I was still a girl of fourteen years when I watched my mother die. In truth, she was not technically my mother. She was my grandmother, but since she (and my grandfather, who I have always called “Dad”) had raised me, I called her Mom. She was diagnosed with cancer when I was about nine years old. She, my dad and I, were all living in Florida at the time.

Mom’s cancer wasn’t like any other form of cancer most people had heard of. In fact, many may never have heard of this form at all. Mom had a species of cancer called Paget’s Disease and was linked to Volva Cancer. This particular type of the repulsive killer was so rare that only five or six cases had been reported. There wasn’t even a treatment protocol for it.

Mom battled her cancer for near on five years. In her final year, she, Dad and I made the choice to move back to Indiana. It was a precarious decision for us. Mom still had to fly to-and-from Florida to receive her treatments of chemo therapy until we found a clinic closer to home. Still, we all agreed that going back would be the best thing for my mother.

“All of our family is up there, and I would like to close to them if I die,” she would say.

Although my mom was the one doing war with a killer, the ordeals of the past few years had begun to take a toll on me as well. Depression had begun to sink its icy fangs into me. I started to withdraw from the world around me. My appetite diminished and most of my time was spent in the solitude of my room either eating or sleeping. My grades plummeted as well, a result of my disinterest in anything that has to do with work. I suppose it wasn’t that she had cancer, so much as knowing what would inevitably happen to her because of it that upset me so.
My mother’s attitude toward the cancer was much different from my own, though. I guess it helped her get through the whole predicament best. Even though she knew that the pestilence inside was going to kill her, she always retained an aura of positivity, happiness, and a blatant determination to make the most of the time she had left. She wasn’t like most people (the ones who find out they have cancer and make it out to be the end of the world). She just took it and didn’t complain.

In fact, up until the last week of her beautiful life, you wouldn’t have know that she was sick at all. Her condition only went south when I went out to Colorado to visit some family for the summer. I had been doing this every summer for the past few years, and it had become a kind of tradition. I was only in Colorado for about two weeks before I had to go back home. I had received an urgent phone call from my dad with but one message: Mom’s cancer had spread to her brain.

I rushed home as fast as I could. By the time I arrived home, though, Mom was but a shadow of her former self. She had lost at least half her body wieght and her skin was thinner than tissue paper. There were seven tumors in her brain when I got home, and the doctors had her on radiation therapy to keep the pain down, as well as several different pain killers to make her sleep. The entire back room of our house had been transformed into a hospital room as Mom couldn’t make it up the stairs to her bedroom anymore. It had a hospital bad and table strewn with medicine, and a foundation called Hope Hospice came over at least twice a week.

It was night when I arrived back to my house, so my mother was lying in the bed already half asleep. I slowly approached her and whispered, “Hi Mom,” choking back a sob.

“Hi honey,” she murmured. “Why are you home so early?” Her eyes roamed around the room under half shut lids. They didn’t seem to be able to focus on anything.
“Just missed you too much,” I sniffled.
“Oh, okay. Goodnight sweetheart.”
“Goodnight Mom. I love you.”
“I love you too,” she lisped.

I shot out of the room and into my own, threw myself down on my bed; my body was wracked with sobs. For a few minutes I remained like that, my face in the pillow to hide my mournful tears. After a while, I felt a heavy hand on my shoulder. I turned my head to find my dad standing over me. I sat up and buried my face in his shirt, shuddering with grief.

“Why? Why is this happening to her? To us? What did she ever do to deserve this?” I asked, my words muffled by the soft fabric of my father’s T-shirt.

“I don’t know,” he replied despondently. ‘But all we can do is be there for her and make her as comfortable as possible, okay? Now take some deep breaths, calm yourself down and try to get some sleep.”

Sleep did not come to me that night. My mind would not put to rest the topic of death. When the morning sun and Dad came to wake me, he found me already showered and changed into some fresh clothes. Most of that day, and others, I spent looking after Mom. Friends and family members came to try to offer condolences, though little could be done to ease my pain.

Finally, on June 28, 2014, at 5:11pm, my mother died. I was there; I saw here take her last breath. When she was gone, I felt as if a giant hole had been punched through my chest. I wish I could tell you that my mom made some kind of miraculous recovery, that she somehow defeated her murderer. Unfortunately, she didn’t. She just stopped breathing. She was just a little piece of blue sky now; another soul among millions. She was cremated and buried two weeks later. She was sixty-three years old.

My mom’s favorite saying was “life is good.’ I remember that quote all the time, but I also remember that it takes ten times longer to put yourself back together than it does to fall apart. Even now, I am still trying to pick up the pieces. That stupid cancer rocked my world to the core. I suppose that’s why I want to become an artist or singer - to create something beautiful and meaningful.

Mom was a fighter right to her last breath. I intend to continue her legacy in the best way I can: by living my life to the absolute fullest. Just like she did.