Her hands were so damped with sweat; you could have sworn Mom had just received some news which send shock waves down your spinal cord. It is the rare kind of wetness you get in the palm of your hands when you first must confront a truth, a mystery, an audience or an enemy. Whichever one of these Mom was facing, I could sense it created vast tension. I don’t ever remember feeling her hands like this. She was always very good at hiding worry from us (her kids) and this may be why, but she had finally lost total control of her body and had no way of hiding her physical being.
September 18, 2019, 2:31 PM, I remember the exact time because I received a text message from the office alerting me for the request of a copy of the earnest money check of a new home purchase contract we had just received. I was right next to my Mom touching her arms and hands. Dad had stepped out of the room to go get coffee. My older Brother had also just stepped out to go take a break and follow up with work stuff at a nearby colleague’s office. I asked Mom for a fourth time in seven days, to please leave in peace and finally rest from her excruciating disease experience. I reassured her Dad would be fine and that we would be at peace. I also asked her for forgiveness for any wrongdoing and harm I ever caused. I was running out of ideas on what to tell her anymore and help her separate and pass to her new world. Dad came back in the room while I was already up and scanning the earnest money check with my cell phone. I sat back down in the chair next to Mom and was powering on my laptop when I asked Dad if he was ready to go have lunch? (Clock struck 2:44 PM) Dad mentioned he was getting hungry but that he would rather wait until I was completely done with work, so I wasn’t rushed to come back and finish. For whatever reason, the check I was trying to scan, wouldn’t scan. The image on my cell phone kept on coming out blurry or completely white after a few tries. So, I thought that if I maybe placed a blank sheet under it and try to scan it that way, it would work better. I told Dad I was going to the car to get a sheet and be right back. (Clock struck 2:47) The distance from my Mom’s room to where I parked the car that day, outside hospice wasn’t terribly far but I will forever try to make sense of how it only took me two minutes to walk to the car, find a blank sheet of paper inside my computer bag, come back into her room, sit down, open up my laptop and reinitiate the scanning process. I have the times engraved in my mind because I kept on looking at my I-watch and laptop continuously to ensure I would get the check in before 3pm. (Clock struck 2:49) Mom stopped breathing. I called Dad over and we both got close to Mom, just looking at her and waiting for something else to happen, not knowing what to expect. I froze and Dad must have asked me a million questions, wondering what was happening. I asked Dad to go get the nurse and on that exact moment, Mom took a pronounced, deep breath which elevated her a bit from her chest and tilting her head back a bit. I immediately began crying as I felt Mom’s soul come out of her body and I also knew this was it. I am seriously under minding the moment, but it is very difficult for me to explain what I saw and felt, I just knew Mom was gone. Dad rushed to get nurse and they both came back immediately. (Clock struck 2:50) Nurse mentioned, by law, she couldn’t pronounce her dead until two minutes pass with no breathing, but she couldn’t find a heartbeat with her stethoscope any more. (Clock stuck 2:51) Mom took another breath with no rhythm and jittery. About 30 seconds later, another weird sounding and very weak breath. (Clock struck 2:52) Nurse told us she restarted her two-minute count each time.
2:54 PM Mountain standard time, Mom pronounced dead.
I have three heart wrenching Mom moments engraved in my memory which will never leave me and have left a permanent scar in my heart. Every Thanksgiving and every Christmas for the last almost five years, Mom would always say grace at the lunch or dinner table and thank God for allowing her to be with us another year. Silently, I would also always thank Him for Mom and her health and fight against cancer. I always felt her 2014 surgery was more and more a distant memory and we would be blessed to have her for so many more years and her cancer would never come back. All that until it did come back and took her life away. Then, nothing seemed distant memory anymore. All of it came back. From her surgery, to the late nights at the hospital, to the chemotherapy sessions to Dad calling us desperate for help.
