Ruthie Reflections
Both of my parents were on the other end of the phone to tell me the devastating news that my mom was going to be put into hospice care. I remember it like it was yesterday. It was a Thursday — one of those steamy, June afternoons. I sat in my blue Mazda hatchback in the parking lot of Bonefish Grill. I turned off the wipers so I could hang on their every word.
I immediately packed my car and drove the seven hours home to Kentucky from North Carolina. Abruptly going home was an easy decision. On my way out of town, in an attempt to be responsible amidst the frenzy, I let my boss in Charlotte know that I would be working remotely for the unforeseeable future — and just to clarify, this was before working remotely was really a thing. A few weeks later, my employer called to inform me that my self-claimed remote working status really wasn’t “working” for him. As far as he was concerned, I was no longer working.
Unemployed and living in my parent’s home, the summer of 2011 didn’t pull any punches it delivered to me or my family. We had so many simultaneous adversities that it is sometimes difficult to believe. My mother, a breast cancer survivor, had been diagnosed the previous fall with Leiomyosarcoma (LMS) — a second, unrelated cancer that was rare and aggressive.
This particular sarcoma affects only 4 in every million people. My mom’s oncologist in Lexington had never even seen a case. LMS grows in the smooth muscle tissue and usually in the hollow organs of the body. In females, the cancer often originates in the uterus. Ironically, my mom had a full hysterectomy a decade earlier, but the cancer began to grow in “remnant uterine cells.” Who knew there was such a thing? So, to add to the anomaly of this all, my mom died of uterine cancer, but she didn’t have a uterus. Insert shoulder shrug emoji here.
As Mom was finishing up extensive chemo, Dad, who worked 43 years and barely ever took a sick day, suddenly required quadruple bypass surgery on the third of June. He went in for a routine heart catheterization, but wasn’t allowed to leave the hospital until they had successfully completed the surprise surgery and removed the blockage from his arteries . Two weeks following my dad’s procedure, we discovered my mom’s cancer was rapidly spreading, and she had only a few “months to live.”
My mom’s older sister, Aunt Rose, and Grama, their mother and my last living grandparent, were in a terrible car accident on June 19. My aunt was on a respirator for the next seven grueling weeks, and Grama passed away a few weeks after the accident due to complications from her injuries. Four weeks later, to the day, my mother lost her battle with cancer. My aunt remained in a coma and unable to attend the funeral of her mother and only sister. The last weekend that my mom left her home was to attend her mother’s funeral. By August, my family was left to process the tornado that had stormed through and the wreckage that’d been left in its wake.
Even until her last week of life, she was the laidback, joyful self that we had grown to cherish. Friends and family would come sit with her, and she would make us all laugh as she sipped on grape slushies from the local Sonic drive-in. She planned her funeral while she was still with us. As people stopped by, mom would ask them to sing at the service or give them an assignment to do once she was gone. It was nearly impossible to ever say “no” to my mom. She had intentional conversations with different people to make things easier on us when she passed away.
She knew that her absence was going to leave a gaping hole in our lives, so she compassionately created a space where we could keep ourselves above water by giving instructions, comforting, and encouraging us until her final days. This true Southern woman definitely had her priorities in line as she also requested that we book an appointment to have her nails freshly manicured for her viewing. This still makes me smile to think about, but her wish was our command.
Of course my mother was adored by my dad, my sister Julie, and me, but that was just the beginning. Our family moved to my hometown when I was two years old. Lawrenceburg, Kentucky is a small town with a huge heart. I couldn’t wait to leave that place after high school, but I have grown proud of my Kentucky roots and absolutely love this close-knit community. Both of my parents were beloved educators that grew an extended family through their years of teaching and administrating. So, my immediate family were not the only ones who were completely devastated on August 13, 2011. An entire village mourned with us.
The oncologist had given us a prognosis that mom would live three to six months; however she passed away only eight weeks later. While this loss was inexpressible, I will always cherish the time our family spent during that final summer together. I have never once regretted losing that job to spend the last few months of my mom's life by her side.
Before the life-altering summer of 2011, I truly had no frame of reference for true empathy for people who are enduring extreme hardship. I basically grew up in a Cleaver household. I often use this example to explain my family of origin and recently I received my first inquisitive, blank stare. So for any young readers who might not know who the Cleavers are (be still my heart), Google them. My parents were married 46 years, and I never recall them raising their voices at each other. Not one time. They modeled a Christ-centered, teamworking marriage that has set an incredibly high standard for marriage in my eyes. Of course, they were not perfect, but they truly were fantastic parents. Julie and I were loved, taught, encouraged, disciplined, and valued. Provisions were made, even when it required sacrifices of time, energy, and resources from my mom and dad.
In fact, I would say that before my mom's first battle with cancer that began in 2009, I barely recall any hard circumstances that directly confronted my family. And while my experience of watching people battle cancer is limited, I must say my mom was a warrior in this arena, as well. Because the cancer had spread to her stomach, she was unable to eat solid food for the last month of her life. One vivid memory I have is of her sitting in her well-worn brown leather recliner beside her bed, drinking a chocolate Ensure shake, and singing along with Bill Gaither on the television. Mom was a huge Gospel Music fan.
"Strength for today, bright hope for tomorrow, blessings all mine, with ten thousand beside."
At mom’s request, the next time I heard “Great is thy Faithfulness” I was sitting with my dad and sister and a few hundred of our closest friends at her funeral.
My heart has grieved in the last eleven years like never before. More than a decade later, I still miss her every day. My mother died when I was 34 years old, so I would not consider myself an orphan. By this point in my life, our relationship had transitioned from mother and child to best friends, but this great grief opened up a whole new world to me. When you lose a parent at any age, you join a club where you never wanted a membership. I can now find a starting point — if even a particle of common ground — with my friends around the world who have known this great grief. The void of not having a mother is now very familiar to me. God used this experience of suffering in my life to solidify a passion in my heart for those who have lost or never known the love of a parent. I can now walk alongside an orphan in a more meaningful way than I ever could when my mom was still alive. While this is not a chapter of my life that I would have chosen, I see God’s handiwork in preparing me for the work he has given me to do. Most of all, though, I feel very blessed to have grown up with Ruthie for a mom.