wonderful memory.