Imagine for a moment, you were awoken early this morning. About as early as you would get up for a typical highschool school day. Except, this morning is Easter morning and you don’t have school today. And today, when your light is flipped on, you aren’t given 5 more minutes to sleep before your dad comes down to holler at you to hurry up and get out of bed. Instead it’s your grandparents and they’re saying, “Get up! Your parents are at the hospital…the ambulance came and picked your mom up around 4am and your dad says we need to hurry!”

So even though you were at a friend’s party until nearly 3am and you’re angry that you were woken up after just a few hours of sleep, you fling yourself out of bed and get dressed as quickly as possible. The visits to the hospital aren’t anything new, but you know something is wrong…there was never any urgency before. You go upstairs to find nobody else is ready yet…so you tell them you’re driving yourself even though your license had been revoked months ago and you grab your keys and start to head out the door. Of course, you are stopped by your grandpa who refuses to let you drive because your grandma doesn’t need anything else to worry about…so you oblige and you wait an extra 10 minutes before everyone is ready to go.

You all pile into one vehicle and make your way over to the hospital where you rush up to find your parents. When you find the room your parents are in, you walk in to find a very upsetting scene. Your dad is sitting there holding your mom’s hand and she’s laying there on the hospital bed with an oxygen mask on pumping 100% oxygen at maximum capacity, and your mom is still unable to breathe.  It is then that you realize, your mom isn’t coming home from this trip, you break down crying, and run over to hug your mom and tell her how much you love her. Everyone else does the same.

The doctor comes in and explains to you all that there are two options. There’s a procedure he can do where he coats the lungs with a chemical that will essentially scar the lungs and seal them, but it would only be a temporary fix and would probably only give your mom another week at best and her condition would remain about the same.

The other option was no better. They would start giving her high doses of morphine to help make her comfortable. She would lose consciousness pretty quickly and then every hour they would come in and increase the dosage until her heart would finally just stop beating. You do not feel comfortable making this decision alone, nor does anyone else in the family so you ask your mom what she wants to do and she says it’s time. She tells you not to worry, she’s not in any pain. The doctor gives you and your family a few minutes to say your final goodbyes. As you’re telling her goodbye, she gasps something in your ear about some letters she’d written. You barely understand it, but you nod your head and tell her you’ll find them.

The doctor comes in and begins to set her up with the morphine pump. The nurse fixes a “Do Not Resuscitate ” band onto her wrist and they walk out. Around noon, your mom loses consciousness for the last time. All that is left to do is wait and cry. Today is the day your entire life was just thrown a curve ball. Around 3pm, your grandpa drives you home to take care of the pets–let the dog out, feed the parrots, etc. He drives back to the hospital while you’re doing that. You know you’re not going to miss anything exciting. Your mom is never going to wake up and the most you’re going to miss is her taking her last breath, which isn’t exactly a memory you want embedded in your mind.

A couple hours later, you hear a door close, and your dad,  is standing at the bottom of the stairs. Your dad is the toughest person you’ve ever known. He’s never cried in front of you, not even after he learned his grandma died. And he breaks down bawling and says, “She’s gone!” and grabs you in a hug. All you can do is sit there and cry together, knowing the family you once had has just been ripped apart. An emptiness lays within the house. Everybody returns from the hospital and all anybody does is sit down and mope around the house. There is no Easter dinner and nobody is smiling and laughing and enjoying the fact that today, you are all together as one big happy family. Today has officially become the worst day of your life.

Your friend knocks on the door about an hour later and asks if you want to hang out. You tell him the news about your mom and he sits there in shock before saying, “I’m sorry…I’ll leave you alone tonight,” but you tell him it’s cool, you need to get away from things and suggest going for a drive. So you jump into his car and do what you do best when you’re bored with a full tank of gas…you drive until you have no clue where you’re at…and then try to figure out how to get back home. Not many words are spoken on this drive, mainly just reminiscing about the past, but it helps you tremendously in dealing with the immediate pain of your mom’s death.

For you, this was just an imagination…for those of you who are close to your families, probably a painful imagination. For me, this wasn’t an imagination. This was Easter Sunday of 2003. This was real.

Happy Easter.

P.S.

After ransacking the computer room looking for the letters my mom mentioned to me while saying our final goodbyes, I found them saved in a folder hidden away on her computer.

Edit: I just realized I never posted a link to my mom’s site. She actually kept an online journal on her website of everything she went through from her diagnosis until she died. If you would like to read her website, you can find it at http://www.cagmom.com/cancer/cancer.html

If you have some free time, I encourage you to read it. I can honestly say I have never had a complaint from anybody who’s read her website…and most people have emailed me thanking me for keeping it online because it’s given them hope.