Addison Ore and her family lost both parents to cancer in 2002. From all of us at Cancer CarePoint who know the family, we send you the best this holiday season.
I don't have much of a taste for Thanksgiving anymore.
I haven't since 2002 when I spent my last Thanksgiving with my mother.
Sadly, that day wasn't the stuff that Hallmark commercials are made of. My mother was in a hospital in Charlottesville, Va., approaching the end of what would be a 10-month battle against an aggressive form of cancer.
A tumor at the base of her tongue had made eating too excruciatingly painful and she had lost more than 50 pounds.
Sometimes I wish my memory wasn't so good.
I have an almost freakish ability to recall specific details from a day. I'm practically my own "Google" when it comes to memory. Put in Thanksgiving Day and more than likely, that last Thanksgiving with my mother is what will come up.
I remember a lot about that day, including that Thanksgiving is a really long day when you're unable to eat.
It was an eerily quiet day. Hospitals are usually pretty empty on holidays because they try to get people home to be with their families. The patients who remain are, for the most part, quite ill.
Maybe my memory is a bit selective after all this time, but I think that the staff working on my mother's floor that day was especially kind to my family and me because it was a holiday.
My good friend Tom and his mother, Liz, were in town for the long weekend and stopped in to see my mother the afternoon before Thanksgiving. I worked with Tom for several years and had become good friends with him when I lived in Washington.
Tom was fighting his own battle then against AIDS, only he seemed to be winning. The day he met my mother he wore a beautiful navy wool turtleneck sweater that brought out his eyes. He was athletic and handsome and looked like sombody out of a J. Crew catalog.
My mother was having a good day that afternoon. Her pain was tolerable and she wasn't lost in a morphine haze. She was sitting up in her bed wearing a pretty pink robe. Her energy was good and she and Tom had a grand time charming each other.
No one could have guessed that they would both be celebrating their last Thanksgiving.
I often revisit that memory of Tom and my mother and the details are seared in my mind. It's as if my memory is a View Master, one of my favorite toys from childhood, and I can click through the 3-D slides on the card.
There's Tom sitting on the edge of my mother's bed making everyone laugh with his sillinesss. And there's my mother at her most gracious, acting as if she's hosting a cocktail party.
There I am, leaning on the window sill, taking in the scene in slow motion, telling myself--remember this.
It's hard to plan a Thanksgiving meal when someone can't eat. My partner and I picked up some things at a locl market that we thought my mother might be able to swallow.
We got some lobster bisque and she managed to get down a few tablespoons.
I remember that when my mother was dying, I was desperate for comfort and found it often in the simplest of things like a few tablespoons of soup. Late in the day, I decided to walk down to the hospital gift shop and as a matter of habit, I asked my mother if she wanted anything. She surprised me by saying. "Yes. Bring me a Hershey bar." Nothing could have made me happier. I remember almost running to the gift shop to get that Hershey bar. I wanted to tell the cashier, "My mother asked for a Hershey bar!"
It's so arbitrary now to recall that the last thing that I bought my mother was a candy bar.
My mother never left the hospital. She died on Saturday, Dec. 7 at the age of 70.
Today marks my fifth Thanksgiving without my mother, and I am thankful for many things, especially my gift for memory.
J.M. Barrie, the Scottish playwright who penned Peter Pan, once wrote that "God gave us memories that we might have roses in December."
Or Hershey bars in November.
Source: Addison Ore, "Go Triad"
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