Mom Moment #1 was in 2014 when Mom was in the prep room at the UMC in El Paso and nurses were getting her ready for surgery. I arrived a bit late that day as work and heavy traffic delayed me but I was so thankful I still found her there. Next to a court room, prep rooms are probably the most quiet and nerve wrecking rooms you can be at, where minutes seem hours and hours seem days. There were three patients, that I counted, inside in that area that day and Mom would be the first to go. Dad, as was always the case, was right by her side and as soon as I arrived three nurses approached us and began to explain the procedure and had us sign paperwork. Mom was very peaceful but had a nervous smile and I could tell her mind was going one thousand miles an hour. When I was younger, I would always get on Moms case about her attention span. When she would pick me up from school, I would always have so many things to share with her about my day but everytime I did, I felt she wasn’t even listening to me based on her daunting stare in front of her. It was like I was talking to her ear, all the time, yet she was thinking of ten thousand other things and just “u-huh” my conversations. Well, this is what Mom looked like in the prep room. As one nurse had Dad sign a few documents, another nurse pulled me to the side and with a very serious face asked me if Dad or I had any clue of Mom’s condition. Now, the way she asked me, her body language and tone of voice, would have made you believe she was extremely disappointed we had no clue what was happening. And sure enough, we didn’t. She went on to tell me that Mom was in a very serious and critical condition, that she was infected with diseases and that she may not make it out of surgery based on everything they had to do to her. God, I am getting goose bumps as I write this. The last story I heard from Mom and her Oncologist, before that moment, was that she had a rather large tumor in her lower abdomen area, it needed to be taken out and that he didn’t know whether it was benign or malignant. The nurse us to say our goodbyes, to kiss and hug her and to pray as much as we could as cancer had invaded her body. It is never fun when you first hear cancer invasion from a nurse. Until this day, I do not know if Mom knew about her cancer before the surgery, if Dr. Saldivar kept some of the information until after surgery or if I had a missed a conversation. I turned around and approached mom in her hospital bed and began to cry immediately. She opened up her arms and hugged me tightly, gave me a kiss in my forehead and asked that I not be scared or worried. She told me everything would be fine and that she wasn’t scared or worried. She then asked me what the nurse had told me. This caught me off guard as I did not know how to respond. If Mom didn’t know her current condition, I wasn’t about to let her know how high risk this surgery would be. I did however tell her, nurse had mentioned she was a bit more sick than just a tumor in her lower abdomen; that there may be other tumors inside her. Mom stared right into my eyes, with those beautiful green eyes of hers and without saying anything, tears started roll down her cheeks. Mom didn’t know how bad her condition really was, and that her life, as she knew it, was about to change forever….
Mom Moment #2 happened recently which says a lot about how much Mom cared about us not knowing when she would get sick or have difficult moments during her sickness. Now that Mom has gone to heaven, Dad has opened up a lot and has shared many stories of when Mom would get sick, in pain and or suffer. Most of the time, I would not be aware this was happening and she would direct Dad to not get us involved as she did not want to get us worried. So, for the longest time (3 plus years) since the recovery of her surgery, I was oblivious to tough times.
Early August 2019, Mom asked Sister and I to meet her at her house as she wanted to speak with us about a few things. I was at work but during my lunch break, we met at her house as I knew this conversation was going to be very important. WOW! What an understatement. I thank God so much for the opportunity he gave me to actually make it to Moms house this day and actually stay there for a three-hour conversation. It was the last time Mom had such a sensitive, deep and eye opening conversation with her Children. Of course, I didn’t know it at that time but Mom died almost 6 weeks later. When Mom called us over for this conversation, she had literally accepted her faith, she had literally accepted death. That morning, after she had met with her Doctor, she decided to stop radiation and all cancer treatments for that matter. She had already been through 14 radiation sessions which were useless in the efforts of stopping her fast cancer growth. Chemotherapy had stopped working a while back and now, these new cancer cells seemed to be on a mission. Her Oncologist had advised if she was to stop radiation treatments then she would maybe have to opt for hospice care. Hospice does not always mean death as some patients have made it out of hospice to live a few more years. She wanted to emphasize this in her efforts to place faith strongly into us that this is the road she wanted to take. Of course, sister and I agreed with her decision as we clearly understood only Mom knew how much suffering she had endured with radiation treatments and there is no way we would force her into anymore of it. Sister started crying immediately after as I held back tears. I didn’t want her or Mom to see me weak in this moment. Mom has instilled strong faith into me, and I felt like things were actually going to improve after stopping radiation.
