I Lost My Mother to Breast Cancer

I hold onto the baby-pink cotton cap. I pull it up to my nose in hopes that I can extract some essence of her. I curl into the fetal position, wishing that I could start my life over again, that I could relive every second with her, and that it would end differently. The day started normal, but the night moved both quickly and slowly.

I was at work, my phone in the car. Why did I leave my phone in the car? Abby, you knew enough to have your phone on your for the past couple of months, why on this day did you leave it in the car? I went on my lunchbreak at 6:00 p.m., my boyfriend, Adrian, had come up to our job to spend my lunch with me. I had gone out to my car to smoke, a bad habit that I had picked up in the aftermath of learning of her illness. I noticed that my phone was vibrating. I had a voicemail.

"Ab, it's Mike. The hospital just called. They said that mom has days, maybe weeks. We're heading to the hospital right now. I hope you get this."

Click.

I run into Old Navy. I go straight to the back, tears streaming down my face, and punch out. I frantically explain to my manager that I have to leave, my mother is dying. She doesn't understand, she didn't know she was sick. I explain as much as my racing mind allows me to.

I quickly find Adrian and yell that we need to leave right now, I need him to drive me to the hospital, he understands without an explanation.

I pray the whole way there. I pray that I will know what to say. I pray that I can manage to say what I need to say to her without crying. This being a prayer that God has heard me say several times throughout the last eleven months.

When I get there I am running through the all too familiar halls. I get in the elevator, and hit the button for the correct floor like it's the button's fault that my mother is dying. By this time I am crying uncontrollably and probably look like some mad woman to those I pass on the way to her room.

When I get there she is already gone. My grandma and her sister, my great-aunt Pat, are in the room, their faces tear stained.

She's laying motionless in the bed. Her eyes are open just enough for me to see that they have been drained of all the love and life that they once held. Her mouth is slightly open, her head facing the window, as if she had seen Him coming for her. She lay in the fetal position, she left much like she came. Her swollen body, cold and clammy, doesn't seem like hers. I wish so deeply that it wasn't. But I have to force myself to realize that this is my mother. My mother is the one laying there lifeless. She isn't breathing. She isn't moving. She isn't there anymore. Why did you leave me here Mom? Can't you take me with you? Surely the heavy pain in my heart is enough to kill me.

I break down into uncontrollable tears. I didn't think they could come any faster when I was running through the halls, but I was wrong. The sadness strips my body of its ability to hold me up. I have to support my weight on the edge of her bed. The last bed that she will ever lay in. The bed where she left us. Fuck you cancer. Fuck you.

My grandma hugs me, telling me that she is happier now. She isn't in pain anymore. And I know this is supposed to be comforting. I know that I am supposed to think like one of those inspirational people you always see on television. But I can't. All I can think is I don't have my mother anymore. I don't have my best friend. This wasn't how it was supposed to end. She was supposed to get sick, and then get better. My phone rings.

It's Adrian. I tell him she is gone. I need some time. I'll call him to come get me. Right then the rest of my family walks in.

Oh shit. I don't want my sister and brother to have to go through this. They're too young. It is almost harder to watch them in such agonizing pain, at only fourteen and fifteen. She was supposed to be at their graduation, crying like she did at mine, beaming with pride.

My father, sister, brother, grandma, and great-aunt are all there with me, we all cry until we can't anymore. It is a weird feeling, wanting, simultaneously, to leave and stay forever in a place. I couldn't stop kissing her cold forehead. We told her we would be okay. It was hard but we would pull through. In my heart though, I wasn't sure I believed it.

We gathered her things, a painful experience in itself. I crabbed the socks that she had stolen from me, and the pink cap that she wore to keep her bald head warm. We left the room, and I called Adrian to pick me up. And I left my mother there, in that hospital bed, and went home with a sadness I had never experienced before.

I couldn't really explain to Adrian what I was feeling as he drove me home. All I could do was cry, as I thought about the last eleven months I had with my mother.

I miss the time when my life was simple. I miss life before cancer. I miss life before I had to face the thought of having to deal with life without her.

I had called home six days after my twentieth birthday to see when my computer would be fixed. Instead, I found out that the third lump to be removed from my mother's right breast was not just another nonmalignant scare, it was cancer. It was a golfball-sized threat to her life, and subsequently my way of life.

The day comes for my mother's surgery. I go with the rest of my family to spend the day at the University of Michigan hospital. I ignorantly bring reading that I need to do for classes, as if I will be able to concentrate on reading while my mother lay on an operating table. We amuse ourselves in the cafeteria with food and funny memories that we have shared with my mom until her operation is over.

We go through the halls with her after the surgery. Her wrapped up in blankets laying in a hospital bed, us on foot. We keep her company in her room for a bit, relieved by the typical Amylike behavior she exhibits once the anesthesia wears off. We decide to leave so that she can rest.

Spring Break rolls around, and I go home to help take care of my mother, who is still recovering from her surgery. My biggest challenge becomes helping my mother shower.

She takes her showers in the kids bathroom, upstairs. She has to be able to control where the water hits her and our bathroom has a removable shower head. This is the first of many limitations imposed by cancer that send my mother back to a childish state.

After helping her upstairs, I help her remove her bathrobe. We have to be careful of the drainage bulbs that hang from plastic tubing that runs into her chest from small incisions by her armpits. I can't help by stare at the stitches that seem to cross-out the femininity that used to exist on her chest. Her chest now looks like that of a mans with the exception of nipples, she has none. I would continue to watch the mother I had known for the last twenty years slowly disappear.

After my mom has finished recovering from her surgery and the bulbs and stitches are removed, her doctors decide on a course of action. She will start on one kind of chemotherapy, and then after a time shift to another. Radiation will be administered when it is deemed necessary, when the chemo isn't working in a certain area.

