The very week of my grandmother's funeral my mom discovered a small lump in her breast. She was 44. She'd been through a living hell the last 2 years prior to this discovery. My father had taken his own life in the summer of '69--the main cause as best I've been able to discern and understand in the four plus decades since was that the long slippery slope of alcoholism (generational) and grappling with the long suppressed trauma of an abusive childhood had finally taken it's ultimate toll. Right on the heels of this devastating loss we learned that my grandma had inoperable pancreatic cancer, my mom caring for her (mostly in our home) for a little more than a year, all while keeping her family and home going, I really don't know how she did it.
A few days after having laid our granny to rest, mom was on the phone with her cousin Gerry, I called her my aunt because she was always more of an aunt, as well, more of a sister to my mom. As she was talking with Gerry she reached to scratch right above her left breast and felt a small lump. Only the size of a BB she said. She mentioned it to Gerry, not really thinking anything of it. Gerry, being a nurse, immediately insisted that this be checked out. Thank God for Gerry, as my my mom was not one for going to the doctor.
With this, all of sudden my world was upside down as I found myself at my Aunt's house in Bellevue, my rich Aunt (the house they had in the 60's is on the same street Bill Gates lives on now). My aunt's life was very different from ours. Very upward status. Even as a youngster you could feel this. They always had all the latest and greatest. I never envied it. My mom though would sometimes complain: "It's always brag, brag, brag", "I buy you Perfection and they have Superfection". I still chuckle at this one. I couldn't have cared less. I played with their toys while we were there, it was of no issue to me, just did what kids do. We'd have a blast playing board games. I was a very content kid and just happy with what we had. I had, in the years to come, heard more than a few relatives refer to their home as feeling "sterile"..."everything in it's appointed place". She was always very good to us, but just an entirely different scene from the rest of the family. And I didn't particularly like staying at their house too long. I did have alot of fun with my cousins, but I would tire of it after a few days and want to be back home. Our home always felt, I don't know, more at ease...a sanctuary of love, simplicity and fun. Contented, with regularity, and nurturing. My mom had the wonderful quality and good sense to let her children just be kids. My aunt's way of life and routine felt much more regimentary. Exacting standards were to be upheld above all. Her disapproval of a thing was very much felt and voiced. But she treated us very well, and I can see had much patience with the childhood exuberance and antics that would inevitably occur when all of us kids were together. There were many fun times for sure.
Having lost my Dad just two years prior and my young mind struggling to process this profound loss, death itself, and having to adjust to this new reality and the re-arrangement of our life. Coupled with the inevitable fear a youngster develops when having lost one parent, of losing the other. And now, having JUST lost my grandma, my young eyes having seen way too much of the illness that took my beloved granny away, I was all too aware of what this news about my mom meant. My mom was EVERYTHING to me ...always. I was inconsolable, and SO afraid. I had my cousin Pam, who in those years I enjoyed spending some time with. On holidays and during summers she always begged for me to come and stay, and we would have alot of fun. They had a pool and they lived right on the golf course which provided plenty for us to explore. But during this stay, I could not have any fun, they could barely coax me out of Pam's room. I would just sit in there and stare at the floor, I could sense the frustration of it on my aunt. I felt so alone, and all I wanted was to be with my mom. The memories of this time are very vivid and still painful if I think of it.
Right away (no dilly-dallying around as it sometimes seems now days) my mom by doctor's advice had a Radical Mastectomy at Doctors Hospital in Tacoma. Even though the tumor was tiny and there was no metastasis, they took her breast, all the surrounding lymph nodes and muscle. Her armpit was hollow and she had 78 stitches reaching down to her waist on the left side. When I was older she explained to me that the doctor had told her they were going to put her under and do a biopsy, and that if they found malignancy they would proceed to do a mastectomy. When she awoke she definitely knew the outcome.
They kept my mom in the hospital for 10 days. When she got back home she had a pretty difficult time the first week or so, she was in alot of pain and had trouble getting comfortable in her bed to sleep. She told me the first night she ended up getting out of bed and sitting up in the chair all night. The boys ended up raising the head of her bed up for her with paint cans, which made it much more comfortable for her.
When I finally got to come back home my mom was at our back door and she barely got the door open and I threw myself onto her waist and would not let go...I can remember her looking at my Aunt Donnie and saying "Oh my..this has been alot on her". It was alot on all of us.
