I loved my new room. It was tiny, only my bed fit and a small shelf at its foot. All I could see was pink and white flowers when I lay down to stare at the freshly wallpapered sloped ceiling. I looked up. Beside the tiny window framed with lacy, cotton curtains, a little brown wicker lamp dangled from a white-painted pipe that went from floor to ceiling. All the spiders were gone. The ivy growing outside of the window seemed to be dancing with joy as the breeze fluttered its leaves.

I looked to the right. She had even painted the wooden slat door that housed a tiny, fold-up ironing board. This must have been a kitchen back in the day, or a maid’s room. All my knick-knacks and games were neatly displayed on the built-in shelf, my books lined up according to size, and my dolls proudly sat next to them.

The tiny door at the far end of the room beckoned me to open it. Before my mother had redecorated this room, the door was covered by boxes of junk which were draped by pumpkin-orange and  blue-striped curtains. The brightness of the green plaster of the walls and ceiling always kept me up at night. I thought there were little monsters behind those curtains and they were responsible for the decor.

I crawled to the foot of the bed and reached over to the door. It was blocked by a Delft-blue and white patterned plank that was held up by two large, grey stone bricks. I moved the plank away from the door causing my stuffed animals to slide down onto the floor. I tried the door and it only opened about an inch. The plank needed to be moved entirely. I raised it over my head and placed it on the bed. The door creaked as I pulled it completely open to reveal a cement wall with an empty black space over it. I stuck my head between the space and the wall. Nothing. Just darkness.

I slammed the door shut, convinced the monsters had left the boxes and were in that space. I needed to get a good lock on this door. Or maybe a flashlight so I could scare them off.

I lay back down on the bed and took a deep breath. The sunshine peered in through the window above and cast a glow in the room. My mother had transformed this place to call my own while I was away camping. It was a large closet housed within my parent’s room that I didn’t have to share with my two sisters or three brothers. All mine. Including monsters.

 

Aiden is learning about bees at daycare. He is now fascinated by them, and at home, it’s everything bees.

“Bees can sting you,” he tells me.

“Yes, but not all bees will sting you,” I say.

“No, ALL bees will sting you!” he retorts, a flash of anger in his eyes.

“Okay, Aiden,” I quietly say, frustrated that I can’t convince him about the bumble and  carpenter bees.

The next morning, Aiden tells Daddy the same thing.

“Bees will only sting you if you bother them,” says Daddy.

Aiden is silent.

Don’t bother the bees, and you won’t get stung.

 

Around this time of year, I always feel an unexplained source of longing, an ache, a heaviness. I can’t figure it out until the Mother’s Day ads and articles appear on my news feed on Facebook. Mom.

This article says if I had spent more time with her, maybe she’d still be alive.  If I had done this, if I had done that, maybe. It’s hard to say. When she was alive, it was difficult to call her. I’d hear the heavy pain and alcohol in her voice. She’d make no sense. She’d lash out.

I’ll never forget her last Mother’s Day. I wasn’t with her. I was thousands of miles away, living the business of my life. I was going to call her on Sunday. I kept reminding myself. But I forgot. Or did I? Was I avoiding it for the above reasons?

A week after Mother’s Day, I got the call. She was in the hospital, they didn’t know what was wrong with her. But she was getting better. I didn’t need to come. But I knew something was really wrong. I trusted their words that she was going to be fine. I clung to hope.

I couldn’t call her at that time. There were no cell phones and her room didn’t have a phone.

Then I got the other call. My sister told me the nurse said, “If it was my mother, I’d come now.” She was clinging to life. This was it.

We took an overnight flight. We arrived red-eyed and full of angst as we sat over breakfast preparing for what we’d see. I was worried about me too, how I’d handle seeing her, what she’d look like, would she be conscious? Would I have a nervous breakdown?

We arrived at the hospital, cautiously walking through the ICU, shocked and sickened by the droves of people attached to tubes and machines, eyes vacant, bodies casted and paralyzed, loved ones touching their faces, trying to communicate.

Then I saw her, eyes closed, a giant, light-blue crinkly tube coming out of her mouth. Her skin was yellow, but she looked peaceful, sleeping. Whew. Not as bad as I thought. I don’t know what I was expecting.

