The sad truth is that we all will lose someone close to us in our lifetimes. Unfortunately, this happens to many when they are young and ill prepared. What is one of the most difficult things to go through is having to care for ill parents after they’ve taken care of us for so many years. How can we bear to have to see our role models on that downward spiral into poor health?
Diane Smith is a 51-year-old Maine resident who is a mother of two children. Her mother Mabel was diagnosed with breast cancer when Diane was 5 years old. It had already moved into her bones. Her diagnosis was terminal. She was divorced and had three children under her care. Diane was the youngest, Robert was 10 and Theresa was 15. Diane’s mother’s depression and pain set in, leading to a mixture of medication that made her act unlike herself. “My mom lived a long time with it. My sister ended up raising me a lot of the time when I was younger,” Diane said. Diane and her brother Rob never connected as closely as she and her sister did. “Me and my sister are so close because we went through a lot of hardships together,” Diane said.
Theresa was 15 when her mother was diagnosed with cancer. She moved out at 18, when Diane was 8 years old. “I only remember a short time where me and my sister lived under the same roof,” Diane said. For most of the time when Diane was growing up, her sister lived in a house just next door. She was also raising a family and trying to get her footing in the adult world. “My sister lived right next door. She helped out a lot. When she would cook dinner for her family, she would always bring me and my mom over some,” Diane said.
“My mom was very bitter because of her diagnosis. She lived a long time after she was diagnosed with cancer. She lived 10 years,” Diane said. Because of the situation, Diane’s family didn’t have a lot of money coming in and times were tough. Diane’s social life was also heavily affected. “I couldn’t go out with my friends. I had to stay home and take care of her a lot of the time. It wasn’t her fault, but it made me kind of resentful. We were a lot alike and we both butted heads a lot,” Diane said.
While Theresa was helping out as much as possible, there wasn’t anyone else who stepped forward. In fact, a lot of people didn’t know. “Nobody knew about my mom. I never told anybody,” Diane said. There were a lot of factors as to why she never let anyone in to discuss her family’s struggle. Because of her situation, she hadn’t made any close friends in school. Children picked up on this and she was heavily bullied. “My dad lived, for a very short time, next door, but for the most part he lived in Connecticut. He did what he could. He’d send me money and I’d go see him in the summertime,” Diane said. Her father was one of her only resources and close relatives as a child.
“I missed a lot of school. A lot of it was that she was lonely,” Diane explained. Her mother would keep her home to keep her company during the day because she didn’t want to be alone. Missing so much class time worsened Diane’s social life and affected her grades greatly. “I was a teenager and wasn’t the easiest child at all,” Diane admitted. Although she did everything she could to care for her mother, their relationship was strained. Despite many hard memories to look back on, Diane recalls her childhood Christmases and cherishes the joy they would bring her mother. “I had good memories of Christmas. She really tried to be a mom at Christmas,” Diane said. With her health worsening over the years, no matter how tired she was, the Christmas decorations would go up and Diane’s mother’s spirits would lift.
“She died when I was in eighth grade. I flunked every class,” Diane said. After her mother passed away on Valentine’s Day at age 55, Diane moved in with Theresa and her family. Theresa made Diane go to school every day so she could see her succeed. “At my eighth grade graduation, I got two awards: most academic improvement and greatest phys. ed. improvement,” Diane smiled.
As to be expected, life changed drastically for Diane after the death of her mother. “I always wondered what my life would have been like if I had a mom who had never gotten sick and could spend time with me,” she confesses. Grief treats everyone differently and there is no right or wrong way to grieve. Diane didn’t cry at her mother’s funeral, though distraught. “No matter how much you don’t get along with her, she’s still your mom,” she said. Her mother would not only jump into action during Christmas, but every time Diane got sick, she would sympathize. She would take care of her instead of the other way around. Diane caught a horrible cold after her mother’s funeral and when she found herself sick on the couch without her mother, she cried for the first time after her death.
“I think I’m a decent person because of what I went through,” Diane said. Her relationship with her mother while she was alive had turned Diane into someone she didn’t want to be. “I said some bad things to her the morning she died that I regret. I was bound and determined to be a good person and not the person I was when she was alive,” she explained.
Diane acted out a lot because of the heavy weight on her shoulders at such a young age. Her mother used to tell her that one day she’d have a daughter and then she’d know what it was like. Diane says she got lucky in those regards because both of her children are much better than she was growing up. “I didn’t have a role model to teach me how to be a mom When you have children you have to put them first, you can’t be selfish. I always wanted to be the kind of mom I wanted but never had,” she said. “I turned my life around for the better.”
