Then, last month I got one dreaded phone call that restarted the roller coaster and sent me careening into a tunnel of terror. On March 29th, my mom was taken to Riverbend hospital for significant bleeding and received several transfusions and was transferred into the ICU. After only a couple days of testing we were informed that my mother had Stage 4 Esophageal cancer that had metastasized into her lymph nodes and she was so malnourished that any hope of treatment would only be possible with a feeding tube for assistance. My mother then made, to me, one of the most selfless decisions I had known her to make in my life, to move to hospice closer to myself and my daughter so she could spend as much of that time left near us. My mother passed on April 24th, after only a mere 2 weeks in hospice.
My life with my mother is about as complicated as any mother - daughter relationship can get, but she will forever be my mother and I never have stopped loving her despite the ups and downs. The emotions that this whirlwind has left me with are more complicated then I really ever foresaw. As a therapist I analyze which stage in the grieving process I am in only to realize that this is not your average grief. I can't seem to figure out what the next step is or how I "should" feel much less how I do. I am balancing the urge to grieve with the concerns of my daughter and her reaction, my families reaction and how I guess I think I am "suppose" to be handling this.
Its so difficult when someone passes when there were so many complicated ups and downs while they were still here. Sometimes I almost feel as if nothing happened and other days I am overwhelmed with feelings of guilt and anger and sadness and hurt. I become fixated on the feeling that everyone is relieved instead of grieving and my heart aches even more. Other days I feel relieved that for once in the entire 31 years of my existence I don't go to bed wondering if she is okay. So for now I will write, and breathe and take it one step at a time.
I attempted to write an obituary and it didn't seem right so then I wrote just the truth and I felt like sharing it. I hope it isn't too raw but its unedited and just what I wrote the week she died:
Kathleen Cunningham was a daughter, a sibling, a mother, a caretaker, and an addict. She didn’t take her first sip of alcohol until she was an young adult but that sip, was all it took. My mother struggled with symptoms of Mental Health and Alcoholism for the majority of her life. This left her without a home, her beloved and extravagant belongings and isolated from her family and loved ones. Her mental health symptoms began earlier in high school, but in her generation things of this nature weren’t talked about publicly and there was a serious lack of resources available to help.
Despite my mothers long struggle with Alcoholism she still presented with a personality you just couldn’t deny. She could walk into St. Vincent De Paul's and walk out looking like she belonged on the cover of Vogue magazine. Whether it was someone on the streets or the nurses caring for her you just couldn’t help but love her. She found humor in almost everything when she was having a good day. She loved to laugh and it was an unforgettable contagious laugh that will always remain with me.
It was during the bad days that you really saw the struggle she faced. It wasn’t just her tone or frustration, it was always in her eyes. Even when I struggled to hear her because she was being undeniably difficult, if I looked into her eyes I saw the pain, the frustration and the anxiety she faced. It is through this lens that I really was able to truly love my mother for who she was and let go of who I wanted her to be.
My mother cared for her mother as well as her late husband through their last days, both battling cancer, only to find herself in a similar predicament. My mother was informed that she had Stage 4 Esophageal cancer and she said to me “ I hope I didn’t wish this upon myself” after we discussed the time during her addiction that she had told me that she had cancer when she did not.
Even during her own times of struggle my mother had an innate ability to help others regardless of who they were, how they looked or where they were from. She was the kind of woman who would take a gift from a homeless woman and treat it as if she were just given gold.
She struggled with her mistakes and the decisions she made in her past as any of us do but her focus was on her children in the end and ensuring that she was not a burden to us was the most important. My mother lived in two worlds, one rich, one poor, one where she was our version of Katherine Hepburn and one where she had an added twist.
She gave us the fortunate ability to see both sides of her. We saw the side of pain and anguish and the side where she traveled the world and had experiences that I can only dream of. She taught us that no matter what you do in life the most important thing to do is live it.
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