M <3

My first Tattoo is the letter M from my mom’s name Miriam, right next to a heart that was elegantly written and drawn by her. I gave her a journal to write in, you see, while she was sick. She managed to write on one whole page, the first page only. Written on that page she wrote: Her name, under that the words “My family” followed by the names of my dad, my oldest brother, mine, and my youngest sister’s neatly centered and underneath all that were the words “Love them all.”

I remember finding the journal a couple months after she passed away, ecstatic to read the wisdom or memories, funny anecdotes or advice, to read her thoughts and have her be alive again. She wrote the one page and nothing else. The disappointment almost stinging the same way it did when we as a family decided it would be easier for her to be on hospice. You see I was 20 years old and very much still a naïve child. I’d never heard of hospice, I didn’t quite understand that hospice just meant a more comfortable way for her to die. It was basically saying, look we’ve been at this a year she’s not getting better she will die, let her die in her home peacefully and with her family. It was giving up the fight because to fight was now pointless.

I remember the corner hospital room she had with big windows letting in sweet light. I remember the doctor coming in with news that didn’t suffice. I remember looking out that corner window as my family gathered around her trying to decide what to do. I remember a mother walking her newborn on the street below as they called to me, looking to me, a 20-year-old child for the answer. I remember her frail skeleton of a body lying there. I remember her eyes looking up at me, the same way I looked up at her when I was a child. I remember feeling a role reversal then. I remember feeling the weight of all her responsibilities on me and I remember her eyes telling me “I’m sorry.” I remember looking at her in disagreement. She had nothing to apologize for. I felt what little hope was left getting sucked out of the room. So hospice it was.

I thought what little life my mom had left was going to be a happy, content one surrounded by loved ones in her own home. I also thought stop the suffering already. I thought die already. I thought die already 6 months back, when the hospital visits were peaking. When the chemo therapy and radiating was causing more destruction then treatment. When the 3 am trips to the emergency room were more frequent then the smiles and laughter. When the pain was so severe she shook. Her body rattling. I thought stop already. I thought end already. Deciding hospice was deciding to end her and her suffering. Deciding hospice was the beginning of a short and slow goodbye.

The role reversal came full circle the night before she passed away. My younger sister and I shared a room. We both woke up to a loud crash coming from down stairs, coming from the small hospital bed they rolled into our living room a week or so before. We ran down to find my mom sitting in a puddle of her own urine on the glass table that centered our living room. Her morphine bag hanging from one shoulder. Her head bent down, neck crooked from the weight of the tumor. She was so small. So little. Fragile and drugged out of her mine. My sister and I carried her gently, carefully to the bathroom. I took her adult diaper off as my sister went to work on the glass table and floor. She sat on the toilet holding her head in a thinking man’s position as I cleaned her up. “It’s alright mom, I got you, don’t worry, I’ll take care of everything, of everyone, don’t worry,” I thought to her, feeling she could hear every word. My sister and I carried her gently and carefully back to her hospice bed, tucked her in, and kissed her goodnight. “I love you.” my sister whispered to her, “I love you.” I whispered too.

The next night we woke to subtle shouts from the hospice nurse on duty that night. Her desperate cries to let this family of 5 know they are about to become a family of 4. We all ran down and surrounded her, “Her heart is going,” the nurse said in a quiet sympathetic way. “Her heart has stopped,” she said even quieter. I held my mother's hand then. Feeling the warmth leave. She always had the softest, most delicate, most beautiful hands. The hands of an artist, the hands of a mother. It started to rain outside. It rained inside too.

My first Tattoo is the letter M right next to a heart, elegantly written by my mom. She stayed and fought through the pain for us. She began the process of surviving for us. Believing truly, as we all did, that she would. She was a remarkable human being, mother, wife, sister, and friend. She lives on now in my heart, in my memories, and on my wrist.