The Day My Mother Died

One weekend, we had decided to clean out the house to surprise my mother. My father found papers stashed away that revealed theft charges; my mother had stolen medication when she substituted for the nurse in my elementary school. I remember my dad scouring the house for more evidence, even finding a stash of pill bottles under their mattress. She had another court date coming up that he learned about, just a few weeks before a family trip to Disney. Shortly after that hearing, my family took our last vacation as a whole, knowing that a key member would be lost to us the Monday after our return; she was going into work-release for two months. Before the end of those sixty days, my father learned that my mother had been unfaithful. Their marriage ended, and at eleven and nine, my sister and I said what we didn't realize would be goodbye to our mother for a great while. Her drug abuse continued, and months of time would pass between visits. We saw that sweet, ideal mother devolve into an addict. This loss has shaped me greatly, and it has taught me integrity, strength of character, and great love for others; without these things, my mother cost herself her family and

One warm summer morning my sister, dad, and I were sitting and watching T.V. and my best friend’s dad called and invited us over for the weekend. He said

Throughout the essay “New Perspective” by: Janice E. Fein, she explores in immense detail how she suffered as a child who grew up with a mother that was very ill. She explains the hardships she underwent and expressed how she felt “cheated in life”. As a small child she could only remember her mother walking her to kindergarten once, as she describes in the essay, but after that she could only remember her mother laying in a “massive” and “ugly” hospital bed. As a child, its difficult sometimes to understand and grasp complicated situations like this. Most of the time children only hold one perspective of things, their own. Fein discusses the impact her mother’s illness had on her childhood and how it taught her later on in life when she became

I knew that my mother needed a solid support system and optimism in the atmosphere, so that is what I gave her. My mom would struggle with making meals like she always used to, found it hard to go to my school activities, and seemed to be a completely different person because she was so physically drained. It was incredibly hard to see my mom in so much pain. I would stay home to be with her because I hated to leave her alone. My mom getting cancer made it hard for me to focus in school, sports, and I failed to be a typical teenager by not being with my friends very often.

And then, the day I had feared of most, finally arrived. We lost our father, the only figure I truly felt safe with. After months of mourning and painful transformations, our mother fell sick. In those terrible days, days during which I was locked in the basement most of the time, for my safety and even more: for the safety of my family, I was incapable of helping. To this, I regret even today.

When I was a sophomore my mother was diagnosed with cancer and as a result, I have spent most of my college career dealing emotional with the result. She is free of disease as of right now but it was a long and tumultuous journey to get there. I practically spent 2 years without a mother because she was so sick and I had to take her role. I organized family events, cooked them meals when I could, did their shopping all while going to school three hours away and having constant fear that my mother and the love of my life was going to die. That is only my personal struggle with it, not even taking into account her trauma or my fathers or brothers. It almost seems selfish to reflect on this because it was nothing compared to what she was going through. I went through stages where I was horrified and so scared and then I was angry and selfish. I wanted my mother back, I wanted her to make me dinner when I came home from college and send me care packages again. I wanted her to go shopping every weekend like she used to and spend money on things that weren’t hospital bills. I wanted to call her and hear something other than how she couldn’t get chemotherapy that week because she was so weak and was rushed to the hospital for a blood transfusion. I was tired of talking to people about it and people asking if I was okay. I felt like a broken record, “Yes, I’m okay. Yes, school is

Every night that we were able to get hot showers we celebrating making it through the day. It was one more day down before we could see our families. We would wright our families every chance we got. The days we received a letter from home was like a kid getting told he was going to Disney World. We would rip into the letter tearing the envelope to pieces. I had never felt so close to my family. I knew I had taken them for granted and I just wanted to be in my mom’s arms

With those statistics, my mother would not see me graduate college, or get married, or have children. With those statistics, my mother would not see my little sister even graduate high school. With those statistics, my mother could no longer grow old with the love of her life. At first, I was furious. My mother had already led a life full of pain and now she had to endure one of the most deadly forms of cancer. I had never imagined a life without my mother around, and now my vision of the future crumbled. My obsession with social status dwindled when I realized that there was much more to life than having nice clothing. I no longer cared about "fitting in" or "looking cool". When my mom, who had absolutely no symptoms for her cancer, discovered her illness, I understood that we will all eventually die. I no longer had an invincible mindset that most teenagers have. I began looking at life from a different perspective. I realized that there was no guarantee of happiness in this world. I learned that if you wanted something, you had to fight for it. My mother now had to fight for her life. For six months, my mother bravely battled through

