The Next Chapter.........
Apr 2, 2020
I went back to work two weeks after my mother passed away. I thought everything would be cool, you know. My mom wouldn’t want me to sit at home being sad so let me go make a coin or two is what I told myself. I’m a preschool teacher so I work with children, I remember my first day back I felt good. I wasn’t sad or anything, I probably was still in shock to be honest. I came into my classroom, one of the children was being dropped off and their mom had just walked out. The little girl walked over to me and looked at me with tears in her eyes and said “Ms. Jazmin, I want my mommy” I think it was at that moment that I knew I wasn’t ok. I didn’t know what to do or say because I wanted my mommy too at that moment. I just hugged her and cried we cried together for a moment. (the poor girl probably thought I was crazy, and, in some ways, I was lol) You just never know when it’s going to hit you. I literally looked the little girl in the face and said “Lets shake these tears away! Mommy is coming back!” so we started jumping around and shaking our bodies until I felt like I was ok. Sometimes you have to think quick and be creative and literally shake things off! I’ve been so caught up in trying to almost distance myself from my mother’s illness, of course she went through it but so did my family and me. I didn’t want to be identified as “The girl with the sick mother” or “The girl whose mom died”. I had to give myself permission to feel and not be “okay”. I watched cancer take over her body for almost two years and every step I handled it like a champ! I was strong because my mother was strong. She did chemo AND radiation 5 times a week and NEVER got sick! She walked in the chemo center with her snacks ready to go and demanded apple juice every chance she got. My mother had cancer, but cancer did not have her! On July 17th.2019 (the day after my birthday) we went to the doctors and Dr. Cannon told my mother that the cancer had spread and that the next step was hospice care. On top of that her oxygen was very low so she had to be admitted to the hospital because they thought she had a blood clot in her lungs. We got a lot of information that day and I remember looking at my mom and she started to cry. This was the first time I saw my mother cry during this whole process. I just thought to myself “Oh Lord it’s finally hitting her” she looked at me and said, “Are you going to be ok?” I said, “Ma I’m fine I just don’t want you to suffer” she looked at me and said “Jazmin, I’m not suffering I’m ok, if it’s my time to go it’s my time to go”. She looked at Dr. Cannon and stared crying again she told him “I’m going to miss you buddy, you always explained everything to me and you were always so kind” the doctor was surprised, he told us he had never given that kind of news and had a patient respond in that way. The stretcher came and they hooked up my mom to the oxygen and she was on her way to the hospital and I was on my way to the car to meet her. That day changed my life because there was no longer any hope that she would get better, that’s a tough place to be in when you lose hope. Now before you saints come at me crazy asking where my faith was, it sounds strange but there was a peace that my mother and I shared, I knew Gods hand was on my mother and I knew he would heal her but it just wasn’t going to be in the way that I would have wanted. The next chapter was to ride out with whatever time we had left together and live it to the fullest………….
