MK Meredith - Not Your Usual Boob: The Good, Bad, and Wonky of Breast Cancer

I Miss You, Mom

I couldnt cry at my moms funeral.

Two things I dont understand about this. First, Im a crier. I mean, a huge crier. Puff the Magic Dragon? Cried. Hallmark Christmas commercials? Cried. Tommy Boy? Cried. And no one cries at Tommy Boy!

Dont judge until youve lived a second in my ooey-gooey heart. Im a feeler, a hugger, and a toucher. If my hands are on you, its because you matter to me. Touch seems to have a direct connection with my heart. This fact will matter later. Youll see.

The second thing I dont understand about not crying is because I love my mom so muchnotice love in the present tense. The feeling has never dimmed. I feel the loss of her every day. So, as you can imagine, my dry eyes wracked me with incredible guilt at the tender age of seven. I couldnt understand what was wrong with me.

Out of sheer desperation and misperceived expectations, I worked hard to produce fake tears to hide my shame. I really believed everyone would think I didnt love her when the truth of the matter was that I loved her so deeply my little brain couldnt accept the reality lying in the coffin in front of me.

I wrote her little notes and stuck them next to her on the satin. I ran my fingers along her cold, firm skin, willing her eyes to open, for it all to be one horrific nightmare.

She really couldnt be gone. But she was.

My aunt scolded me, telling me to keep my hands to myself, and it was one of the rare times my dad rose to the occasion and defended me, saying I could touch my mother if I wanted to. So I did because I couldnt not.

Remember how much touch is connected to my heart?

I couldnt fathom never being held by her or hugging her. I so desperately wanted time to rewind.

I couldnt say goodbye.

But I had to.

And it was devastating. Even as I sit here writing this, my eyes fill with tears as the same feelings from that day wash over me. Thats the funny thing about memories, they can produce the same emotion, from anguish to ecstasy, no matter how much time may have passed. Memories are timeless.

Ive lived with breast cancer my whole life. At least from my first memories. My mother was diagnosed around the time I was four, waaaay back in the old days just before the early 80s, when the height you achieved with your hair was like an Olympic sport and neon was considered a neutral.

Shed only been 36 years old when shed received the call, and whether she had been considered old or young hadnt even been on my radar yet. I was only interested in the next time I got to watch Woody Woodpecker and eat donuts. But now I feel the magnitude of her youth with that diagnosis, and at the same time, I feel old with the weight of so many memories and such heartache.

Shed been told over the phone of all things. As the story goes, when she hung up after speaking to the doctor, she picked up an old plaster of Paris bust of Maryshed converted to Catholicism after marrying my dadand threw it against the wall.

I know she felt betrayed.

It landed facing her, upright, without a nick on it.

If you know anything about plaster of Paris, you know this is virtually impossible. And as you can imagine, she immediately calmed.

And found her center.

They told her she had about three months, but she showed the universe. She hadnt been ready, and she lived another three years.

Though she had a mastectomy on one side, and then I believe later the other breast removed as well, the cancer had metastasized to her bone.

Back in the day, you didnt talk about breastsat least not in public, out in the open amongst respectable people. Not healthy ones and certainly not sick ones. And I dont think anyone had a good grasp on the importance of acting swiftly in the face of cancer.

Ill never know exactly how quickly she sought care or if there had been a better way.

I just know she was stolen from me and my brothers.

And breast cancer was the thief.

Shed been on a medication that basically kept her alive. She and my father decided it was time for her to go off it, but that month, March of 82, my dads mom died from complications after surgery on her liver. So, my mom went back on the medicine because she wasnt going to have my father bury his mother and his wife in the same month.

Even then, during a time of her own great suffering, shed thought of someone else.

That generosity of heart was one of her best-loved characteristics.

In April, at 39 years old, with me, the youngest, at 7 and my three brothers at 10, 13, and 17 years old, she passed.