When you have kids in school you get to know the other moms in the class. Some better than others. Me and two other moms in particular have gotten to be pretty good friends over the last couple of years. It helps that our boys are bestest buds and want to do everything together all the time. We’d ride to field trips together, meet up to let the kids play, mom stuff… one of those moms told me sometime when the boys were in Kindergarten that she’d been battling lymphoma. They caught it late, she’d been through what I call the “wipeout” chemo treatments where they basically wipe everything in your body out and hopefully take all the cancer cells with it. They’d moved up here so her parents could help them with their little boys while she recovered.
Things seemed to be going pretty well. She told me later that she’d been diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis on top of the lymphoma. I wondered if it was caused by the chemo. Chemo does horrible things to the body. She had a wreck late winter/early spring this year and seemed to be having a hard time recovering from it. Then she told me she’d been not feeling well and running a low grade fever. She was nervous because she was due for a cancer check and she was hoping those symptoms didn’t mean her cancer had come back. They did. Her levels were back up. She had to start chemo again. She told her doctor she didn’t want to go back in the hospital for the wipeout chemo again – at least not while her oldest boy was still in school. She couldn’t bear the thought of being that miserable and in that much pain again. They were going to try pill-form chemo and see how that did. I never heard her complain. Even when I could tell she didn’t feel well, she didn’t complain. She did everything she could with and for her boys. I don’t think she ever told them that they couldn’t do something because she didn’t feel well.
She passed away around 2:30 this morning. I don’t know all the details. My other mom friend called me at lunch and told me. I know they found her unconscious, she’d gone into renal failure so they did dialysis and they had to put her on a vent. But it didn’t work and now she’s gone. I can’t imagine how her husband feels knowing she’s gone and he’s got to tell those boys that they’ll never see their Mama again. Conner was asking the other day if he could go play at their house sometime. How do I explain to him that one of his best friends has lost his mom? She’s been a constant in Conner’s life, too. She was always at class activities, she was always there when he’d go to play. I know this will make him worry that I’ll get sick and die, too. That’s the way kids operate. After all, she was about my age. I could get sick and die, yes, that’s a reality, but I don’t want him dwelling on it and worrying about it. I don’t know what to say to him or to her family. Words don’t seem appropriate. “Sorry for your loss” sounds hollow and useless. “She’s not hurting anymore” won’t ease the hurt in her boys’ hearts.
I’m going to have to pray long and hard about this one because I just don’t understand. Such a dear, sweet friend and such a wonderful mother….
