Lindsay’s Story

Chocolate Cherries 

Since as long as I can remember, my mom always made chocolate covered cherries at Christmas. It was a long, tedious process - soaking cherries for 1 week in rum, then wrapping them individually in a fondant dough, followed by dipping into melted chocolate. Then they had to sit for 2 weeks before anyone could eat them. I would always sneak one or two as a child, before they were ready. As I got older, I helped her and soon it turned into a tradition, the cherries signaling the beginning of the Christmas season. 

In late 2019, we found out my mom had ovarian cancer. She underwent a hysterectomy to remove a large tumor followed by intense chemo, the most aggressive one available. Everyone said how strong she was, she would fight this and win, she would be a survivor, she would ring that bell and never look back. And she did ring the bell. What followed was a wonderful summer — normalcy returned even though the world was in COVID chaos. We thought my mom was cancer free, but the cancer had another plan. Four months later, on January 2021, my mom would take her last breath in this world, dying peacefully at home at the age of 64. 

When the doctors finally told us there was nothing more they could do it was one of the worst days of my life. It was New Year’s Eve, the night before my 37th birthday. My beautiful, vibrant mother had spent the last year being poked and prodded, injected and x-rayed, opened up and stitched back together. They did everything to try and prolong her life. We could all see it, looking back I think we knew what was coming.

Almost one year after my mom’s death I am only beginning to understand the magnitude of her absence. The pain is insurmountable on some days. It’s broken me down but it’s also shaped me, like all experiences do, into the person I am today. I am truly grateful to be alive. I think being so close to death has changed me. When I walk my kids to school I take time to feel the fresh air in my lungs. I look at the trees changing with the seasons, the sunrise, the stars, the blue sky, the snow falling on my cheeks. My mom is a part of it all. 

Maybe if we thought about death more, we could understand what it truly means to live. To see each moment as a miracle. Maybe a better understanding of death could remind us to love harder, breathe, live our truth, forgive, cry in the shower, scream if we need to, jump in the cold lake, feel the pain, heal, be present in the moment and not worry so much about the future.

I now know that we love and grieve forever. They are part of one another. There is no timeline on my grief, and sometimes it comes at the most unexpected times -  a memory while doing dishes, a tissue in an old jacket, a birthday card in a drawer, the urge to send a text to tell her something funny the kids just did….and then it hits you and it’s like losing that person all over again. Most recently, it was the chocolate cherries. I couldn’t think about doing them without her. So maybe this is not the year for the cherries, but I know they will return one day.