Happy Mother Day to my mom!

I wrote this to enter my mom into a contest to win a surprise package for mother's day. I hope she WINS! She most definitely deserves it! Happy Mother's day momma!

If you were to meet my dear mother you might wonder if she is really human. You’d probably think she must be some sort of super hero with super hero power and strength or something. I am here to tell you that she is more than just a super hero. My mother is a real angel sent down from heaven with a special mission to keep our family together and show the world how to love with pure and selfless intent.

I am just one of the 10 kids that my mom has given birth to. When one of my older brothers, Byron, was 10 years old he was in a serious car accident while on a road trip to Alaska with my grandparents. Byron miraculously lived through the accident and is now 39 years old. Although he is still with us today, this terrible accident left my big brother, my mom’s precious son, with severe brain damage and partially paralyzed. For the last 29 years my dear mother has taken care of Byron. Every day, for the last 29 years, she has gotten him out of bed, bathed him, changed his catheter, dressed him, combed his hair and brushed his teeth. She has made his meals into puree before spoon feeding him, and held his hands through his seizures he suffers from daily. For the past 29 years my mom has woke up every night, in the wee hours of the morning, to roll him over and straighten out his crippled legs so he can be more comfortable and fall back asleep. No matter how hard or inconvenient it might have been, my mom has pushed Byron around in his wheel chair to all of us other kid’s baseball games, piano recitals, swimming lessons, performances and graduations so that we wouldn’t ever feel one bit deprived of her support, attention and love. As a mother to a little one year old, I have to confess that sometimes, when I am changing a soiled diaper and wiping a stinky little bum, I daydream of the day when my baby will be old enough to go to the bathroom in the ‘big girl’ toilet and when I can be done with changing stinky diapers. Every time I find myself longing for this day I feel so guilty knowing that for my mom, that day will never come. For her, diapers aren’t just a temporary stage that Byron will eventually grow out of. For 29 years my mom has been changing her precious son’s stinky diapers and yet with every one of those diapers that she changes she humbly gives thanks to God for letting her son stay with her another day longer.

About ten years after Byron’s accident my oldest brother, Nathan, woke up one morning with his new bride of not even a year not feeling very well. After breakfast he went to go lie down on the couch. When his wife went in to go check on him he wasn’t breathing. By the time the ambulance reached their home it was too late. I remember being at home when my mom and dad received the phone call from the hospital who told them that their son had died from sudden heart failure. The image I have of the devastation in my mom’s eyes and on her face is still so vivid and haunts me still today. Every mother’s worst nightmare, loosing her child, was now a reality to mine. To this day, she celebrates Nathan’s birthday every year and looks for little signs from her boy that say to her, “Don’t worry mom, I’m still here. I’ll be watching over you and I promise we’ll be able to embrace again soon.”

About 5 years before Nathan passed away my mom’s oldest daughter, Elisa was diagnosed with Lupus, a chronic autoimmune disorder. At first the affects of this disease were pretty mild for my sister but as she grew older and went away to college, the affects Lupus had on her grew worse and worse. She was hospitalized several times and had to withdraw from her college courses on more than one occasion so that she could go home and get better. Even though my mom’s college degree was not in nursing, she was the best nurse her daughter could ask for. How comforting it must have felt for Elisa to come home from being so sick at college to her mom who would nurse her and comfort her while she went through all her chemo treatments to get the Lupus under control. Well, soon the affects of Lupus on Elisa became so severe that her kidneys shut down and she was put on dialysis. The doctors said she would need to have a kidney transplant if she didn’t want to be on dialysis for the rest of her life. Of course, my mom was the first to raise her had and offer to donate her kidney to Elisa. The family quickly put an end to that idea knowing that there were still 5 kids living at home, including Byron, who needed their mom. We knew Elisa’s blood type was O+ and according to my lab results from a college biology class I was taking, so was mine. After a long list of other tests at the hospital we learned that I was a perfect match to donate a kidney for Elisa. As a mother, can you try to imagine the emotion…sitting in a hospital room with one child laying in a hospital bed on your right side, hooked to a dialysis machine, waiting to go under major surgery to receive a new kidney and ironically, on your left side, is your other daughter laying in a hospital bed waiting to go under major surgery to give her kidney. How stressful that must have been on my mother to be put in that circumstance. How fervent and intense her prayers must have been in that moment, pleading for the help of God to guide the hands of the many surgeons so that her daughters would make it through the surgery. I’m sure she spent every second of those 8 long hours while we were in surgery praying that Elisa’s body would accept her new kidney and function properly and that my body would heal and function properly with only one kidney. No matter how much stress she must have been feeling or how emotional I’m certain she was, during that nerve racking time for me and Elisa, my mom gave us strength and helped keep us calm. She kept a smile on her face and held our hands though it all. In fact, the last thing I can remember before I fell in deep sleep from the anesthesia is her smiling face looking down on me. I could tell she was trying her hardest to hold back the tears. In fact, right before I closed my eyes, I’m pretty sure I saw one slip away and roll down her cheek.

Now, for this mother’s day, my mom is not going to be here. Almost a year ago my mom and dad decided to pack up their suitcases, leave their home and other belongings behind, and take Byron and Gabe, my youngest brother, to go spend a year living close to my youngest sister Leah and younger brother Dave. Most of us siblings live close to my parents so they get to see us and their grandkids quite often. Dave and Leah and their spouses have lived far from home for a while and my parents thought they could use some extra support and help from their mom and dad especially since David and his wife just had their first baby. Pretty selfless act of kindness, I’d say. This is just how my mom is. It’s her nature to sacrifice for others. My mom is always serving and doing things for other people so that their lives might be better. She has obviously been through a lot in her life as a mother but never have I ONCE heard her complain or feel sorry for herself because of the all trials she has been through. In fact she is the most grateful, humble, selfless person I know. She never does or buys anything nice for herself; only for others.

Even though I will not be able to see my mom on Mother’s Day this year, I want her and everyone who reads this to know that I KNOW that angels do live among us. I have witnessed living proof of one of God’s finest. And I feel SO blessed to be able to call her… my mother.