It all started with our family sitting at the dinner table with my mom crying, holding crumpled up tissues with black streaks of mascara on it. My dad nervous enough to say, “Your mom has stage four breast cancer.” Those words have stuck in my head clear as a bell for the last eight years. Our faces of curiosity soon turned into fear. As an eight year old I didn’t understand a lot of words grownups said, but those burning words were sharp knifes on my throat.

It may seem late but this is when we got our food. My father went out in our neighborhood, as camouflaged as possible, to get whatever vegetable scraps he could from the privileged people’s gardens. With the scraps, mother would make soup. The soup was made from water, salt, scraps, and chicken bones for flavor if we were lucky. I remember the steam dancing on the pot under the very dim kitchen lamp. The soup was honestly terrible but it was all we had. Despite the bland taste of the soup, my mother would always present our dinner with pride, knowing that she has done the best that she could. It was the same view each night. My mother presenting the soup, with a look that was a perfect mix of worrisome and affectionate. We found that look comforting as children. My father wore his anxiety on his face in wrinkles and a permanent frown on his lips, but he would force a smile once in a blue moon. My brother was always lighthearted and he provided all of us with joy and hope. This was my life, and that’s what I expected the rest of my life to

I was 9 when my mom received the phone call from her oncologist – he was fairly positive that she had breast cancer. Cancer. I remember feeling so hopeless and afraid – how could I live without my mother? How could I stand by and watch her die, unable to do anything to help? Even until today, I still remember the feeling of desperation and hopelessness

My grandmother died a painful, slow death that no person should endure nor witness. I watched the person I cared for most in this world become too weak to walk on her own, suffer from too much pain to live her life, and become too drugged to put words together. Due to the cancer spreading, her body shut down, and because of this, I received a one-sided goodbye.

“Beep! Beep! Beep! Beeeeeeep!” my alarm clock was piercing my eardrums. I got up slowly, my alarm clock still going off. It seemed as if the loudness was just getting louder and louder. Finally, I stumbled out of bed, turning my alarm off. After I got dressed, I went downstairs to pack my mother’s amazing cookies for school. Her secret is adding the right measure of mixing because mixing develops gluten in the sugar, making the cookies a chewy consistency, adding the right measure of shape because round dough balls take longer to bake, resulting in softer, thicker cookies, besides adding the correct amount of spacing because cookies baked at low temperatures spread more during baking and need approximately 2 inches between them. It also depends on the temperature, and the quantity of time you bake them for because a low temperature and longer baking time yield crisper, thinner cookies; a higher heat and shorter baking time makes softer, thicker cookies. My mom taught me these rules of cooking when I was around five. What can I say, I guess I just have a way of cooking.

It wasn’t until the morning of Saturday, May 21, 2016 that I realized what the true feeling of unconditional love was. The moment a parent looks into his or her child’s eyes there is just so much love it’s unbelievable. People think they know what love is when they love a significant other, family member, or a close friend; however, that love is nothing compared to the love a parent experiences the day his or her child is born. That is the love I felt the moment I placed my beautiful baby boy on my chest.

To this day, I can still remember standing at the end of my driveway watching my mother arrive home from the bus stop. This day was different; she was not coming home empty handed. In fact, she had stopped at a yard sale on the way home and bought a prize for me, a doll named Suzy. This memory, from the age of two, embraces the story of my mother and my entire childhood. In Indianapolis, Indiana in September 1980, I was born to a single mother. Throughout her life, she worked for the phone company in downtown Indianapolis. Even though she raised us through hardships and despair, she always took the time to love my brother and me outwardly. Until second grade, I have no recollection of my father visiting more than three occasions. At last, in fourth grade we began to spend weekends at his house and with his family. Sadly, when I was eleven we learned that my father had cancer. One week before Christmas, after a school music program, I read his obituary in the paper and told my mother he had passed away. From that moment, our family forever changed, specifically my relationship with my mother.