Reasons I Love My Mother

Reason #360:

Today is my sister Katie’s 20th birthday. So today’s reason will be a joint “Reason I Love My Mother” and “Reason I Love My Sister”.

My mom was sick during Katie’s last year in high school and first year of college. For as hard a time as I had with my mom being sick - leaving work all the time, flying back and forth from California from New York, constantly worrying about being so far away - I can not imagine what it would have been like to go through the death of my mother as a teenager. I hate that I only got twenty-six years with her, but I hate even more that Katie only got nineteen.

Last August, we moved Katie into her sophomore year apartment without my mom, because she was too sick to come. It was a sad, emotional day. Frankly, it was terrible. One of the worst days I can remember from the whole experience.

But Katie got through it. Because she is a wonderful, weird, funny, offbeat person. She makes me laugh, she confuses me, and she usually seems both really young and oddly mature at the same time. At my mom’s memorial service, her friends said that Katie is a lot like my mother in that when she walks into a room, you know that she is there immediately.

It’s true.

It was hard on my mom, too, knowing that her sickness was affecting Katie’s “fun years” - she wanted Katie to enjoy her senior year and be excited to head off to college without the drama of a sick family member. And even though that was the least of Katie’s worries - what really mattered was my mom getting better and feeling loved and cared for while she was sick - my mom did her damnedest to make things normal for Katie. She showed up to Katie’s high school graduation and threw her a graduation party in our backyard while she was going through chemo and wearing a wig that made her self-conscious. She made a point of going down to Sonoma State after Katie was moved in so she could see her dorm in person, even though she was pretty weak that day. And she talked and listened to Katie whenever she needed a mother, no matter how sick she was feeling.

To say my mom’s illness was hard on Katie would be a huge understatement, and to assume that I know what she went through at all would be inappropriate, but coming out of this whole experience, I have been nothing but impressed by her. And I know my mom would be, too.

Today she turns 20.

She had a helluva time getting here, but she did it. And I love her.