February 2019. Her cancer is back. I’m in Olathe working and my boyfriend at the time is over. It’s Monday. We are supposed to have small group but I get a phone call that moms cancer is back and it’s bad so I stay home. I sob in bed. My best friend and her husband come by, Jake doesn’t leave my side. Something feels scary. Unknown. I’m terrified and confused. I call work and ask for the day off to get to Omaha to see her. Leah (boss) was amazing. Offered to give me the full week but I didn’t think it was necessary. I would go see mom for a day, spend the night, go back to kc to work and then come back to Omaha Friday for the weekend. We were told she would start chemo but would go home Friday. The future was scary but there was a plan in place. I remember sitting in bed that night after hearing the cancer was back. I feared everything. Things I shouldn’t have feared yet. Cancer wasn’t acceptable and I couldn’t accept it. cancer - again? She beat it once but can she do it again? She hasn’t felt well in months. Is this all It? How did her dr not find it? Worst dr ever. She was in the drs constantly. Enlarged heart - low iron, the flu... but never cancer. Finally a trip to the er exposes cancer - everywhere? My mind couldn’t accept it.
I drove in the snow to get to her the next day, once I got there she was in a procedure so she wasn’t in the room when I got there. I don’t know how long I was there. I know I went into her bathroom and threw up (not sure anyone knows that ha). Being back in a hospital for her made me sick to my stomach. I remember them wheeling her in on her bed. She saw me and smiled very faintly - she was exhausted. But she saw me.
‘Brookey, you’re here! Oh you didn’t have to come sis’.
I hugged her. I cried. I sat. The rest of the day is a blur. I can’t tell her what we did all day but I can tell you how my last night with my mama went.
Everyone had left and she wanted to shower so
I offered to help her. I washed her hair that had turned so
Gray but beautiful. I scrubbed and massaged her head and helped her wash up. I was dating Jake and she asked a lot of questions. Unfortunately we talked a lot of small Talk, she was so tired. I got her dressed and into her pajamas and a blew dried her hair and brushed it. Helped her get into bed and put lotion on her feet and socks over.
She told me she loved me. I didn’t know it was the last time. I kissed her forehead - I didn’t know it was the last time.
I hugged her and breathed her in, I didn’t know it was the last time.
‘Sis, I’m going home Friday and I want you to come back Friday and bring Jake and I want to spend the weekend together’
‘Okay mama’
We hugged and said goodbye. I didn’t know it would be the last. There were other memories that are a blur. I bought baby clothes she hated lol. We sang worship around her. I danced. She talked about Jake loving the crazy sides of me. She looked at dad a lot. She slept. She told
Me she didn’t think this cancer would kill her. There are bits and pieces jumbled in my mind about that day. But the thing that sticks out the most is how I had no idea it was ‘the last’. Oh the things I would have said instead. I would have crawled into her bed and wrapped Myself in my mama if I had known. Her hair was more gray than I had seen it. Her room felt huge. She had her bible and devotional by her bed. She was beautiful. As I continue to write about my grief I’ll talk about the day she left us and the roller
Coasts of emotion I’ve been on since then - but today I’m
Just getting my feet wet. I’m hopeful that writing this out will help me process my grief and possibly walk along people going thru the same thing.
What I wouldn’t give to be in her arms, to know she was coming to visit, to FaceTime her or even to be back in the room with her - just one last time.