The beginning of my mom's chemo treatments don't make her sick. She doesn't even lose her hair until she has had three to five of them. And when this occurs, when the first clumps of hair begin to fall out in the shower and while styling her hair, my mother bravely shaves her head. She proudly sports the pink University of Michigan hat that I had purchased for her. She's almost more beautiful with no hair, and she likes that it takes her less time to get ready in the morning, all she has to do now is apply makeup.

She seems to be doing fine. Maybe she will pull through, even against the staggering odds that I read about on the internet. (Only 16% of stage 4 Breast Cancer patients make it to the five year survivor point.) I didn't realize how early in the battle it was. We didn't know that the cancer in her body was, regardless of Chemo, spreading.

My mother continued to work at the job that she loved until her fatigue prevented her from doing so. She still seemed relatively healthy when I left to move into my apartment at the end of my summer break. She was tired, but besides for napping and her bald head, you couldn't really tell that she was sick.

In the first few months of the school year my mom began to show just how sick she was. I began to wonder if she would pull through. She was in and out of the hospital. She would have pain when breathing, lower-back pain, and a blood clot in her pulmonary artery that nearly took her from us. The cancer had spread to her brain and spinal fluid. She lost most control over her legs, forcing her to rely on a walker for even the simplest of tasks.

I would visit her in the hospital whenever I could during her many stays there. We would joke around, she would tell me repeatedly that she liked my outfit, and every once in a while I would help her to the bathroom. It was all hard to witness, but I wasn't quite ready to give up all hope. I wasn't quite ready to accept what was happening. Christmas, however, would shove me into reality.

I went home the night before Christmas eve to help with the cleaning and cooking. My mother was determined to do as much herself as she could through bouts of pain and exhaustion.

She managed to put together the ingredients for the cheeseball and direct the rest of us on the proper way to make the rest of the food. She sat in a office chair scooting herself around the kitchen, doing dishes and gathering cooking supplies. On Christmas Eve my mother was happier than a peach. She couldn't wait for us to open the gifts she had picked out (yes she did the Christmas shopping for not only her and my dad, but also my grandparents) and she ate all of her favorite foods. As the night went on though, my mom grew tired and sick. She had been battling bouts of puking, and Christmas Eve was no exception.

I did all that I could for her, washing out the bowl she used to puke in, rubbed her back, got her both cold and hot washcloths, helped her get up, and then back down. I can't tell you what it is like to have to help your mother to the bathroom with a walker, to have to help her change clothes, to watch a T.V. show with her and realize that she is only laughing after you because her mind is so altered by the drugs that she can't tell what is funny anymore. It is truly disheartening.

so we made it through Christmas Eve, my mom only crying once, when she hit her head falling while trying to pick out a more comfortable shirt to wear, a task that was a particularly challenging one since she had gained about thirty pounds.

When we got up the next morning at 6:00 a.m. (my sister and brother, although in high school, still insist on getting up at the crack of dawn, and to be honest, knowing that this may be my mom's last Christmas, I kind of wanted to get up then too, because I knew my mom was excited) we crept downstairs to wake our parents. We went into their bedroom where my mom slept, (my dad worked nights so he generally slept in the basement so he didn't keep my mom up) and whispered to my mom that is was Christmas morning. She awoke, startled and completely disoriented. She didn't know who we were or what day it was, I don't even think she knew where she was. It was heartbreaking to see my mom so out of it, a woman who before always had it together.

We opened presents and my mom really enjoyed it like she always does, maybe even more this time since I am not sure she remembered everything she had gotten us so it may have been just as big of a surprise to her as it was to us. Later in the day, after we had all taken naps, we began to get ready for the family to come over for dinner. My mom had not been feeling well and was starting to throw up more frequently. She was in intense pain and had the same headache from the night before.

It finally got to the point where my dad called her doctor because there were times when she wouldn't respond to our questions for a few seconds, so we couldn't tell if she just didn't have the energy to talk or if there was some other reason since she had her head buried in the pillow. When the doctor called my dad back he said to bring her into the emergency room.

We began to pack her up and my mom began to cry, she apologized for ruining our Christmas, she was always worried about everyone else before herself. We got all her things around, got her into the van, and they took off. The rest of our family started to arrive and we told them what was going on.

About 10 minutes later my mom and dad pulled back into the driveway. They stayed in the van for about ten minutes before I went out to see what was going on. I opened my mom's side door and asked what was going on. My dad told me that she wasn't responding. I called "mom" and my mother just rolled her eyes over to me. She looked like a deer in headlights, her stare blank. I ran in the house to dial 911 with the rest of my family wondering what was going on. My grandpa took the phone from me and I lost it.

When I finally returned to the kitchen they told me she wasn't breathing. My sister was a mess and my brother was outside trying to help. My aunt preformed CPR on her until the ambulance got there. My mom started breathing again, and when she did the first thing she told everyone was that she was fine. Just like her.

I never got to say goodbye to my mom that night. The last time I saw my mom alive was when she was in the ambulance, through the livingroom window. The next time I saw her was after she had passed away, in the hospital bed. There are times when I can't get that image out of my head. Times when I wish that I could have said goodbye that night, kissed her, given her one more hug.

I miss my mother so much. She was my best friend. The way that cancer changed her appearance and personality has made it difficult for me to wrap my head around what has happened. It's hard to connect pre-cancer mother to cancer mother to make the connection that both are gone. But I have finally reached that point where I can look back without necessarily being bitter about the situation that was dealt to us. I am finally able to look back and simply be thankful that I had a mother that left me with so many memories to cherish, and so many life lessons to live by.

I gently fold the pink cotton cap in half and place it on the top shelf of my closet.