Chapter 4: Being a Mom without a Mom

My Mother was a wonderful human. Bright and sunny and possessing an impeccable knack for keeping her sense of humor in even the most unpleasant situations.

She died when I was 25, after battling cancer for nearly 10 years in just about every form, and after receiving all the medication and radiation they are legally allowed to give you.

She was not a woman to be gainsaid.

Not a person who pampered, but who sincerely knew how to love. She most especially excelled at the tough kind of love. 

My Mother was the friend who showed up when everyone else was “washing their hair.”

She would have noticed Zacchaeus, hiding in that tree, and then been nice to him…and then invited him to Christmas at our house.

On my 16th birthday, the day she went in for her mastectomy, she gifted me with a stuffed lion.
Not just any stuffed lion mind you, a stuffed lion sporting a tie that had a surfboarding Santa Clause on it.

After we stopped giggling, she looked at me very seriously and said, “I wish it was a Mercedes.”

A single Mom with three kids living off a teacher’s salary means no cars when you turn 16.

I looked back at her very seriously and said, “Me and you both.”

We rocked with laughter for a few minutes before it dissolved under the weight of what was about to happen.

She blinked back a tiny a tear and said to me, “You know what I think about, when I think about my baby daughter?”

I wrestled up a small abashed smile, and she continued.

“ I think about that verse in Proverbs…’The wicked run when no one is chasing them, but the righteous are as bold as a lion.’ “

Now I had to wrestle the knot in my throat, back down into my stomach, as I absent-mindedly rolled and unrolled Leonard the Lions tie. 
(Because why wouldn’t you name a lion Leonard.)

She reached forward and touched my face, “You’ve always been bold. You were bold even in the womb! Things are about to get really hard for us I’m afraid…but I want you to know, I don’t worry about you. My daughter is strong…and bold as a lion.”

I will never, never forget that moment.

It was like being on Holy Ground.

Here she was, facing what would likely be the scariest day of her life, and instead of crumbling…she was taking the opportunity to give me strength.

We embraced for I don’t know how long before we loaded up and went to the hospital, where things did get, really hard.

After a surgery that took almost an entire afternoon, we were told the cancer was worse than they thought, bigger than they thought. 
She would likely not live, even 6 more months.

The almighty had other plans I guess.
My Mother fought and fought and fought and fought.

The next ten years weren’t hard. 
They were impossible.
Still, somehow we made it through.

My teenage years were swallowed up in trips to chemo and driving Mom to and from radiation.
Swallowed up in nausea and in the shadow of death.
My brother and sister and I became caregivers.
We pulled together and tried to survive.

While other girls my age were worrying about boys, I was worrying about potential funeral costs, and the pills we needed for her pain that we couldn’t pay for, and whether or not I had told her I loved her enough times, for her to really know it.

In the last weeks of Mom's life, my cousin Heather and I linked arms to take on the task, of making sure she received her pain meds and her sleeping meds on time.
At this point, pain meds could only be administered rectally and the sleep meds had to be crushed into fine powder, mixed with Jell-O or water, and swabbed into the inside of her mouth.
The worse of the two was touching her once lively face, that was now nearly dead and lifeless, and marred by tumors.
The skin of her beautiful high cheekbones, stretched over an ugly glob of cancer.
As it took over her skeleton, and began it's terrible work on the rest of her body, I remember looking down at her, lying so still and wooden, and thinking, "This is the body, that made my body. Soon the body that made me will be gone.'

At the time, I had no understanding of how deep that biological connection really was.

As we danced through the drudgery of death, every time I was confronted with something that was unfair, or something that made me think, “Oh god. I can’t do this.” I would straighten my back one more time and say to myself, “Mom did all of this for me once. 
I want her to know I would do it for her.”

So I did.

I changed diapers, and gave medicine. 
I never slept.
I sat on the narrow windowsill by her bed singing softly. 
I prayed through my tears, face down in the carpet.
I begged for mercy.

Tried to keep her comforted, tried to be understanding…tried to love her entirely…even when it was tough.
When all hope of recovery was gone.

Nearly 9 years later, when I found out I was pregnant, my first formative thought was, “I would give anything to be able to call Mom.”

Throughout my pregnancy I often suppressed excitement over having a baby, for fear that opening up that box of joy, would in turn pour out the deep sorrow I had been carrying with me since her death.

The wonderful joy of being pregnant is, like I mentioned before, everything is becoming new.
Literally.

I was, at every moment of the day, growing a life, a life that had never existed before. 
Cell by cell and day by day.
Everything inside me was being bathed in the energy of creation.

In case you didn’t know, God is a God of second chances.
It’s kind of his jam.
He’s in the business of creating, and of surprising us with hope.

So, four months into my pregnancy, when I pulled my car over into the Target parking lot, so the nurse on the other end of the line could tell me that my growing baby didn’t have any genetic abnormalities or foreseeable medical issues, and that baby was also…a girl, the box of joy burst all the way open, and my sorrow evaporated in it’s light.

Just like my Mom, I was the Mother to a daughter.

She had spent the last days of her life preparing me to be a parent.

Giving me the tools to be a strong Mother. A Mother that knew how to keep going, when two hours of sleep seemed unfair, and the baby wouldn’t stop crying and everything fell down, and I thought, “Oh God. I can’t do this.”

I did what all real Parents do.
What real Love always does…I did it anyway.

“I have come…to give unto them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness…” 

Isaiah 61:3