Letting Go

Growing up we are so often told- you can do anything you want to, you can become anyone you wish to be. But the one thing you’ve never told that I now wish I had- you can make it through anything.

One year ago I sat on a stool while a makeup artist gently and ever precisely applied gold leafing to the entire right side of my face when I received the phone call that would change my life. I was half way through a photo shoot with a good friend of mine when I saw that my dad was calling me, realizing the time was much later than our normal communication times I decided to not let it pass through to voicemail, I excused myself into the hallway to talk, this must be important news for him to be calling so late.

At this point my mom had been fighting breast cancer for two years, and while she had quickly reached stage 4, the doctors had much hope on each new round of chemo they put her on- that “this one” was the heavy hitter, it would target just the right cells to move her onto recovery. And round after round she held the brightest hope that each treatment was to be her last. “Hey I just wanted to give you an update on mom.” My dad’s voice spoke calmly over the phone. I knew they had gone in earlier that day for her newest round of chemo and I eagerly listened for some ground breaking miracle to be relaid, we all knew it was coming, it was just right around the corner. The day my mom finally got the results that she was free of cancer. My dad preceded to relay that they had come across a minor setback- her body seemed to have caught an infection of some sort and that they wanted to get that under control of before they once more pumped her body full of chemicals once more. One issue at a time. She was going ok, in pain but we’d receive the test results shortly. Plans were discussed on the subject of me coming out their way soon to visit her and get her spirits up once more. Saying a quick prayer I ended the phone call and slipped back into the shoot. What transpired over the next hour of that evening I could not tell you, for my world was about to come crashing down, and I didn’t even know it.

The phone call two came about an hour later, I answered the phone this time a bit quicker, eager to hear what antibiotic regiment they planned to put her on. Instead I heard my father’s voice break through my ignorance, “The tests came back, mom’s in liver failure. You need to come home, she’s not going to make it much longer”. Now I’m not sure how many of you reading this have ever experienced this, but there comes a moment where, when you receive news that shakes you to your core, your world begins to spin out of control and stop dead in its tracks all at the same time. I stood there, doubled over in the hallway, gasping for air that never came. Auto pilot took over as we begin to discuss how I was going to make it three states over to say goodbye to the women who bore me and raised me. My world was shattering around me and I no longer had anything to hold onto.

10 hours and no sleep later I boarded a plane and prayed that slumber would take me away. I’m not sure who that 2.5 hour plane ride was longer for- me or the poor helpless gentleman sitting besides me as I cried myself to sleep. All I could think was “I need my mom, I need my mom, I need my mom”. A short time later I arrived at the hospital with my brother and sister-in-law, my dad greeting us and quickly updating us on mom’s status- she was coherent, while she seemed to hear and grasp what was going on, she hadn’t been fully “awake” since the night before, she seemed peaceful, low drug usage was needed, but most of all- that we needed to prepare ourselves for her physical condition, she no longer held the youthful, energetic, healthy women we all knew her to be. As we walked my auto pilot drove me forward, repeating over and over “Be strong, you need to stay strong”. Stepping into that hospital room was like stepping into a twilight zone where my heart and head were no longer attached to one another. I made it all of 20 minutes before asking everyone else to clear the room. I told myself that I wanted to have a lovely mother daughter moment where I could so eloquently lay my heart before her. But what rose up from within me was wail that shook me beyond emotional comprehension as I cried out “Mom no, don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me, I need you”. I crawled up on her bed beside her as well as I could without causing her more pain than she already was in. I would like to have told you that I gave some great speech to her on how she impacted my life and how her legacy would live on through her family, but I can’t. I laid there and cried like what I could imagine the terrifying pain of a young child who believes to have lost their mother in a crowded room. I just wanted my momma to sit up in bed, hold me, and take all my pain away.

Many, many things were to happen over the period of the next 24 hours, most which are too intimate to share so frivolously over the internet, moments and memories that I hold dearest to my heart. Memories that would be betrayed to simply leave typed up on some blog eventually to be forgotten by its readers.

Approximately 24 hours after my brother and I walked into the hospital room, my mother began her journey home. The realization hit me when I reached out to hold my mom’s hand and realized it had turned ice cold, with quick look exchanged to my dad as he took her other hand in his, we knew this was it. Yes she struggled some, but she took those last moments in the same way she lived her life, with dignity and strength. My father and I began to say our final words, letting the woman lying before us know that we were going to be okay, we would be alright if she needed to go. Convincing ourselves and then her, that we could do this fucked up thing called life without her. In the midst of mine and my father’s encouragement my brother came to the edge of the bed where I was sitting and in his gentle manor whispered, “It’s okay mom, you can go home now”. Seconds later she took her last breath on earth and a calmness washed over the room, over our hearts. After fighting so fiercely for two years my mom finally received her healing. It wasn’t the healing that we expecting, it was the healing that she needed. My mom was gone.

Now as the hours tick by to the one year mark of her death my world has once more been turned upside down. My dad and I coined the phrase “finding a ‘new normal'” in the past year, it’s our way of saying I don’t know what to do next, life is no longer the same. And in these past few weeks processing my “new normal” has looked a lot like letting go. Not necessarily letting go of the pain and anger that comes with learning to face all the “firsts” without my mom. No those I face every day I wake up and am forced to deal with the reality that my mom is still gone. It’s more of letting go of expectations and dreams. The expectation that my mom is going to be there on my wedding day, watching me walk down the aisle. Letting go of the dream that one day I would be able to watch my mom hold my own children for the first time. The letting go of the idea that I would be able to watch my parents grow old together. Letting the painful reality sink in that my mom will never know the man I marry, that she was no longer a phone call away, and mostly that I had a lifetime a head of me that she wouldn’t be there for. I had to learn to let go of the grand question of “why“.

As the one year mark came closer I realized I had been holding my breath in a sense, thinking that once I had passed a year full of experiencing every mark and milestone a year brings (holidays, birthdays, etc.) that suddenly everything would simply ‘click‘. That after 365 days I would understand why, at the age of 24, I had to watch my mom die. Why she wasn’t healed. Why none of my friends seemed to understand. Why the doctors didn’t pull their head out of their asses and get her diagnosis right two weeks before when she told them something was wrong. Why there had to be such a hope risen in me when I lay down next to my mom’s body that day as I lay my head on her chest and heard the last bit of air being pushed out of her lungs once she had passed but for that moment I swore she was coming back to life. Why every day since then I wake up with the denial that she has been gone on a ridiculously long vacation and is due back any day now. Why I was a quarter of a century old and I had to learn to deal with losing my mom. Why heart hurt so badly. I had to let them all go.

Now I wish I could tell you that I found some magic key, and that is has provided the answers to all my hearts’ questions and taken away every last bit of pain I encounter on a daily bases. No, I still get up everyday, swear, and think “It wasn’t just a bad dream“. But everyday when I get out of the shower I look my reflection in the eye and tell myself “You can make it through anything”. Some days I don’t believe myself, the pain is too overwhelming, but miraculously I make it through the day. And tomorrow, if I believe hard enough, I’ll make it through  the day again.