Losing Mom

Friday, Oct. 8th, 2010


My mom was beautiful. I’m not just saying that. Everybody thinks his or her mother is beautiful. But mine really was. It must have been a shock for her to be an only child and grow up to be the mother of ten kids. But to see her, you’d never have known it. She was always slender and gorgeous with big dewy brown eyes and cheekbones to die for.

She used to sit at her piano and play by the hour. My baby brother Tommy would lie in his playpen and doze in the sun while she played. I would cuddle up to her shoulder beside her and sniff the Avon scented candle on top of the piano, and I would watch her beautiful hands glide across the keyboard.

As the oldest, I didn’t get Mom all to myself very much of the time, so I savored that time at the piano. As a matter of fact, I inherited my mother’s piano, and it sits in my living room with that same Avon scented candle on top of it. Would you believe it? That candle still has its scent after more than 40 years. I’m sure it’s a little sign from Mom. I’m a big believer in signs.

She was 45 when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, and it was so unthinkable, we couldn’t for one second entertain the thought that she could possibly die from it. But she did. Only three years later.
Our huge strong father was in denial. We were all in denial. My youngest brother Jeff was only 7-years-old, but I was 23. I should have been old enough to figure it all out. But I didn’t.

One day, when Mom was in the hospital, I moved back home to help out with the younger kids. Walking through my mom and dad’s room, I discovered my youngest brother Jeff in the bed half asleep hugging Mom’s pillow. “Mommy,” he sighed. I should have picked him up then and there and comforted him. But instead, I went to the bathroom, sat on the toilet, and cried. It wouldn’t really happen, I told myself.

She died in April, 1979. Terri was 12-years-old, and she cried so hard at Mom’s wake that Aunt Patty had to take her out of the funeral chapel. It’s hard enough to be 12-years-old without looking at your mother lying in a casket.

Now that Terri has breast cancer, I think of that time in our lives. One day, a month or so after Mom died, Terri came to me with her face full of fear.

“I think I have breast cancer,” she said.
It would have been laughable had we not all been so raw with grief.

“You don’t have cancer,” I said.

Her eyes filled with tears. “I do. I have a lump.”

I examined the lump. “Terri,” I said, “it’s a bone. Everybody has it.”

Her small face crumpled in relief, and she smiled for the first time in days.
It was good to be the big sister and take that horrible worry from my little sister.

More than 30 years later, I'm still her big sister.  But I can't take her breast cancer away.