Losing my son is most horrible thing that ever happened to me. I have had such a blessed life, a great family, a great support system growing up, a great church and youth group, a great husband, great in-laws. My life has been really good...oh except for my mom dying when I was 15.
THAT is why my therapist says I treat my mom's death as a side note in my life.
But since John Preston died alot of the emotions that I didn't feel at the time have surfaced. So here is the story.
When I was 12, my dad took a 2-year contract job in Saudia Arabia. He was there for about a year when my mom started having some stomach pains. He came home for a week in 1982 thinking he was going with her for some tests, but when they went in the doctor simply said "You need to stay home. Don't go back." She was diagnosed with colon cancer and given 3 months to live. I fell apart that night. She and my dad decided that they were going to try anything and everything so she put herself in a program for testing methods.
The doctors put a pump in her side that shot out chemo every hour or so. That didn't work. Except that every time we went to the mall it set off the sensors and she had to get out her little paper and show the mall cops.
Then daddy took her to a specialist in Germany under the guise of a European vacation for the family. That didn't work, but we had a wonderful time and made memories that will never be forgotten.
Then she did regular chemo and radiation. That didn't work, but after she lost all her hair it grew back twice as thick and twice as curly and gorgeous.
Daddy got a job at FedEx and mom had great insurance.
On Monday, July 30, 1984 mom went in for a regular check up. While she was there her veins collapsed. By Tuesday, July 31 she was in a coma. Thursday, August 2, 1994 she quietly passed away while my daddy, sister, brother and I stood around her bed singing to her. 10 minutes after she died, her parents, my grandparents stepped off the elevator at the hospital. My grandmother never spoke another word or at another bite.
Barely 2 weeks later on Wed, August 14, my grandparents were hit by a car crossing the street on their way home from church. My granddaddy's leg was broken, but my grandmother sustained severe head trauma. Exactly 2 weeks after my mother died, my grandmother died from that head injury.
My mother donated her body to science so we didn't have a funeral, but instead had a memorial service in Memphis, TN and then another in Knoxville, TN at the church where my parents had attended church for the 20 years previous to the 6 we had lived in Memphis before she died.
Apparently my parents didn't read the fine print in the contract with UT Medical Services, because in January of 1985, my dad received a call telling him that they were done with my mother's body and he could come pick her up. Talk about shock. My dad couldn't even comprehend it, and so my Uncle Leon (my mother's brother) took care of her. My dad didn't tell us about it at the time. It had only been a few months, things were just settling back to normal (or the new normal for us) and he felt like he should give us some time. The longer he waited the harder it got to bring it up and tell us.
So at our family Christmas get together in January of 2010, 1 year and 5months after John Preston died, my dad told us that our mother was buried in a plot at Historic Elmwood Cemetary in Memphis in the section dedicated to people who had done as my mother had done, and what my father still plans to do.
I am not sure how my brother and sister felt about it, but it was a good day for me. I thought he made the right decision to not tell us at the time - especially me, as I was only 15, a teenager with enough normal problems in addition to my mom being dead, to also have to imagine all of that. Maybe he shouldn't have waited 26 years. But also, I was glad to know there was a place to go where I could honor my mom, and have a place to go and spend quiet time dedicated just to her. It was quite a shock though.
So for the past 2 Mother's Days I have spent the day at my mother's grave and my son's grave. It's a little rough. One of the things I say to whoever will listen is that I didn't get to have a mom, and I don't get to be a mom. Those are the days that I get angry and bitter.
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| Mother's Day 2011 with John Preston |
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| Mother's Day 2010 with my mother, the first in 26 years. |
But then, again, I realize how blessed my life has been up until the loss of John Preston - with the exception of my mom dying of course.
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