Mother

My mother is going to die one day. Sometimes—quite often, if I am honest—I grieve that fact, even though I don’t know when that day will come. My mother has several autoimmune diseases. Rheumatoid arthritis, Lupus, Schoergen’s syndrome. They give her pain every single day and most days, she can’t even walk. When I still lived at home, I would often hear her in the early mornings, puking from her medicine. She has medicine that works much better now, but there were years and years of trial and error until she finally had a chemical cocktail that fights to keep her functional, without negative effects that were so detrimental.

For most people, their hero is their father. I love my dad, but he is not my hero—far from it, if I am being honest. My mother, however, is. I love her as much as a human being can love another. I owe everything to her, my tenacity, my perseverance, my empathy, my love of critical thinking, my compassion, I owe to her. I grieve the fact that her life will likely not be long. I grieve that she will probably pass away before I am middle aged. I grieve the painful way that her body is tearing itself apart and I grieve that she must deal with such things every single day. My mother rusted early, much sooner than she should have, and I grieve that almost every day.

I grieve not just the pain that she feels physically, but emotionally too. She has lost both her parents in the past two years, she has spent most of the last twenty five years in extreme poverty and the target of attacks from both friends and family, yet she has stayed so consistently empathetic and compassionate and loving and self-sacrificial and I can’t help but admire her strength but grieve that she must be so strong at all. Why her? She deserves a much better life than the one that the world has given her, and I grieve that I cannot also give her a better life. 

I love my mother as much as a human being can love another person. I would not be the man I am today without her. Thank you, Mom. I hope to keep making you proud. 

See you Wednesday.