Hi Everyone!
When October rolls around, my heart is filled with happy memories accompanied by a pang in my heart. As many of you know, October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. It’s an illness that plagued my mother off and on for many years. She died just a couple years ago after fighting it, really hard, for a long time.
Below is a photo of my mother, sisters and me. This was when Mom was in remission the first time and had grown out enough hair to feel confident enough about getting her picture taken. To this day, this is one of my favorite pictures. I have it framed in my home, and will cherish it always.
This blog is dedicated to her. She is the one person I admire most in my life. She lived her life with such grace and love; it was, and is, easy to say that if I am 10% the goodness that she was, I’m doing pretty well. My Mom lived her life as an incredible model to myself and my three siblings, and a great lifetime partner to my father. She loved the study of theology and lived her life dedicated to helping others. She and my father never made much money, but most of what they did make, they gave away to those who needed it more. Mom was a model of integrity, character, truthfulness and justice. Her proclivity for inclusiveness and capacity for forgiveness was astounding.
A few years before my Mother died, my sisters and I gave her (and ourselves) a gift: a necklace, with an angel wing, on which was inscribed “There are no goodbyes for us. Wherever you are, you will always be in my heart.” My sisters and I, my Mother’s sister, and a friend who is family, still wear ours. My Mom’s unfaltering faith and belief that this is true, helped us all through the grief.
She said that going through the experience of cancer and all its treatments made life more beautiful to her. She never complained. Ever. She especially loved reading in the early morning hours as the sun would rise. She said that it would never get old, bathing in that light every morning. I still can’t see a sunrise or sunset without feeling intensely close to her.
Several months before she died, I told her, holding back tears and voice cracking, that I wasn’t ready for her to leave. I wasn’t done learning from her. I would be lonely without her physically being here with me. How would I know that she was really still there? Her answer was: “Oh, honey. You know, there is something porous between this life and the next. My love for you will bleed through and you’ll feel it – you’ll know that I haven’t left you.”
A day before she died, although it was difficult for her to talk, she was still cracking jokes, and being so very thankful to the hospice workers and the pastor who came to see her. My sisters and I were there and utterly heartbroken when she took her last breath. I will always consider being there with her one of the biggest honors of my life. She brought us into this world, and I like to think that we helped shepherd her out.
I miss you, Mom. I love you. Thank you.
