I started writing about my mom and her struggle with Ovarian Cancer over a year ago. I took a memoir writing course to help organize my thoughts, but I eventually dreaded the days I would set aside to write about her, and I stopped for my sanity. Back in January, I sat down to write comedy, and instead everything I wanted to write about my mom came pouring out. I've written about 100 pages of a book so far. Although, it's still a struggle to write about this painful time I had with my mom, especially about her death. Like grief, memories of her come in waves, and I've been writing chapters of my book based on a memory or a feeling from that time. I've mentioned in previous posts of my mother's death, not going into detail, but just as a part of my story. Because this Sunday is Mother's Day, and today happens to be World Ovarian Cancer Day, I decided to publish on my blog a chapter from the book I have been working on about my mom.
This book has no title yet, but this is a sample chapter:
The night before my mother's hysterectomy, she pulled me into her bedroom. She had a look of worry on her face, and all I thought was she wanted to tell me how scared she was, but not to worry. Instead, my mother shut the door behind her and started balling her eyes out. She went to her closet, reached up to the shelf, and grabbed a small black box. She then handed it to me, her hands trembling, and said, "If I don't make it, I wanted to make sure you have this."
"Mom, you're going to be fine," I said, half-believing myself.
"This was supposed to be your graduation gift," she said, still holding the box in her shaky grip, her hands stained with her own tears.
Something in me told me my mom knew, deep down, that there was something more serious going on with her body. The look on her face said it all--she was terrified. She probably thought she wouldn't make it through surgery, or she was afraid of what the doctor's might find. I thought it was a common procedure, and that once she had the hysterectomy, she would be back to normal.
I told my mother that night not to worry, and to save the gift for when I would graduate a year later.
She was able to see me graduate college, and it was one of the proudest moments of her life. Shortly after I graduated, she would show her friends who came to visit my degree, which was displayed on a shelf inside her T.V. stand in her living room. She prided herself on raising a child that made it through college.
My mother always wanted to pursue her degree. She was married at 20, had me by 23, then my brother when she was about 27, and had hoped that eventually, she could go to college. Unfortunately, my father didn't really go along with her dreams, and she ended up leaving my dad, who was an abusive alcoholic. I was 4-years-old, my brother nine months old. She decided the black eye my dad gave her was the last straw, filed for divorce, and went on public aid.
When I was young, I didn't know how poor we were. My mom worked from home part-time doing telemarketing so she could be home with my brother and for me after school. On the weekends, she worked as a receptionist for a hospital. My brother and I saw our dad every other weekend while he was staying at my grandmother's.
It wasn't until I saw my mom crying one night when I was 4, that I became very angry with my dad. When I would visit him, I yelled at him, "Why do you make mommy sad?" and "This is all your fault!" At the time, I didn't know he was an alcoholic, and that alcoholism is a disease, and that's why daddy hit mommy sometimes. I was smart enough to know, however, that when he drank beer, he wasn't so nice.
I asked him one afternoon when him and my mom were still together "Dad, can you only have one beer today?" He then asked me, "I have six here in the cooler, and I don't want to waste them, so is six okay?" So of course, I said, "Sure, Daddy!" not knowing that six was a lot, but his tolerance was so high, it was probably just enough to give him a buzz.
Because my mom was vividly upset from the divorce, it affected my health as well. I barely ate, and became Anemic. Above is a picture my aunt took of me, my mom, and my brother shortly after she left my dad. You can tell how tired my mom looked, how pale I looked from the Anemia, and my brother looked like a chubby, healthy baby, blissfully unaware of our sorrows.
My mom told me when I was older that the hardest thing for her to do was to leave my father, but that she had to do it in order to take care of her kids. She was a mother first, and she couldn't survive if my dad was around. She always wanted a happy family, tried to be there for my dad even when he went to A.A. a few times. It wasn't enough, and from that point on, it was the three of us.
The morning of my mom's hysterectomy, my brother and I drove her from the suburbs to the hospital on the west side of Chicago. It was very silent most of the ride there. The air was filled with doubt, fear, and worry. Just like I had been when I was 4-years-old, I had no appetite, and I all I could do was focus on my mom, because her pain was my pain.
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