The hours that followed were difficult and tumultuous. She went in and out of seizures, her eyes suddenly flashing open and closed, mouth flailing. They attended to her quickly and brought them to a sudden stop. I overheard a nurse saying they gave her Ativan. I wondered if she was afraid.

As we watched her take her last breaths, the heart monitor beeped, quickly going slower and slower. We each approached her to say our good-byes, and then her heart rate stayed, then beeped slowly down until the next person came, then stayed. I told her to be brave and strong, that I would be brave and strong for her.

Her body was ice-cold to the touch just minutes after she passed. Her skin was rubbery. Her face was grey and shrivelled, deep red blood caked around her open mouth. This was not the mother I knew. She wouldn’t want me staring at her decaying body like this, focusing on her appearance. I remember she said when she was alive that she didn’t want an open casket, that she wanted to be cremated, she didn’t want people staring at her. She would tell me stories of when her mother was in the hospital and didn’t want anyone to see her unwaxed moustache.

I turned away. My sister told me of how she washed Mom’s hair several days before and the look on her face was pure bliss. That I would have liked to see.

Years after this day, the guilt plagued me of not calling her that final Mother’s Day. Guilt for not having flown earlier to see her when she was somewhat lucid, not trusting my instincts. But one day my oldest nephew said to me, “You just weren’t meant to be there at that time.” Maybe it would  have been to difficult for me to see her vacant eyes, although she was seeing, she wasn’t there. It would be have been difficult for me to hear her singing a haunting song, telling me she saw Jesus standing at the end of her bed. It wasn’t meant to be.

Accepting that things aren’t meant to be is a huge part of life, and death. Accepting that we are not in control of our or someone else’s destiny is difficult. We want to be in control, and make decisions every day to maintain that.

I don’t know what my main message is, except that if your mother is alive today, call her, often, even if it is difficult for you. Don’t make it about you, if you can. Make it about her this Mother’s Day. It is her day, not a day to focus on differences and damage.

Regret plays a large role in future decisions. It’s not all bad. Focusing on regret is one thing, but being proactive about it and learning from it can be life-changing. This loss has brought us closer together as a family, made me see the beauty and grace in each of my siblings. There was no fighting, no ownership, no blame, just love for her and ourselves. It brought me closer and to forgiveness with my father. It’s made me a better parent, realizing what my own went through with me and to cherish each and every day spent with my son, to encourage better relationships for him.

This cycle of longing turned to gratitude happens each year. It is an ongoing lesson.

What is my story today? Do I have any blessings?

The blessings are abundant even though I am standing alone. But I am not alone. I have warm bodies in my apartment, including my two cats. I have friends around me, not physically but in spirit. And when they are with me physically they lift me up higher than the moon.

The sun is out, the air is clear, the music is playing.

Today’s conversation:

Aiden was playing a game on the computer this morning. It kept saying the word “lonely” for some weird reason. Aiden asked, “What does lonely mean?” I said, “It means you have no one around, no friends, no Mommy and Daddy…” He looked at me and said, “Someday, Mommy and Daddy are going to die, and I will be all alone at home.” This broke my heart although he spoke the truth. I cannot give him a a brother or sister. All I can do is love him, and teach him to love and find true friends that will be there when we are gone. Such a young boy already understands the concept of death. But he won’t be alone. I wanted to tell him we will always be with him even though we will not be with him physically, but I didn’t. I was too overcome with emotion to answer.  He will find his way and people to protect him when we are not able to. I tell myself he will also have his cousins and aunts and uncles, but I know from experience having my siblings around when I lost my mother was so helpful and uplifting. I can’t imagine going through the grief without them. But I need to trust that he will have others to replace the non-existent sibling.

How do other people who are the only child do it? A few of my friends come to mind. They found a sibling in books, travel, friends, hobbies, their imaginations. Aiden had me make a life-size cardboard cut-out of a small person who he calls Kayla, his sister and best friend.

