Twenty-Five Years

My mother passed away 25 years ago on this day. Early in the morning, I received the phone call that she had passed somewhat unexpectedly in the night. She had pancreatic cancer, and the doctors had said she likely had another month or two to live. I knew the end was near; just two days earlier, I had brought a local preacher in to see her, giving her the chance to make her peace if she wanted, or to say nothing if she didn’t.

I hadn’t expected her to pass away so soon after that visit. Perhaps that brief moment, that permission from someone like the preacher, was all she needed to move on. I will never know.

My mother worked hard to make a good life for herself and her two children, my brother and me. She held a full-time job for all the time I lived at home. I remember how she kept the house sparkling clean, always ready for the days my father returned from business trips. She retired in the 1990s, when she was about 46, because by then she had her years in after having worked at the same company since she was 16. She died 10 years later. Her retirement years were not easy, unfortunately.

I wish she could have been happier.

Pancreatic cancer is a cruel cancer. I'm sure treatments are better now than they were 25 years ago, but not by much. It's a cancer that is generally not diagnosed until it is in its advanced stages. The most common type, pancreatic adenocarcinoma, has a survival rate of just 8% of people five years after diagnosis.

My mother lived just over a year beyond her diagnosis.

I have now lived a longer life than my mother did. It's sobering to think that I have spent more time alive, breathing in the lovely smells of my beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains, than my mom did. 

Fifty-six is awfully young to die. Each year I live beyond that feels like borrowed time.