Rachel’s Story
My beautiful mama Nancy passed away 4 days before her 63rd birthday. She was robbed, I was robbed, my kids were robbed, my dad was robbed, my sister and her son were robbed, all devastatingly ROBBED. She endured so much trauma throughout her life of multiple cancer diagnoses. This last scan came with a specific cruelty in dying while both her daughters had newborns, a living hell.
Anyone who has loved and cared for someone with terminal cancer-my heart breaks for you as it does for myself and my family. The agony, the suffering, the EATING, the hydrating, the total lack of control, the helplessness, the dance you have to play between living in the moment and “facing reality.” It is pure torture and can only be understood when it happens to you-and I truly hope it doesn’t. As big as this “cancer stuff” was, in that it ripped my mom away from this world, it actually is just a blip, a minute detail, a nothing in the broader sense of my mom’s story.
My mom was a literal angel (and I do mean literal). “Little mommy” as I called her, was the kindest, bravest, most selfless soul. She was the humble, quiet, fierce kind of strong that put everyone’s needs above her own, always. She made the people she loved find confidence in themselves while teaching them to hold compassion for others. She made everyone around her feel seen, heard, and loved in the most special way. Growing up having our mom, as ours, was winning the lottery. She was warm, fun, creative, generous, and so incredibly funny. Our home was filled with so much love and joy. How lucky we were to have her in our corner because she was the brightest light.
My mom taught me to be a proud, unapologetically strong-willed person. She instilled a foundation of believing in my own worth and what to demand as respect from a partner, friends, and colleagues. She instilled in me that my purpose here in this world is to make it better, as she had in her 30 years of teaching. She encouraged me to find my own path to help those in need and I’m so grateful for that foundation.
There is not a second of the day I’m not missing my mom. It’s a biological yearning-a constant ache in my bones, a silent scream stuck in my throat. I miss her in the BIG ways- who am I without her physical presence? How can I be a mom without her here? How will I survive this? How will I continue her legacy? I think I miss her in the small ways most.
I miss opening a bag of red vines and letting it sit in the pantry because we like to eat them when they get hard. I miss seeing her drink wine out of a plastic cup because wine glasses are for the birds. I miss her calling and telling me she wore two different shoes to the mall and only noticed when she got home. I miss her putting a bar of soap in her bed to “prevent” Charlie Horses. I miss her getting my son’s “supper” ready before she would ever consider sitting down, even for a second. I miss her ordering an extra shot of vanilla in our lattes when she’d bring us Starbucks to drink together at the kitchen table. I miss her taking 3 hours to get through the grocery store and always returning the shopping cart. I miss the way she crinkled her water bottle when she drank it. I miss coming home and seeing her in my kitchen when she wanted to come over to see my son (and me) unannounced. I miss her bringing me orange sherbet when I was sick. I miss her sneaking my dog bread when he was on a diet. I miss holding her hand when we walked anywhere, even as adults. I miss her never remembering where she parked her car. I miss eating lemon drops in her bed while we read together. I miss her emphasizing the wrong syllable on certain words. I miss her calling the doggy daycare because she was convinced they gave us the wrong dog. I miss her choosing the weirdest routes to get anywhere-avoiding all roundabouts. I miss her looking at me when someone was chewing too loudly because we hate chewing. I miss laughing so hard we had to hold our legs together trying to mouth “stop it” to each other because we knew we were both going to pee our pants, and we did…all the time.
I miss her in every way and I honestly don’t know how I’ll survive this. What I do know is that I am the luckiest that I had the mom that I did.
