Yesterday was hard. September 10, 2010. Yep, that was the day. Just one year ago I was sitting in my mother's den with my brother talking about how hard our year had been when he told me it was midnight and I should get to bed; I needed my rest.
20 minutes later, he woke me up and told me what I had been dreading for months. Mom was gone. Somewhere in that 20 minutes, while I was slipping into a world of peace and rest, the Lord sent His Angel of Life and escorted my Mother into eternity.
When mom was first diagnosed with a mass in her lung my brother and I tightened our belts, took a deep breath, began to pray for her healing and set our feet to ride through this storm until she was cancer free. I began planning my stay in Lubbock, TX as soon as I hung up the phone with my brother. I told my husband, "I have no idea how long I will be there, but I DO know I will be there until she is healed".
After 6 days in the hospital and many tests, biopsies, blood transfusions and scans...the doctor called me into the hallway to show me her PET scan. It was then that I knew, I would be in Lubbock until the Lord took her home or gave us the miracle we were praying for. The cancer was everywhere.
You know, you always hear from friends, 'Pray for me, so-n-so has cancer' and you give them a look of concern and tell them that you definitely will. The real question is, how many of us really take that pray request seriously and call out to God on their behalf!? Or you hear that a friend had to take care of someone while they were sick. They took food over to them, or sat with them, read to them, etc. But when do you find someone that moves in with that person; stays up all night cleaning up after them when they become sick from the chemo; cook and clean for them!? Rarely. I have found out through my experience that rarely does someone take care of their loved one all by themselves, 24/7 until the change comes.
Am I tooting my own horn? Hardly. There were times I just wanted to run away. I was so exhausted and sick to my stomach that I would have given anything to pay someone else to take care of her, if just to give me a break. In fact, to be brutally honest sometimes when I would hear her call my name I would get frustrated because I just didn't want to get up and see what she wanted. I know that it was simply my own humanity and selfishness getting in the way of my thoughts. I just wanted a break. But when it is your mother, breaks don't come. All I had to do was stop and think through the 39 years she had stood beside me, taken care of me, or just given me a shoulder to cry on...........there was NO way I was going to let someone else take care of her. So, I put my life on hold and accepted the challenge. It was the battle of my life and a challenge I didn't know if I would win or lose.
Caregiver. The true definition: A person whose character shows through with patience, kindness, empathy, compassion, gentleness, cleaner, cook, chauffeur, self-control, goodness and most of all - caring. When all was said and done and my brother and I stood over mom's shell, we knew we had honored her in the truest form we could. We couldn't stop the cancer from eating away at her, we couldn't turn back time, we could only reflect on what the word "MOTHER" means. Being a mother is being a CAREGIVER.
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