Reasons I Love My Mother

Reason #318:

As I’ve written about before, my mom had a wall of inspirational pictures next to her bed. It was photos of her children, phrases cut out of magazines like “full, luscious hair!”, and pictures of places she loved and and/or still wanted to visit some day.

When it became clear that chemotherapy wasn’t getting rid of any of her tumors and we were at a loss for what to try next, she asked me to do a google image search of healthy lungs, print out the best picture I could find, and then tack it up to her wall. So I did.

Then every night before she went to bed and every morning when she woke up, she would look to the picture of the lungs and focus on the positive end goal: to get better, healthier. Even if only for a little while. Just like that picture of New York she had up on her wall because she was adamant about going back to visit me one more time, she had that picture of those healthy lungs so she could be reminded of something she wanted. And I loved that she did this.

But I do remember the night she passed away being just destroyed by that wall. It was all these little wishes she had for herself; things she loved, people that made her happy, images that made her smile and goals she had set for herself. She spent time printing these pictures and quotations out, tacking them to her wall, looking at them, hoping for them, and then in the end, when she was dead, they were all still there. And I remember thinking, Now they’re just bits of paper tacked to a wall.

Which is I guess what they always were. But while she was alive, they were important bits of paper. They had meaning and they were worth something. And they still are, I guess. Because as much as it makes me sad and existential to think about that wall still existing long after the woman who created it has passed away, it was very important for a time. And it was very much my mom to me.