I Wish I Could Tell My Mom Happy Birthday

Thinking about my mom, Floy Dean today on her birthday. She would be 78, twice as old as she lived. She died of colon cancer at age 39. At diagnostic she was told she had a year but she lived 18 months. Those last 6 months were filled with almost daily hospital trips, and pain.

I remember the good times, her laugh, smell, her hair, her hugs. But I remember the hell that was late stage colon cancer. I remember the nights the most because her pain exceeded the power of morphine to keep it down. She cried out in pain wanting more relief.

By then it was only us at home so I cared for her overnight and all day. The morphine had long stopped working. It was a cruel existence and something she didn’t deserve. I counted the seconds until I could give her the next dose. The relief took moments and lasted moments.

I’d lay back down, unable to sleep, and waited for the time to pass, her cries to fade, and my alarm to ignite in a few hours. Neither of us slept well, but hers was pain, mine was sorry and helplessness. I cursed a cruel and indifferent god who was uninterested in her health.

It is odd because our mothers are our gods. Givers and sustainers of our lives when without them we simply can’t be born and can’t survive birth. But we are taught to turn from a tangible beautiful loving god to a untouchable idea of a god who ignores our pain in times of need.

I’ve never forgiven that god for taking her so young. Her life was hard. Pregnant at 15 and by 18 she had me, her 3rd boy. She said she cried when I was born she so wanted a girl. She got a girl 7 years later. Kicked out of home, violently abused by my father, and religious leaders.

She survived them all, not because their god rescued her, but because she grew up, understood her worth, and walked away from them all and built the life she wanted and deserved. No one but her sister and two girlfriends helped her. Women helping women, she’d say way back then.

She thrived with new work, new travel, new boy/girlfriends, until one day she had a stomach ache. The time of her post marriage, escaped abuse, made a life for herself was all of 10 years. 10 years. A cruel outcome by a trickster god who needs to apologize for harming her.

I love and miss her every second. I long for her love, her smell, her soft hair when we hugged. I long for her sharp wit, sharper tongue, and proudly making her a cup of coffee just like she liked it.

I wish she were here so I could tell her happy birthday.

Happy birthday, mom.