It feels like a blur between that day and what I am about to share. If you have ever dropped an object from a building ten to fifteen stories high, watch it fall slowly….picking up speed and eventually smash itself in the ground into pieces; then this is exactly what it felt like thinking about the time between Mom’s conversation that day and what I had to endure next. A few days after that day with Mom, Sister and Dad called me to come to their house because Mom was feeling very ill and kept throwing up. It had already been a few days Mom had not been able to stop her abdominal pain and vomiting. She had tried various home remedies, medication and trips to the ER but nothing seemed to be working anymore. When I made it to their house, sure enough Mom’s physical appearance and demeanor had drastically changed. I mean, from one day to the next. When I got there, Dad was walking her to the bathroom in their master bedroom. She wanted to pee and so I kind of stepped away a few feet and just waited outside the door. A few minutes later, Dad opened the door and asked for her vomit container from hospice, so I grabbed it and handed it over. Mom sat in the toilet seat, helpless and weak. Tired. Then the vomiting began. Green liquid came rushing out of her mouth like an open faucet. I hadn’t realized how bad it was for her until this very moment. I watched her with anger, sadness, scared and froze in time. She looked up at me in between breathes and the green liquid just continued to come out. With every push, Mom shook her head and tears rolled down her cheek bones. Dad standing infront of her holding the almost full container of this green, odorless liquid coming out of both her mouth and nose, as Mom closed her eyes and mumbled words, clearly asking God to help her stop this! I have experienced awful things in life but nothing will ever compare to what I saw that day. I felt so helpless and I also knew I was very unhelpful. Dad kept on having to wake me up from my daze to assist him and Mom out of this, get her cleaned up and dressed from this mess. This is the moment I realized Mom has gone through hell and back with her illness and that I had also known very little about what she had endured all this time. That night I came home and tried to learn as much as I could about green vomit to maybe help her some way or another but unfortunately all information channels pointed to only one thing; bile is coming out of Mom because her organs are regressing.
Mom Moment #3 happened only but a few weeks later. God gave mom a two week blessing to feel at least a little bit better, pause the pain and vomiting and eat and drink a few things so she could come back home from hospice and spend time with her loved ones one last time. She had so much family visit at home, some who she hadn’t seen in such a long time. A ton of folks who came to pray with us. We were able to have two birthday celebrations with her, one exclusively with her immediate family which we all enjoyed so much. On August 31, we made Mom a cake, sang happy birthday to her while my Son played the guitar, she had a thoughtful and deep pause right before blowing her last candles. Mom turned 68. During this brief pause to Mom’s eminent afterlife journey, she also took the opportunity to independently say goodbye to her kids. We each had our moment with Mom and each more than likely had a very different conversation with her. I always admired this so much about Mom. She dissected all three of us very well and knew what motivated us, saddened us, angered us but more than anything she knew how to love us each in our own very way but equally. Only a Mom dedicated to her kids and family knows and understands how to do this. My goodbye conversation with Mom was brief but with consistency. She got to her points quickly and left me strict expectations. She tied it all in with saying her goodbyes, but we smiled and laughed throughout the whole thing. This the they way all my Mom conversations had gone, as far as I can remember. It was just so wonderful to watch her work her magic with me as she knew this was the way to say bye to me.
My grandpa, Mom’s Dad, was ill with Alzheimer’s for almost 15 years before he passed. His Illness began the year of my wedding in 2001 and every year it progressed rapidly. I will never forget the day I went to go visit him and he no longer recognized me. It was like a dagger, right through my heart. He looked at me and we kept on asking him if he knew who I was, and he said no. For the first time in a lifetime, I was a stranger at his home. That night, while driving back home from Juarez, I cried like a baby…I couldn’t believe it was real and how painful it felt he didn’t know who I was. Well, when it happened with my Momma, darkness covered my soul and love, true love, as I knew it was burned into ashes. I am not sure I will ever recover it back as I will forever only have one Mom, who brought me to this world, and she is now gone forever. My third Mom moment is precisely this. After writing Mom moments number one and two, its hard to believe there could be any worse ones.
