Two years ago today was the last time I saw my mom. It was mothers day 2008 and my mother was dying of cancer though I was in complete denial. When I saw her she down in Florida that day she had gained weight and was puffy looking, a result of the medicine she had been taking. We spent the day watching an old Joan Crawford movie called 'Mildred Pierce' and we talked and laughed about her childhood. It was a typical day with my mother and maybe the best day of my life.
When it was time to leave we hugged each other and she told me something that will always haunt me " next time you see me It will be different." She was trying to tell me that she was dying and that things were worse than they were which was difficult for me not only to see (since I live in NYC and she was in Florida under the care of my older sister) but it was difficult to understand.
When I left I took one more picture of her on the balcony and thought about what she had said about things being different and then I felt like I may never see her again which I brushed off because she was my mom, strong and stubborn, nothing was going to take her down.
Two weeks later I saw her again but it wasn't her, it was just a shell of my mother lying in the hospice, hooked up on an I.V. and doped up on pain killers. She couldn't speak and she barely knew I was there and to be honest I felt like I was looking into her coffin, it was awful. On my birthday I got news that it was official she was going to die and on July 8th she was gone.
The irony of us watching Mildred Pierce on that day was that the story of Mildred Pierce was basically a mother going to extreme lengths to protect her child from danger even though she had to suffer for it. My mother hid from me the fact of how sick she really was, she didn't want to be "a burden" to her children. She put herself in front of me to the end trying to protect me from the pain even though she knew she was dying and was most likely scared out of her mind.
When she did pass my siblings and I had to go back to her place to pack her belongings. As we walked into the condo and looked around we saw what everyone else saw when they walked in wall to wall photos of of us, her children and grandchildren. No longer were they the tacky pictures we saw with embarrassed children's eyes but these photos were like sheer love radiating through the room. We became aware instantly of something we took for granted for so many years, no one will ever love you like your mother does and we'll never have that again. It was a hard pill to swallow.
I can't believe I lost my best girl. Thank you mom for all your love and sacrifice, you're always in my heart.
Happy Mothers Day.
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