After that, I didn't want to leave her side, I couldn't be close enough. When I started 3rd grade after that summer, I went through a bad phase at school where I kept saying I didn't feel good so they would send me to the nurse and my mom would have to come and get me. I remember my teacher telling me the final time--"this is the last time Stacey". I think she and my mom had a discussion...the insecurity I was feeling from all the losses and illness. With time and patience I got better and felt more secure. My 3rd grade year turned out really fun and one of my best. Life went on very normal and happy.
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| Whitman Elementary 1971-72 Third Grade Tacoma, WA |
As I got older and would see how her body had been butchered over a tumor the size of a pea, I kind of thought it was overkill. She told me her doctor was very old fashioned and wanted to make sure. That's how it was handled in those years. But ya know, in the end she came back to full capability, none of this stopped her from going back to life as she was before. Such a survivor ...such moxy. An example I have not lived up to. And she remained cancer free for 26 yrs., and I was so grateful of that. As well, I have since experienced through a couple friends who had only a lumpectomy and radiation ....their cancers returned and ultimately claimed their lives. So I'm mixed in my feelings on this.
Sometimes through the years, not often, but sometimes, I would wonder what would have happened to my life if this had gone another way. I would have been left in the custody of my aunt. It was a feeling of dread when I'd contemplate what life would have been like to live in their world and not be with my brothers. Thank you God for saving my mom and the wonderful happy childhood and life there after because of it.
As the years passed mom and I always remained so close. As I became a young adult and after I married and moved from home, the bond only continued to grow. I had the kind of Mom I could share anything with. My best friend expressed to me how fortunate I was to have this and how she so wished she and her mother could have this kind of bond. This made me appreciate even more how fortunate we were. Maybe having the fear of losing her so young gave me a greater appreciation for her, I don't know. And perhaps the loss of her husband, my dad. I've wondered at that at times, how it may have been different.
She was such an ageless spirit, who could relate to all from toddler to 80 year old. Such a good listener and so understanding. She cried with me through my break up with my first love, in fact sitting up with me all night long and into the morning, listening while I poured out my feelings and heartache. There right beside me through every trial and triumph. Even things as simple as my finally rescuing the princess in Nintendo Super Mario...Too funny LOL...She was working at the local diner and I called to tell her, she told me to hang on and she went and announced it to everyone.
We shared everything...holidays were so fun, as we worked together and I learned all the family traditions and special touches. Christmas was just magical, and remained so through all the years. She had such a flair for decorating, baking and gift giving. Such loving personal thought put into all of it. More even than Christmas itself I loved our hectic shopping days lugging around bags till it felt like my arms would break off at the elbows ...out at the midnight sales and then going to Denny's for hot fudge sundaes at 1 in the morning. Even all the hassles headaches with Xmas lites blowing out could be silly and fun. There were times she was so exhausted I'd find her fast asleep on her bed among mounds of packages and tangled wads of lites.
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| The two loves of my life |
And then the day came in April 1997...out of the blue she became sick. Her doctor wasn't certain but thought she might have developed a Pneunomia and sent her for a chest X-ray. The doctors office called 2 days later and wanted her to come in on either Friday or Monday to discuss the result. She chose Monday. By Saturday, the 19th, she was so sick I knew we had to go to the ER. I had to go out to our apt. and get some things, when I circled the cloverleaf and hit I5, all of a sudden such a sense of urgency hit me, I mashed the gas peddle and was speeding the entire 14 miles to our place. I quickly gathered what I needed and I raced back. When I arrived back at the house, mom was sitting at the kitchen table. I sat down and looked at her and gently said "mom, we have to go to the hospital". She didn't put up any protest, but agreed...NOT her normal. She asked if I'd help her sponge down first, she said she smelled. Shakily and very ineptly I helped her do that. I was so full of anxiety. Just getting her to the car was something else again. She was so obviously struggling and having a horrible time trying to breath. It was one of the worst horrible windy nights I could remember. When we arrived we put her in a wheelchair and I couldn't even do that straight being so rattled and afraid.