Dad called me to work that day, early in the day to let me know he was having a hard time with Mom. Not only was she ill and hallucinating but he needed to move her from her normal bed to hospital bed because she was moving a lot. When I got there, sure enough it was a mess again. Dad looked desperate and Mom could not hold still. She was thinner with sunken eyes but in a weird way full of energy. It was almost like from a movie where you see someone’s actions detached from its actual physical body. Mom was trying to get up and walk, cook and travel somewhere but her body wouldn’t allow her to. As I was trying to help her up from the bed and into the wheelchair, I asked her how she was feeling, and she said she felt very sick. I then rolled her over to the den where she had her hospital bed and it took great effort to have her move from the wheelchair to the bed. She was fighting Dad and I about it, plus she wanted to walk and cook. When I finally assisted her into the bed, Dad asked her if she knew who I was. She said, No. I was shell shocked. I then asked her myself again, if she knew who I was. She paused, looked at me and touched my face and said, No. I am not sure I can write much more about this – I can’t.
Mom stopped being herself that day and never came back to reality. The hallucinating became stronger, she talked to family members who have all died, she began playing with her covers, tried pulling herself up from the bed, asked for things which didn’t make sense and would drink from a glass in her hand which didn’t exist. Mom was gone forever. The last time I talked to my Mom was the day before. It was a Sunday and the first Cowboys game. I went to pick up Dad to bring him back to my house to watch the game and eat some burgers. That afternoon, Moms last ever conscience words to me were, “Mijo, me mandas una amburgesa con tu papa!”. That was the last time she knew who I was.
I will forever wonder what Mom wished for as she stared at her 68th birthday candle on August 31st.
All living things in this world and in life begin at the base of one cell. It is the smallest structural and functional unit of an organism, typically microscopic. At its core, a cell is composed of a cytoplasm and a nucleus and enclosed by a membrane. My brother, my sister and I once started as a cell inside Mommas body and then became a set of cells which then once fertilized by Dad, became us and born into this world by the brilliant miracle of life! A feat only Mother’s can accomplish, understand and feel. When I was inside room 522 at the hospice next to Mom, looking at her, I kept thinking about this over and over again. I kept thinking about this human being giving me life, 42 years ago and not only that, but then helping me understand how to be a human. How to eat, talk, walk, poop in the toilet, get dressed on my own, just to begin. Then, how to rationalize, how to control emotions, how to respect others, how to defend yourself, how to make decisions, how to make sense of good vs bad vs evil and finally how to love. Hardly does a Mother ever live to fulfill her desires after having children. Many say once kids turn 18 then Mothers can rest and focus on themselves but that’s hardly the truth. A Mother’s job to correct, tech and love her children never ends. Mom was in her hospice bed for 7 days with no food, water or oxygen tank. Many other sick came and went, dying immediately in the rooms around her but Room 522 kept having a resilient heartbeat. Many family members, friends and loved ones came to say their goodbyes, we prayed, we sat in silence but the situation inside room 522 did not change (day and night) for seven straight days. We left her alone for about a day and a half, came back and the situation inside room 522 remained the same.
On September 18 I did wake up with a bit of anger. I couldn’t sleep much the night before and we were all getting desperate with Moms situation. No changes for 7 straight days is a long time and it was wearing us all down, specially Dad. After taking a shower and getting dressed I recall thinking about this notion how everything begins at the size of a single cell. Just like all living organisms, Moms cancer began as a single cell but one which would rapidly multiply, which is the case with all cancerous cells. Mom’s cancer developed in her ovaries. Tumors formed inside there which eventually ruptured her ovaries and spread throughout her abdominal area. When I started thinking about this, I had to sit down for a moment, at the side of my bed and quite frankly try to rationalize. The same organ which creates cells, allowing Mom to procreate and give life was the same organ which took her life. This sounds way more simplistic in terms of just the physiological aspect of it but to me it was very hard, and still is to understand how the very same organ can give life or take a life. Mom’s dash was written before she was even born. This is my faith and I know we all have a dash which already has a predetermined mission in place for us to fulfill. “The dash” is that mark in your tombstone inbetween your date of birth and your date of death. In mom’s case it is 1951 – 2019. That dash in your tombstone defines all your life accomplishments, your walk on this earth, who did you impact? What troubles did you cause? And then what diseases did you have to endure? But, I also believe it shows how long it took you to accomplish your mission. In Mom’s case, 68 years.
