Tiffany’s Story
It was a warm Friday in early October of 2008, and I was having a blast on a get-a-way trip with a couple of girlfriends. We surely all took off work a few extra days that week to indulge in a well-deserved early weekend trip. I was 26 years old at the time, single, and I was living "my best life" in Hollywood, California with a dream job and roster of friends. I remember being on our trip and thinking to myself that I hadn't heard from my mom. She was always the type to give a quick call or a thoughtful text to check-in and see if I am okay and tell me to have fun. When I did not hear from her, I gave it the benefit of the doubt at first but the closer we got to leaving our trip, the more my instinct knew something wasn't right.
As we were walking in the airport catching a flight back to Burbank, California my phone rang, and it was my aunt. I picked up and right away I knew by the sound of her voice that something was wrong. I can still hear that phone call on repeat in my head sometimes, when she said "Tiffany, your mother is sick and in the hospital and we don't want you to worry right now, but you need to come home." My heart sunk; I skipped a few breaths. I had a flight to get through before I could even make my way home. After an hour-long flight that felt more like eight hours, I rushed to my apartment just off the iconic Sunset Boulevard. I wanted so bad to drive home that night, but my aunt insisted I try and get some sleep. So, I tried - even though I failed miserably; and first thing in the morning, I drove home to my hometown which was a few hours south.
I was nervous, scared, confused... but I knew whatever it was, I had to be strong for my mom. As I walked down the cold hospital corridors, I saw my mom sitting at the end of the hallway next to her hospital room. She looked at me and told me the news, she had been diagnosed with cancer. Stage 4 breast cancer. I was in shock, it was not the words I wanted to hear, but it was happening.
After we took my mom home that day and a few days passed, I found myself scared and overwhelmed with emotions. I knew right away I had to quit my job, pack up my cute studio apartment in L.A., leave my friends behind and move back to my hometown to be with my mom. I suppose the silver-lining is that in these days following my mother's diagnosis - I found God again and my spiritual life as Christian. I went running down during altar call in need of help from a higher power to get me through this unknown journey called cancer. To this day, it is my faith that has gotten me through it all.
The next year and a half my mom fought her battle hard. In fact, she looked and acted very much like her happy and healthy self. She did radiation therapy that was working for a while so at first, we did not have to see the draining effects of chemo. She also had all her hair. We had hope. Hope she was going to beat it. In fact, at times, it did not even seem like she had cancer because she had so much energy and life in her.
In May of 2010, things took a turn for the worse. My mom and I were at the mall having lunch and a little shopping, one of our favorite things to do together. When I looked over at her in the middle of Macy's shoe department, I saw her peel over and crunch her stomach.
"I'm fine, Tiffany," she said. Typical, as my mom never wanted me to worry. About a week later, I was driving home from work and I again had an instinct come over me. I called my mom and I knew something wasn't right, so I drove across town to my mom's house, and she told me the news. She could barely say it but shared that the cancer had metastasized and spread to her bones. The treatment that had been working well had stopped working and she would need to go on an aggressive form of chemo now.
Looking back, 27 years old at the time...I think a part of me was naïve to what exactly was happening because I had always been the "eternal optimist," and the girl who never gave up on believing in miracles. My mother's sister came out from Alabama to live with us and nurse my mom along with my Uncle joining (her brother), who lived in Washington. Without them, I don't know how my mother and I would have gotten through this time. My mother was my intermediate family growing up, and my parents separated when I was 3 years old. Although my dad was very much in the picture in terms of being a part of my life, it was day-to-day, just my mother and I.
The next few months revolved around my mother in and out of the hospital for chemo treatments. There were good days and bad. I was juggling life as a career-driven 27-year-old with a job I absolutely loved, being a social butterfly on the outside, but living a double life it felt like, knowing just how sick my mom was. That is not something you can just brush aside.
The summer of 2010 was passing by. One Friday afternoon my mom, aunt, uncle and I went to a local home improvement store to buy a portable AC to help keep the house comfortable and cool for my mom. As we walked in the store, my uncle stood there and said to me in his baritone voice, "Tiffany, we have to tell you something. Your mother only has three months to live." I gasped, stood in shock and truly felt like I had no words. I crumbled and called my dad in the middle of the store crying, telling him what I just found out. I suppose I yearned to hear the voice of reason and wanted/needed my other parent in that moment, "you'll get through this Tiffany," I remember him saying.
The next day I had a large-scale event I had been planning for months for my beloved job at a local theater company. I just remember waking up thinking "how in the world am I supposed to pull this off, with knowing my mother is dying?" Sure, I still had a bit of hope - but my world was shook. However, in true show business nature, I pulled through. I guess I knew the show must go on, but no one around me knew that I had just found out my mother was given a death sentence, the night prior.
I started thinking of all the things I wanted to do and say and experience with my mom in the short time I had left with her. It all felt surreal, and like I was living an outer body experience. I remember calling a close friend who had also experienced loss and just asking her, "what do I do, how am I going to get through this, it's my mom." My beloved mother, so caring, kind, loving and nurturing - the epitome of the definition of a mother; was dying.
A week and-a-half later, just a few weeks after my 28th birthday, my mother Janice Katherine took her last breath shortly before midnight on August 31st, 2010. The days leading up to it were filled with family and close friends in the house saying their good-byes, and the only way I know how to describe this moment in time is that it was painfully sad and surreal. She passed away peacefully, and hopefully out of pain controlled my morphine drips, in her own bed. I didn't have the strength in me to see her take her last breath, but I stayed with her until about 5 minutes before and my Aunt stayed with her until the end. I remember my Aunt coming into my room across the hallway saying "she's with the Lord now," and a flood of peace came over me. I suppose the peace of God.
As surreal and heartbreaking as it was, I knew my mother was out of pain. The next several years were hard. I moved away and tried my best to start my life again, but I always felt (and still feel) like I am living life with a hole in my heart. It was hard getting through those initial years after she died without siblings or a significant other by my side. If I am being honest, my grief process has been isolating and I’ve learned it's not linear - it comes and goes through life and it's milestones. After all, she was my mother.
I suppose I should end this story on a positive note. In 2014, I started dating my now husband and that is when I started seeing life in color again. Life didn't feel so grey from grief. And now here I sit ten years later, writing the story about my beloved late mother, in the same living room where I wept when she died. Down the hall in my childhood room where my aunt came in to tell me my mom took her last breath, is where my sweet son is now sleeping in his crib. I have a family of my own now. And while I still miss my mom, it has been comforting to know her spirit is close by. She left me with the tools I now need most in life - how to be a great mom.
