My mother died of ovarian cancer when I was 25. For a long time, that was how I described it. I was 25. I was stuck in a child`s mindset, focusing only on her life with me and my pain at losing her. In doing so, I dismissed so much of her life, her life independent of me: hitchhiking across europe as a young woman, a brief romance with a mysterious italian man, nights out at small town Saskatchewan dances while attending nursing school during the day, broken hearts, a successful and meaningful career, a love affair with my father and its subsequent disappointments, and millions of tears, secret smiles, private triumphs and heartbreaks of which I will never know. My mother died of ovarian cancer when she was 54. She had plans for her future, and dreams left to pursue. Nowadays, my tears are for her and for everything she has missed.
For a while my mother had not been feeling well but pushed it aside. She was a registered nurse and fell prone to the bad habit most medical professionals have of diagnosing themselves. She had a variety of reasons for the pains she was having: it was stress, it was indigestion, it was menopause. But eventually her stomach distended so much and the pain was so intense she had to make an appointment to see a doctor. Tests were done and it was decided that exploratory surgery was the only way to determine the problem. The night before our family doctor comforted us and said, "It's not cancer. Cancer doesn't present like this". We clung to those words, desperately wanting to believe them. He was wrong. When they opened my mother up they found her so riddled with cancer that nothing could be done but drain off some fluid and close her up again. There was no chance for a cure. Now it was just, 'how long'. And that was a question to which no one had an answer.
Immediately my mother turned her attention to comforting us. Like many mothers, she was the cornerstone of our family. We took her for granted, and it broke my heart that in the flurry of grief and love that poured out at her diagnosis, she said, "I've never felt more loved'. I think back on that statement often, and feel ashamed that it was only in those circumstances that I told herhow important she was to me. These are the things I think about when people say they have no regrets in life. I have a million regrets and so many swirl around her. I should have done more, spent more time, helped more, listened more. It's a burden I'll always carry, like stones hanging around my neck. But the burden is a gift as well, reminding me to be try and be better, be kinder, to be more forgiving, to be more like her.
We were fortunate enough to live just outside a big city with world class care. One of us could take mom in to the clinic in the morning, stay a few hours while she received her treatment and go home for the night. During one visit my mother introduced me to a young woman who was sharing a room with her. They had become friends over the weeks of treatment. Sitting next to this young woman's bed were her two small children, no older than 5 or 6, and a pleasant looking young man who was obviously her husband. Afterwards my mother said that this woman's friendship had helped her deal with her own feelings of self-pity. "They have to travel four hours every day for her treatment. She's dying and she hasn't even raised her kids. I'm lucky. My family is grown and I've had a whole life already." It speaks to what a remarkable woman my mother was, able to feel grateful even in the midst of a brutal treatment.
Mom battled cancer for two years. The doctors had guessed she'd live a few months but my mother was valiant. During those two years we had many important discussions about life, for which I am enternally grateful. One of these discussions was on the existence of the soul. My mother knew that I had very loudly and arrogantly disavowed god and religion as a teenager and she seemed somewhat affectionately amused by it (I didn't understand then how often older people are amused by the black and white absolutes with which young people view life). During one of these discussions we talked about her training as a nurse with The Grey Nuns in Winnipeg and how one day they had explained to her scientifcally that the soul exists. She couldn't remember the exact details but it had to do with the energy measured in the body and the indesputable fact that energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed. The idea that some little spark of my mother's would somehow continue on is a comfort to this still confirmed atheist, even if its only a little blip of energy. When out walking, sometimes I think I feel it dancing along beside me. Yesterday, the sun hit the snow at such an angle that it was alight with tiny little glimmering lights and I thought of her. Life is not as black and white as it used to be.
The night before my mother died I went to bed early. I suppose we all knew on some level that she was dying but held out hope that she would come home again, as she had after other bad spells. As I laid there trying to sleep I was overcome by a feeling: 'get up, go to the hospital'. To this day I can't explain it. In the middle of the night I got out of my bed, got dressed, and drove to see my mother for the last time. She was sleeping. I leaned over her and whispered in her ear. I told her how much I loved her, how lucky I was that she had been my mother, and so many other things too private and precious to repeat. She smiled in her sleep, a smile which has been replayed in my mind a million times, a final gift.
My mother died on a sunny September morning just before 11 am. My father and my siblings were all there as she passed away. They joined hands around her bed and sang 'You Are My Sunshine' to her as she died. I had driven back home, two hours away, to take care of some issues with my business and planned to return the next day. My brother called me and said the words. I didn't cry but instead felt an overwhelming sense of relief. The torture, the agony for all of us was finally over. The tears came later, when I wrapped her in her favourite shawl, helped my sister put her in a new nightgown, and watched my family fill her coffin with secret notes, photos, talismen. Death makes people superstitious. A way to cope I suppose.
As I get older I sometimes feel like I am travelling down a long road, one on which my mother stopped by the wayside. Just when I feel she is becoming too distant and I have lost her, she permiates my life again, with a sound, a smell, a memory. Maybe its that little spark of energy dancing around me again. Now I know why old people like to speak the names of the dead. It makes them part of our here and now, keeps them alive in our lives. My mother is indisputably a part of me. She's the best part of me. Some day, all of our names will be forgotten, no one will tell our stories anymore or remember our deeds, good or bad. But we were here. She was here. And I speak her name like a prayer.
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