A couple of weeks after Christmas 2005 my mom asked my sister Katelynn and I to talk with her because she was sick again with cancer. She told us of the severity of her cancer, that the prognosis was grim. That her doctors had told her she had a very short time, maybe a few months, maybe six, at the very best a year. Mom had already been fighting the awful disease on and off for 13 years (even though she'd been told at when she first got cancer and went through her first course of treatment she would only live five years). She tried to seem optimistic. But for some reason, I knew that this time it would not be long. I could see how tired she was. She had not slept a full night's sleep in years. Her skin color was light grey and her hands were cold and shriveled. Mom had not been eating very much at all. She could not sit or stand or lay down for long periods of time. There was no comfortable position for her. She tired quickly. Mom was still smiling…but I could see her holding the tears back behind her blue eyes. She knew, too. She just didn’t want my sister to worry about her; she didn’t want anyone to worry about her. She did not want to burden anyone—as usual.
Almost 5 months from the day we spoke, on June 16, 2006, around 6:00am, mom suffered two strokes as she lay in bed. She lost the use of her right arm, she had tunnel vision, her speech was slurred. But still she managed to get up and Kate helped her down the stairs and called 911. Mom was determined to get downstairs to make it easier on the paramedics. She was taken by ambulance to BayState Medical Center. There, she underwent a series of tests, but began to have seizures. Mom was given an IV to prevent them. She resisted the installation of the IV, she always hated having them and she'd had way too many over the years. Saturday evening she began to sleep and she continued to sleep. She slept until Monday. Mom hadn’t slept that well in years. She had been given drugs to make her very comfortable and to keep her pain-free. By noon on Monday she began very deep and labored breathing. A very gracious nurse took us aside, talked with us and told us that her body was shutting down. It would not be much longer. Around 3:00pm Monday afternoon, June 19, mom died. She was just 51 years old.
On Thursday, June 22, at 11:00am Kate and I went to the Springfield Crematorium, which is inside a centuries-old stone chapel. Kate wore a bright yellow dress and as we entered the chapel she held my hand. They brought mom out inside a white cardboard box with wooded batten boards atop a stainless steel gurney. We stood by her for a little while, until it was time for her to go into the crematorium. Kate and I went for a walk around the cemetery. It all seemed a little too surreal. I never really thought that at the age of 31 that I would be holding my sister’s hand at our mom’s cremation on the second day of summer.
Mom underwent many, many hours of radiation treatment to a point where she could not receive any more. She had Lymphedema in her right leg, a condition when the fluid within soft tissue does not drain naturally and causes severe swelling. She had way too many surgeries to remove cancerous tumors and some organs that were attached to the cancer. When you add up the entire time mom spent in the hospital for treatments, surgery, doctor visits, and recovery days it was well over two years.
I really don’t think I fully knew the gravity of what she meant to my life until months after her death, when I picked up the phone to call her to tell her about something that happened to me. Mom was one of the strongest and bravest people I have ever known. And I miss her a lot.
This August, to honor my mom, I’m riding my bicycle for the sixth time another 200 miles in the Pan-Massachusetts Challenge to raise money for the Jimmy Fund and Dana Farber Cancer Institute. And I need your support because no one should have to watch their loved ones suffer or die from cancer. I’m trying to raise $6,500 for this great cause. Even if you can only give a little it will be much appreciated.
Your support means a lot,
Christopher Rawson
To donate visit www.pmc.org my Rider number is CR0028
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