As I sat there in my bed, I really started to wonder when that malignant cell materialized inside Mom’s ovary. What date and time? What was Mom doing? Where was she? What was her mood? Was it caused by something she did, ate, drank, smelled or touched? How many years, months or weeks prior to her diagnosis did it begin? Why Mom?
According to the Journal of the Unite Stated Cancer Society, an estimated 1.7 million cancer cases will be diagnosed in all of 2019 combined with a little over 600K deaths from those cases. This equates to 4,800 new cases each day and when you look at the ratios between men and women, 1 out of 3 women will more than likely be diagnosed with some sort of cancer. Cancer is the second leading cause of death after heart disease, but not by a whole lot.
Ovarian cancer is a rare form of cancer but unfortunately lethal. It is known as the silent killer because it isn’t diagnosed until its late stages. A puny 20,000 cases are diagnosed each year in the united states but the 5-year survival rate is less than 46%. And get this: It is commonly diagnosed on women at age 63 and death from ovarian cancer commonly occurs at age of 71. Mom became another statistic.
I am so proud of my older brother and younger sister. All three of us labored tirelessly to make things happen for both Mom and Dad. Now that I think back about everything which transpired in early August, I am very thankful that the five of us had and have this camaraderie and love to willing fully and with great desire assist each other every way we can. I say five, because Dad gave everything he could, not only since August but for almost five years and Mom did the same. It was surreal to see my brother, sister and I work the game plan together with very little time to think. I am a sports kind of guy so the only way to describe this is by having you imagine a football team’s quarterback dropping back to pass and sling the ball into an area where he expects and trusts his receiver will be at to catch the ball. Then from the sideline the Coach calling in plays, audibles or sending signals to us so we can run or adjust on the play. This is how our cadence was. Never did we doubt our actions or intentions and we could basically read each other moves and react to them or adjust to help one another. There was so much going on, so many things to think about and so many emotions to deal with. During the hardest last 7 days of Mom in the hospice, Brother and I alternated staying with Mom and Dad in room 522 basically without even telling each other that we were. It just happened. We bought food, made phone calls, made decisions on various important up-comings, again without much thought or discussion. I would say this is about 90% of the battle during hard times. How well or not, can a family really come together when it’s the moment of truth. This is the time when everything is tested, including your true intentions and love.
I will miss momma for all eternity until I rejoin her in God’s kingdom. There are so many stories and moments with Mom I can share but she left me with two gifts that I will cherish forever. The first one is faith. She not only talked to me about faith and the importance of it but she also showed me through her actions what its like to have faith. This is never easy as too many at times faith is lost with how horrible this world treats and defeats us. It is way easier to just give up on faith because it not actually something you can taste or touch but Mom knew how to feel it and see it. The second one is attached to faith by never giving up on anything regardless of the circumstances. Again, it is easier to give up on things, hopes and dreams versus fighting through adversity. More than once, Mom showed me how to get things done regardless of the circumstances. I cannot tell you how many times I watched her battle through adversity to get from point A to point B. I guess I don’t need to tell you, how well this was displayed when she was diagnosed with stage 4 ovarian cancer.
Mom left us with a ton of memories inside room 522. Day and night, people came and went, told stories, cried, laughed, remained silent and prayed. The nights felt lonely and sad as the only thing you could hear was her death rattle. We must have drank 100 gallons of coffee, eaten all kinds of meals and even watched a Cowboys game in the hospice lobby tv. To the wonderful nurses and Doctors who took care of Mom, thank you for keeping her clean, pain free and comfortable. Your job isn’t easy yet you do it with love and care. To the mountain view from outside the hospice, it was like almost watching God do its miracle with Mom. To my Dad. You will be going straight to heaven. You are already an Angel on earth. And finally, to God. Thank you for taking Momma and helping her defeat cancer. She is now pain free and clean of all impurity. She is an angel in heaven and its my pleasure to know that my Mom is sitting next to you, watching over us!
I now know that when Mom’s hands got extremely damped, she was separating from her body and her soul was preparing for its departure. That moment must be the greatest of all moments. Getting nervous probably does not begin to describe it.
I love you Mom and will miss you dearly.
