They say your mother is your first best friend. She is the one who patches up all your ouches, she the one who rocks you to sleep as a baby, and she is the one who eases your heartbreak and heartaches as a teenager. She is supposed to help you plan your wedding and coach you in the ins and outs of being a first time mother. In a sense, your mother is the best support and biggest part of your life.
I really don’t have a memory of my mother, I can’t even remember what her voice sounds like. All I have is a couple of pictures and other people’s memories of what my mother was like. I lost my mother at five months old to the most horrible, hopeless and heartbreaking disease called cancer. My mother was diagnosed with liver cancer that spread to her colon at the age of twenty-eight, while she was pregnant with me. I was born two month premature and weighed three and a half pounds, the hospital finally released me after one month to my grandma. My mother was over joyed that she gave birth to a healthy baby girl. Five months after I was born and brought home my mother passed away in our house with a room full of my family member. My mother left a notarized letter to my grandma stating she was going to raise me and have custody over me.
At first when I was growing up I didn’t understand why my mother wasn’t with me, I remember at the age of nine or ten dreaming my mother was coming home and everything being so different. One day after school I was about twelve years old, I got off the bus and my heart was pounding in my chest, my eyes were feeling up with tears, an inexplicable feeling that I was abandoned came a pound me. As tears starting running down my face, I ran to my grandma and ask where my mother is, why isn’t she here with us and why doesn’t she love me. My grandma hugged me and said “Your mother loves you more than anything in the world, she is not with us because it was her time to go with god. You’re too young to understand but she sacrificed her life by refusing cancer treatments so you can live and have a wonderful life”. At the time I didn’t understand what my grandmother told me or why I always had an emptiness in my heart when I would hear someone talk about their mother. But as I got older and mature I learned how to deal with the emptiness of losing my mother and how grateful I am to have my grandma by my side.
My grandmother she may not be the super hero you read in comic books, she can’t fly, turn invisible, or lift a car over her head. But I don’t know what I would do without her, she is my rock, my backbone, and the one who is like a mother to me. The one day god calls my grandmothers name I don’t know what I’m going to do. I will be lost without her in my life, but I will remember what she told me “It’s okay to think about the past, but don’t live there. Focus on your future and strive for greatness.” If it wasn’t for my grandma I don’t know where I would be or who I would be. She tough me right from wrong, she raised me as her own. She has pushed me to be great and to succeed in life and pressure my goals.
To this day I think that the cancer research people should have at least be close to finding a curl to cancer, with all the technology and years of research. I think it is time to find a cure now, it is time already. I know God has a plan for each and every one of us in life, and I am very grateful to be blessed with an amazing family, but the scar from not knowing and losing my mother at a young age due to cancer will forever be with me. There are no words that can really describe how I’m feeling, perhaps there is no words to describe this pain and emptiness in my heart, at least there is none on this planet.