Strength Through Losing My Mother

When I look back on the hazy memories of my childhood and my parents, I see a kid playing sports at school, dealing cards with friends, and putting together puzzles in a hiding spot up in the attic. One memory stands apart. In 1992, my best friend's mother died of cancer. The family was shattered, and it was my mother who pulled them back onto steady ground. For two weeks she cooked meals for my friend's grieving father and his kids. Ask him what he thought of her and he'd tell you, without hesitation, that she had a heart of gold. I've never disagreed.

Part of what made her that way, I believe, is her faith. She is one of the most devout people I have ever met, and from as early as I can remember, she was the one who brought me to church with her each Sunday. She belongs to the RCIA, the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults, which opens a path for people who want to join the Catholic faith.

Roughly six years ago she decided to chase something she had always wanted: to become a teacher. She understood it would be a grind. Raising three children, keeping up the house, and studying all at once left little room for anything else. Still, she believed the effort would eventually reward her. What she couldn't have known was that in this odd world, hard work doesn't always pay off the way you plan.

After four difficult years of college, she graduated on one of the clearest, brightest spring days I can recall. My aunt and her family made the drive up to celebrate with us. It was the first time in my life I can remember crying out of pure happiness.

Life has a way of turning on you fast. Two months after that graduation, at age 44, my mother was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. The news made me physically ill. I couldn't understand how this could land on someone who had given so much to other people. Those were some of the hardest months I've lived through. My faith in God nearly evaporated, right alongside her dream of standing in front of a classroom. It wasn't only her loss; the whole community felt it.

She grew restless with the sudden emptiness in her days, and the situation pulled her into depression. She started taking medication meant to slow the disease. I prayed that some good might come of all of it, yet I felt useless, with nothing in my hands to actually help her. Sitting still and watching her body break down was unbearable. The daily full-body spasms, the memory that kept slipping away. MS is a cruel disease, shutting down the nervous system a little at a time until it kills, and all I wanted was to promise her everything would be fine, the way she promised me when I had the chickenpox as a boy.

For the last two years my father has worked a second job to keep the family afloat, and I've spent my time with my mother, doing what I can to help her carry the condition. I've come to understand that the strength I need has to come from inside me if I'm going to keep moving forward and accept that she probably won't get better.

That is my decision to make. I've become an adult with responsibilities of my own and the real possibility of one day caring for a family I start myself. Lately I've felt less tied to staying home on Friday and Saturday nights, and I've started going out, living my own life, which is exactly what she would want for me.

The hardest part is knowing her body is leaving her piece by piece, and that a day is coming when she won't be here at all. But I'm young, with a lot of years and growth still in front of me, and I get to decide what I build with them. Maybe learning to live fully is one of the things I take from all this. Maybe it took exactly this to show me the strength I didn't know I had, a life worth living, and a world I can still shape.