Thursday - An Unhappy Anniversary
Oct. 6th, 2005 10:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ninanevermoreIt just occurred to me that today is the 21st anniversary of my mother's death.
I was 15 years old in 1984 when I became a motherless child. The funny thing about being a motherless child is once you become one, you stay one for the rest of your life, no matter how old you get.
I was 12 when they first found the cancer. She found a lump in her breast and the biopsy came back positive.
I was 13 when she finished that first round of chemo and was declared cured.
I was 14 when they found another abnormal lymph node that turned out to have a bb-sized malignancy in it.
I was 15 on October 9th, 1984, the day after her funeral, when I looked up "lymph node" in the dictionary. On October 10, I went back to school, because my father decided that we needed to "return to normal" as soon as possible (I missed 2 days of school, Monday for her funeral and Tuesday to help straighten up and recover from it). When I got back to school, people asked where I had been and I told them. They were surprised. I had told no one that my mother was ill. My parents told me not to talk about it when she was first diagnosed, that it was personal family business, so I continued not to talk about it even as things progressed and got worse.
I wonder who I would have been, without this loss and grief that molded me? I am stronger, I am more insightful and I am wiser because of it.
I can't image my life any different; I have no point of reference to even try to imagine it.
I guess you drink the cup you're given, with both the bitter and the sweet.
I was 15 years old in 1984 when I became a motherless child. The funny thing about being a motherless child is once you become one, you stay one for the rest of your life, no matter how old you get.
I was 12 when they first found the cancer. She found a lump in her breast and the biopsy came back positive.
I was 13 when she finished that first round of chemo and was declared cured.
I was 14 when they found another abnormal lymph node that turned out to have a bb-sized malignancy in it.
I was 15 on October 9th, 1984, the day after her funeral, when I looked up "lymph node" in the dictionary. On October 10, I went back to school, because my father decided that we needed to "return to normal" as soon as possible (I missed 2 days of school, Monday for her funeral and Tuesday to help straighten up and recover from it). When I got back to school, people asked where I had been and I told them. They were surprised. I had told no one that my mother was ill. My parents told me not to talk about it when she was first diagnosed, that it was personal family business, so I continued not to talk about it even as things progressed and got worse.
I wonder who I would have been, without this loss and grief that molded me? I am stronger, I am more insightful and I am wiser because of it.
I can't image my life any different; I have no point of reference to even try to imagine it.
I guess you drink the cup you're given, with both the bitter and the sweet.