Waiting from 9:30 at night till 5 in the morning for her to finally be settled into a room. Hours spent in a state of anxiety I had never experienced. Watching my mother struggle as I had never seen. Needles and tubes being poked into her...blood gasses, oxygen levels. Then they said they were going to catherize her and my heart went into my throat, she'd never been catherized in her life and I knew this was a big fear for her...this was a thing that went back over forty years. A story she told me a few times through my life, when she had had a miscarriage in the mid 1950's. That she had hemorrahaged badly and was frightened out of her mind. Granny had wrapped her in a bedsheet and pop carried her to the car to go to the ER. And then the part about them wanting a urine sample and she told them she could not do that, the fear obviously taking over her senses. So the doctor told her if she wouldn't do this then they would have to catherize her. Long story short, she gave a urine sample. When she'd tell this story I could tell it was a very traumatic thing and it always stuck with me. And now here we were with her having to face this particular thing. When they were preparing to catherize her this night, she asked me to leave the room while they did this. I didn't want to, I was so afraid for her. When I came back a half hour later I was so relieved to hear her say, it was no big deal at all, thank God.
These seemingly endless hours were nothing but unrelenting anxiety, the not knowing and how terribly sick she obviously was. She was making that noise we all make when we are in pain and struggling. I've never felt so helpless. On the other side of the curtain in another bed was a patient who, from the emanating sounds and intensity of the attending nurses was plainly struggling to live. This only added to and compounded the unrealness we were swimming in. So many trips outside and smoking too many cigarettes, feeling weakness but knowing I could not fall apart. Just stuck in this miasma of fear hoping my legs would keep me standing. I will never forget the horrendous wind and rain of that horrible night. It matched entirely the turmoil and storm going on inside of us. The ER doctors were being very guarded in what they would say. When finally at around 5am they told us they were moving her to a room, we of course asked what they thought was the matter, the answer was so obviously vague and guarded. I remember something said about maybe an infection and that was all they would say. Which just didn't sound right to me and feeling tangibly they were just trying to placate. Fear reigns supreme at this point. We followed along while they wheeled her to her room. She seemed so not there, and I couldn't connect to her. I had to just roll with all that was unfolding before us. I wanted to stay with her, but she firmly wanted me to go. She wanted to be on her own. I was as undone as I could ever remember being. We got back to the house and just sat in shock and stupor. There was no way I could rest.
It was all SO unreal how fast this came down. There was no indication. We had been doing our normal things like always, shopping, having lunch, celebrating Easter and then BAM! It didn't make sense...even her primary was floored. She had been in for her yearly physical just a few weeks prior and all was a-okay. Apparently not.
Hours later that morning back at the hospital we found out the x-ray the doctor had ordered earlier that week had revealed she had a large mass in her lungs. On Sunday she had an MRI and biopsy and the following Monday morning, we were told she had lung cancer. Hearing this I started to shake and of course the tears then poured forth...after receiving this news I went out to the fountain and threw in a coin, made a wish and begged God.
When I later came into her room, she said to me with her chin quivering that she had a lump in her armpit...and for the life of me, I swear it felt to both of us like a time warp moment just between us—right back to 1971. I hesitantly asked her if I could feel it, and it was the size of a golf ball and hard as a rock! I was not prepared, I couldn't believe what my fingers were feeling, it was unreal, an electric shock went through me--the fear!! I held myself together, but I knew I couldn't stay long. I told her I had to go attend to some business and that I would be back in awhile. I made it to the parking garage with Allen and when I got into our car, the dam broke loose. I wailed like a wounded animal. He started the car and just drove randomly out of downtown and into the Tide Flats. I wailed the whole way there and back. I got it out and then found the strength as best I could to face what was ahead.
When I got back to her room, I found the gumption to ask her what I didn't want to ask, but because of the size of the lump, I had to: "Mom, have you been lying to me?"—— "NO Stacey, I had no idea this was there!' I have since learned that cancer CAN spread that fast... like wildfire! The doctors confirmed this. And I watched this happen with a friend's mother. She had just been given her all clear and a few days later she woke up with three lumps on her neck. And so to be at peace I have to believe what my mom said. The consultations with her Oncologist after her MRI scan revealed the cancer had metastasized into her nodes, liver and adrenal glands, with a big branch protruding out of her lung on the right side into her armpit. In the scan pictures it looked like wild mutated cauliflower. There's no words to adequately convey the utter devastation this news brought. They gave us two months.
But she passed just 17 days later on May 6, the same month as my grandma, the same month as her first cancer 26 years earlier. And I suppose it should not have been of any surprise, but those short 17 days were sadly filled with family intrigue and unguarded words that still linger. Mostly the female counterparts, who we felt were way across proper boundaries. I still feel so robbed because of that. I was the one mom had chosen to handle her affairs, having to deal with things I didn't want to, not then--I wanted to spend every living second we had with my mom! I was doing my very best to stay strong and diplomatic, but I had to contend with being dug to the bone over her property and decisions. My God. Who the hell cares about property and money?--Mom is going to die!! All this ate away at the precious time that was left. I could definitely sense it was all an attempt to wear me down. And I was so naive to this aspect of death and utterly unprepared for it. But have since learned, what we experienced in that way was mild when compared to things I've heard and sadly seen.
