Ten years ago...

My mother is sick. This is something that I've blogged about before. What I haven't blogged about was that she first got sick on September 11, 2001. It's been ten years today. I will always remember that day as long as I live. I was petrified. Scared out of my mind. People DIED who didn't do anything wrong. All I wanted was my mother but she was at work. As a nurse, she worked from 11am to 11pm. And because I had school the next day, I was sent to bed before she got home. I tried to stay up. I fought sleep with all my might and lost. My childhood fear was that my mother wouldn't come home. I was so scared that something would happen to her and I'd never see her again. My dad waking me up that night telling me that "Mommy is sick" was possibly one of the worst moments of my life. I'll never forget the flashing lights outside the window. I'll never forget being put in my sisters room and told to comfort her. I'll never forget drying her tears and fighting to keep my back because she needed me to be strong. I'll never forget the voices of the paramedics taking my mother to the ambulance. And I'll never forget thinking I was never going to see my mother again.

She had surgery to remove a brain tumor ten days later. She had seizure after seizure as the doctors worked to control the scar tissue to and find the right medication. She totaled her car. She nearly died of hypothermia after having a seizure outside in ten degree weather without any identification on her while out walking. And then slowly she started to get better. She became my mother again. And most importantly to me, she stopped working long shifts and was home when I came home from school. I would never again have to worry about her driving home late at night. Years went by. Other than a MRI every year and anti-seizure medication, it was as if that first brain tumor had never happened.

Then March rolled around and she had her yearly scans. The doctors said she had a completely UNRELATED brain tumor in a different part of her brain. While the first tumor was benign, this new one wasn't. And it's going to kill her eventually. This summer was full of radiation and chemo therapy. The doctor's said that it worked and the tumor is stable for now, only to call back the next day and say she needs more scans. They don't know if the treatment, her best chance at survival, worked to stop the tumor growth. So that's on the docket for this week. More scans to see if the tumor is actually stable. If it's not... well, we cross that bridge when we get to it.

My mother is as healthy as she's going to get. It's not what I expected ten years after that first incident, that first seizure, that first night of believing I would never see my mother again. We thought we had dogged a bullet, only to have it come back ten years later. I think that's why September 11th is so difficult for me this year. It isn't just the ten year anniversary of the tower's falling, it's also the ten year anniversary of the start of everything with my mom.

I used to be the type of person who would wish that time would go faster around bad times. I would wish the clock would speed up during finals. I'd count down days to moving back to school when things got bad at home with my sister. And I'd pray for the day I would be on my own, a real live grown up. I don't do these things anymore. I wish that time would slow down. I wish for more days. I don't want it to be Christmas this year, because she only has so many Christmas's left. I'm learning to look at life as a hourglass. We only get so much sand...

Today reminds me to be thankful of the time she does have. At least I know to cherish the time we have left together. And she'll be surrounded by family and friends until that day comes, hopefully ten to fifteen years from now. I'm old enough to know my mother as a friend, something that a lot of people don't get to do. So I can be thankful for that.

So RIP to all of the victims of this day ten years ago. September 11th taught a lot of people that none of us are guaranteed tomorrow. We will never forget those that lost their lives and the heroes that emerged that day. I will never forget anyway.