Losing Her

I spent my entire 31 years of life fearing the thought of my mother's death, even before she was diagnosed with cancer in 2015. My mother was almost 40 years old when she had me. I was her first and only child; the child that she had waited her whole life for, and she treated me as such. Growing up, we had an immeasurable bond. We had the kind of mother-daughter bond that people envy. Looking back on it now, I realize it may have bordered on unhealthy how close we were; not just how much I needed her, but more so how much she needed me. As I got older and more independent, our relationship got more complicated, but the love we had for one another never changed.

I remember when we received the news of her first diagnosis. Stage four with growths and masses spread throughout the abdomen; so much so that it was hard to tell where it had even originated. The only reason it was found was because my mother went to see a doctor for sharp abdominal pains, and that doctor requested that she have scans done immediately. I remember my mom coming to my house with my father after those appointments, and her announcing the news. I remember the three of us hugging one another in the living room as the fear and panic of the unknown began to set in. I didn't know it then, but that moment was the beginning of a battle that would ultimately end in devastation.

My mom fought her cancer for seven years, which was longer than most doctors had anticipated. Shortly after her diagnosis, one major surgery removed most of the growths in her abdomen, and then after that, a series of chemotherapy and radiation served to keep the cancer cells from growing and metastasizing. And it worked...for a while. Eventually, my family and I became numb to it. After the first year of her treatments, I moved away to a new state, started a series of new jobs, and went on living my own life. Cancer felt like a battle my mom would always fight, but we lost sight of the notion that one day she might not win. I became comfortable. I watched my mom try every new treatment; watched the life slowly be drained from her body. She grew smaller, weaker, and sicker, but she was with us, and we assumed that meant that the treatments were working. And then, the phone call...

It was a Monday afternoon, and I had called my mom on my way home from work to tell her about the highs and lows of my day, as I often did on my drives home. She answered and talked with me just like she always had before, but once there was a lull in the conversation, she spoke up and told me that she had some news to share. I could hear it in her voice; the anxiousness, the fear, the uncertainty. It had spread to her liver. Tiny masses were blocking an opening within her liver, and it was unable to function properly. "For now, we don't know what this means," she said, "I'm not giving up, I'm going to keep fighting." I choked back tears on the phone, because I didn't want her to hear. But when we hung up and I arrived at my house, where my partner was waiting on the couch, fully unaware of the conversation I had just had, I fell to my knees and sobbed. He held me and waited patiently for me to explain, and we sat there together as I tried to process the news I had just received.

In the following months, I lived in a nightmare. I rushed back to my familial home in North Carolina, where I stayed for the final few months of my mother's life, caring for her as she slipped away. And though I was glad to be there for her, I know that the memories I have of that time will haunt me for the rest of my life. During this time, my father struggled to cope with his pain and fear. He had spent his entire life stifling his emotions and convincing himself that that meant he knew how to cope; so when grief came knocking, he found himself utterly unprepared for the emotions he could no longer control. He wasn't ready for this. Truth be told, neither was I, but someone had to step up, so I did. He and I cared for my mother together, but he often shied away from the harder truths, leaving me to face them. My partner came to visit me every week when he was able, but the untimely loss of his own grandfather in the midst of my mother's final days sent him to New Mexico to spend time with his family. This unfortunate series of events left me to deal with much of the trauma that I was experiencing alone. My family and friends sympathized with me and tried their best to understand, but until you live it, there is no way to fully comprehend that kind of grief.

My mother passed away in the early hours of November 28th, 2022. I was met with a cocktail of emotions that I never imagined I could possibly feel all at once. The pain and sorrow were to be expected, but the relief and subsequent guilt caught me off guard, to say the least. No one prepares you for that. Everyone talks about the sadness, but no one talks about the relief. For seven years, my mother's cancer had loomed in the back of my mind. The constant what ifs, the frequent nightmares of the moment I might finally lose her, the uncertainty of it all. So in that moment, at approximately 3a.m., when my father called me from the hospice home and said the words "your mom...she's gone," I was ready for the sadness, but I wasn't prepared for the relief. It was my biggest fear, the moment I had dreaded for so long, and it was finally here. I didn't have to wonder anymore, because it had happened. I felt guilty for feeling relieved, and I felt unimaginably, unbearably sad. Not only sad for the loss of my mother, but sad that this had to happen at all. To me, to anyone...no one should know this kind of pain. And yet, it happens all the time.

The following days were what I tend to think of as "the gray period." Everything felt surreal. I felt like I was suspended in time, not grounded in reality but not quite free of it, either. And then the formalities began. The funeral arrangements, the flowers, the casket, the gravesite, the grave marker...I've always been sour about the way modern society handles death, but my experiences in the days following my mother's death truly turned my stomach. Have you ever thought about how expensive it is to die? Or rather, how expensive it is for your loved ones when you die? Imagine losing someone you love, and almost immediately after, having to discuss the thousands of dollars it's going to cost just to celebrate their life and then bury them in a metal box in the ground. I'll spare you the rant and leave it at this: no one should have to talk about money when grieving the immediate loss of a loved one.

My father is very traditional, as was my mother, so he insisted that we have a viewing; another tradition that I don't understand and did not want, but out of respect for my parents, I didn't object. For me, it was a nauseating experience that I mostly try to block out of my memory. I am a helping personality by nature, so most of my time at the viewing was spent talking with and comforting other family members and friends, even though it was my own mother that was on display in that casket. Thankfully, we opted to do the viewing and funeral service all in one day, so once the viewing was over we were able to move on to the service immediately. I am a singer, and one of my mom's final requests was that I sing at her funeral, so that's exactly what I did. So many people told me that they didn't know how I was able to get through it, but truthfully, it wasn't that hard. Not because I wasn't hurting, but simply because I was in what felt like a catatonic state. I wanted to get the formalities over with, so I focused only on what needed to be done.

Once the funeral was over, that was the moment I felt like I was finally able to sink into my grief. And so I did. Losing her is one of the defining moments, if not the most defining moment, of my life. I am immensely, undeniably changed. Grief is a living thing, and it resides with me now as I go on with my life. An ever-present entity that I know I have to learn to tolerate, because there is no turning it away. It's with me now, always and forever, serving not only as a beacon of the loss I've suffered, but also as a reminder of the love I was lucky enough to have in the first place. In loving her, I was eternally blessed, and in losing her, I am eternally changed.