How do you get over the guilt of not being able to have another child? Some people have told me it’s not very nice of me to not have another child to accompany Aiden in this life. I think it would be much meaner of me to risk my life, risk being gone much earlier, snatched away from my little boy’s world. The pain of losing one’s mother at a young age is far greater than an ache of sibling desire. At least I can provide him comfort, friendship, guidance and the support he needs. And having another sibling is not always the answer to completion and happiness. There can also be suffering involved, such as sibling rivalry and rejection.

But come to think of it, we are actually happy as a family of three. I feel complete, that this is okay. Yes, I love babies and my ovaries hurt a little every time I hear a gurgle and see their tiny feet kick and squiggle. But I’ve accepted it’s not meant to be for the greater good. We are perfect together. There is a greater plan, and Aiden will love and learn with other people.

So today is International Women’s Day, the day we celebrate and pay tribute to women all over the world, promoting women’s issues such as equal rights, respect and power. Today I have chosen to promote women’s bodies and health.

I feel somewhat empowered because I quit smoking recently. Smoking is supposed to be worse for women than men because we have estrogen. So women, if you smoke and are concerned about your health, read the following article below from Daily Mail.com. Men, smoking is still bad for you too!

A woman who smokes the same number of cigarettes as a man is twice as likely to develop lung cancer, doctors have found.

Research suggests that females are highly susceptible to lung cancer even though they inhale less deeply and start smoking at a later age than men.

The key to the doubled tumour risk lies in crucial lung tissue differences from men, and the presence of the female hormone oestrogen, according to Professor Diane Stover, head of the lung unit at Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, New York.

She described the data which revealed the threat to women as ‘horrifying’.

Women are also more susceptible to the lethal lung condition chronic obstructive lung disease, which is caused by smoking and is rapidly increasing in incidence.

For British women, the findings raise the prospect of a leap in lung cancer cases. Recent research suggests that the proportion of women in this country who smoke more than ten cigarettes a day has risen to one in four, bringing them in line with men for the first time.

Dr Stover said that cancer cases among women in America and Europe were significantly higher than the number of female smokers would suggest.

In Japan, a study of cancer victims among 1,000 male smokers and 700 female smokers showed that women developed the disease two years earlier than the men.

Dr Stover told an international conference, attended by 17,000 doctors and organised by the American Thoracic Society, that lung cancer was more common in non- smoking women than their male equivalents.

A mass of research showed this was true whatever the woman’s circumstances – for instance whether she was exposed to passive smoking at home or at work – and under-lined the vulnerability of female smokers.

Part of the reason was the biochemical way women dealt with the 50 or more cancer-producing agents in tobacco, said Dr Stover.

‘Men and women deal with these carcinogens differently,’ she said.

‘There are individual variations, but men tend to detoxify them and excrete them in their urine whereas in women the carcinogens take a different pathway, they are transformed into other carcinogenic substances.’

These could lead to mutations in tumour-suppressing genes or ‘cell suicide’, she said.

Other compelling evidence of greater female susceptibility was that a gene potentially linked to cancer, known as the GRPR, was twice as likely to trigger a tumour in women than men because it attached to the X chromosome, which was twice as common in females.

Dr Stover said: ‘Another way to put this is that a cigarette smoked by a woman had double the carcinogenic effect of a cigarette smoked by a man.’

Dr Lesley Walker, director of cancer information at the Cancer Research Campaign, said: ‘There are a few studies that suggest women are at higher risk than men from lung cancer caused by smoking.

‘The most likely explanation is that oestrogen promotes the cancer process in some way but the underlying reasons are not clear. There are not enough studies going on in this area.

‘We want both sexes to stop smoking but women may be at higher risk and this is a real concern because tobacco companies are targeting women as smokers in the developing world.’

Women are different yet not weaker. Because of our complex reproductive system, we are required to take better care of ourselves. Sometimes we think it sucks to be woman, with that time of the month and all, but really, it’s not that bad. And neither is childbirth when you put it all into perspective. These things make us stronger emotionally and physically. We can handle anything, except smoking. And that’s not such a bad thing to eliminate from our lives. I’d rather have the power to give life and mother a child than to the ability to smoke more cigarettes and do harm to my body.