They scheduled her to come home on the 6th. I was at the house waiting on the medical supply company to deliver the equipment that was going to be needed when the call came from the hospital that mom had taken a sudden turn that morning. We raced to the hospital. As soon as I entered her room I knew the hour was now at hand. My brother Larry was with us. The look on his face as our eyes locked will never leave me. His eyes--so haunted. He couldn't take it. He could not even enter. He turned and headed back down the corridor. I went straight to her, holding her hand while she was gasping her last breaths. She was in a coma and Cheyne Stokes breathing. That was not a good thing to see I'll tell ya. I just kept hold of her hand and lightly stroked her hair. After about half an hour I let go of her to go find Larry, I was so worried about him, I had to check on him, he was not doing well at all I knew...I raced to the elevator and rode the three floors down to where he was outside, and literally outside himself. I was only with him a minute or two when I told him I had to go back and he decided to ride back up with me, but said he couldn't come into her room. When we got to her floor and as the elevator doors opened we were greeted by the young nurse who told us our mom had just passed. My heart went into my throat, an adrenalin blade shot through me, my arms went a bit numb and my pulse began to race. I got to her room and there she was...and here was the moment I'd been dreading virtually my entire life. I literally said that in my head "here it is Stace". I sank into the chair, my legs weren't going to hold me up. She looked just like when she was sleeping, but she was not just sleeping...she was gone. Gone from here, gone till our time is at hand and we are again joined...this beautiful vibrant soul who was our mother and my best friend in the whole world. It felt hard to breath as I looked over at her lying on the bed--my senses trying to absorb this reality. There's nothing that can express what I was feeling. And still feel if I allow myself to think about it. I knew this was coming, but never expecting this fast. But it doesn't matter if you know what's coming, there is nothing that can prepare you for the utter finality that you feel. The tears I'd been continually holding back for a couple weeks finally burst forth with heaving sobs. My aunt Gerry was beside me holding onto me and telling me to let it out and my brother Steve standing above me with tears streaming down his cheeks. After I got a better grip on myself I asked if I could have the room to myself...I leaned over my mom telling her she was the best mom in the world and thanked her for giving us the best life any child could hope for. I had to believe she could hear this. I kissed her forhead. The last kiss. Then I left her room for the final time.
Gerry told me later that night that as soon as I had let go of her hand and left the room she passed. I've since grappled with that, whether it was better I didn't see her take her last breath, or feeling like I should have been with her in her final moment. Gerry said she felt it was better that I didn't see it. I don't know, I guess I believe it was meant to be the way it happened.
Somehow I attended to all the arrangements with the funeral home, everything had a dream state quality to it. The day before the viewing I struggled with myself, vacillating whether I really wanted to go...I wanted to remember her as she looked when I left her.. peaceful and beautiful. But then I worried that if I didn't I may regret it. I decided to go, but I waited until that last hour when I felt nobody would really be there. I got to the door where she was. My brother Scottie and Mike, a friend who is like a brother to us were in with her. I got to the door and I started to go in circles, wanting to enter but not being able to. Scottie grabbed me and held me. I couldn't stay very long I knew. I knelt at the kneeler, shaking as I said a very cobbled prayer. I only looked briefly over her. Unreal, can't be, she's not there, just the suit she wore upon this earth. I said I love you Mom...then I had to go, but at the same time not wanting to go..so hard to realize this would be the last time I would ever look upon her. I felt like my legs weren't going to hold me... thankfully Allen and Scottie were with me and kept me up.
The day of the funeral was unbearable...I still don't know how I was able to keep myself stitched together as well as I did. Probably the worst and vivid memory of that day was just before the service we had gone to see my Dad's grave in the wall and next to it was my mom's with a black curtain on it, it took my breath away. So ominous, symbolic of the finality and downright creepy. I still have trouble believing they did or do this. Somehow I made it through the service, I held together through it without breaking down. It was not the service I wanted, it did not do justice of honoring her life and who she was. There was acrimony on the part of our brother Steve and his wife which he did not hesitate to display, refusing to sit with my brothers and I. Casting such a pall over what was already total devastation. This only compounded my complete exhaustion through it all. There's much much more to this where he was concerned and what he put all of us through starting almost from the day we discovered how sick she was, on through the funeral arrangements--all of it, but I don't wish to even qualify it by going over it anymore. Just ugly and painful. And I was at the end of my strength to do battle with the nonsense. I find it pathetic. I know he had great pain and heartache as well. But this was all too typical of how he had treated each one of us at times through the years. It did not go unnoticed. The saddest thing is, this to me was the brother who hung the moon when I was a little girl. I was disappointed, but determined to hold my head up as my Mother was honored in the simple private way she had wanted. When I found a fairly private moment after the service...the Priest helped me to put a note in my Mom's hands. He lifted the lid for me and placed the note in her hands. Then I left a kiss on the lid of her casket.
It had all been such an unbelievable whirlwind, nightmare and the world so unreal, I hadn't even begun to be able to process it all. I didn't even realize the day after her funeral was Mother's Day. I awoke that morning with a blade of fear that went through me like shards of ice. I was so shattered I couldn't even cry. The reality she was really really gone. No more hospital, no more doctors, nurses, counselors, funeral directors--I can't even call her. I remember I was face down on the mattress, the bright sun beaming through the blind when I wished it were gray and raining and I said to myself..."well Stace, it's either get busy living or get busy dying".
The tears finally really broke loose about four days later. I called Allen at work, knowing there was nothing he could do and I had what amounted to a mini nervous breakdown on the phone with him. A TOTAL meltdown. Something I had never experienced before. I can only imagine the utter helplessness he was feeling listening to me hyperventilate and coming apart. Thankfully this was the only time this happened. It was just all so totally overwhelming. This was the day it really went bone deep and sank into my soul--this is for the rest of your life now Stace. You will never know a love like that again or give anyone that same twinkle in their eye. I have since been able to give myself a small pat on the back for the strength I was able to muster after this to handle and do all that was before me to be done.
Though my life has not really been right since. I had just turned 34 and I felt way too young to be an orphan. I have since tended to measure everything from that threshold. I miss her even more than my worst imaginings ever were. Time has lessened the intensity and acuteness of the pain, but it's always there. You just learn to walk with it.
And things became so compounded when my oldest brother took his own life just 3½ months after mom's passing because of his overwhelming grief. One day I will write this story, in a future blog. He had lived at home with her all his life, and now his mom was not here...as well, the acrimony and animosity being pumped by our brother Steve over my mom's estate and decisions she made had Larry totally despondent. He wanted her wishes respected, but sadly Steve would not. This was not a time to instigate divisions, but to all come together as Larry so wanted. It was all too much for him to bear. This loss was colossal, and will always be. He was the gentlest soul you could ever know. And I know would have eased the deep grief and trials I have gone through all these years. The same week we buried our brother we discovered my Uncle Jimmie had lung cancer and he passed away 4 months later....and now it's dug it's way into this generation, my brother Scottie was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2011 and had the upper part of his left lung removed. I so hate cancer.
So even though I'd been through so much loss growing up I still could not know or prepare for what the journey of grief is really like. Just when I thought I was really getting better...well, life threw some real curveballs at us in the early 2000's as life tends to do...compounded by more betrayals than we could ever have imagined. Some still are not comprehendable, and never will be. Then another rash of deaths one upon another. All those who were our main support. It is just us now to lean on each other. To this day for both of us that desolation is always just under the surface. I discovered my grief really intensified again. I'm in the midst of working through it. And I realize now too, it's going to be like that, it will continue to ebb and flow till my time to leave this earthly coil comes. The longing. How many times the tears have flowed freely and I wished the impossible--that my mom was here to sooth my sore heart in the way only she could. But I feel she still does...I have sensed her presence a few times.
The day I was diagnosed with Diabetes in 1998 and devastated at this news on top of the many other blows we had that year...this was definitely a time when you want your mom (Oh Lord how many of those times I've had since then). I had gone outside to wait while Allen took care of the paperwork and all of a sudden a squirrel came right up to my feet. My mom loved squirrels...I knew it was her, telling me "it's going to be okay Stace".
Though I must admit, inside, I'm really still that 8 year old girl now, who is ever longing to be with her mom.
I thank God every day for my many blessings...most of all my wonderful soulmate hubby who has stood tirelessly beside me and loved me though it all.
