11/23/1947

She was born November 23, 1947.  Tomorrow, she would have been 63.  The last birthday that I spent with her, was two years ago, when she turned 61.

I don't really remember what we did during the day but that night was spent at home, in our kitchen.  We had dinner, I think.  She wasn't feeling to well, she hadn't been for a few weeks.  No one really knew what was wrong.

No one actually thought anything was wrong with her.

The last five years of her life, she had a shit ton of health problems.  She was a diabetic.  She was a smoker.  She was overweight.  She had a useless limb -- her ankle, heel and all of the bones connecting them had been shattered in a car accident.  The useless limb made her mobility pretty much non existent, which didn't help her weight or her diabetes.  She also had ovarian cancer.

Those five years, she had hospital stays of at least a week at Northwestern, Swedish Covenant, St. Joseph's, St. Elizabeth, and St. Mary's.  I was on a first name basis with the staff at some of those places.  We went to the hospital all of the fucking time.

The year leading up to her 61st birthday was very similar to the previous 4 in that regard.  She kept asking me to take her to the doctor.  She wanted a pill that would give her her strength back.  That is all she would ever say.  "Tell him that I feel week, that I want a pill or something to give me my strength back..."  Her doctors having given her ever fucking medicine under the Sun, really didn't know what to say.  They would take blood samples, run tests, nothing of consequence would ever be found.

Ever.

Three months before her 61st birthday, she spent 3 weeks at St. Mary's.  They thought that she had put on too strong a pain patch (she had them because of her foot) and that she had started to get addicted.  That she was weak and her balance was off because was fucked up all the time.

They thought this because I told them that is what I thought happened.

My mother and I had a trust problem.  I didn't fucking trust her.  When I was 18 she revealed to me that the person I thought was my father, was NOT my father.  It was just a name I had, mind you -- I'd never met my father, but I had a name.  I thought I knew who he was.  When that happened, her and I were never quite the same.  In time I would grow to understand, well, reconcile that situation.  As, I saw it, my mother was a person, she made some mistakes, but she always loved me.  Who was I to judge someone that did nothing but love me all of my life?  She asked to be forgiven, but I never did.  I never felt that I had too.

She never did anything to me, but love me unconditionally.  Yes, she lied.  She made that mistake.  But after that, it was Ride or Die, Bitches...  No one had my back the way she did.  No one.

To forgive her was to say that she needed to apologize for loving me...That never felt right.

The thing is, I never really trusted her again.  I tried.  Actually I am not sure that I did.  I hope I did.  It was all just so fucked up at the time.  I don't know.  I do know that the trust was never the same.  Ever.

When I told those doctors that she had taken too strong a pain patch it was because neither they, nor anyone else, at any other hospital, ever found anything wrong with her.  Doubt crept into my head.  I stopped listening to her.  I got angry, frustrated that I kept having to take her to all of these fucking doctors appointments and nothing would ever be fucking found to be wrong with her.  Other members of my family started thinking the same thing.  Maybe she was just getting old.  Maybe she just wanted attention.  Maybe the guilt of her life being exposed just caused her to go insane.  We all thought she might have just lost it.

The night of her 61st birthday, I was at my wits end.  An Uncle came over.  He saw her, saw the way she was acting, and because she had just been released from the hospital, because I was so angry, and we were all so frustrated, we just stopped listening.  I resented that even on her birthday, she couldn't let up this act for sympathy.  That she was just acting this sick and confused to sell the fact that she was sick, when in fact she was fine.

My Uncle and I challenged her, if she felt as bad as she was acting she just needed to go to the fucking hospital.  She refused.  She had been in and out of those places so much she didn't trust them.  I mistook her refusal for not wanting to be found out.  I was so confused.  So angry. She wasn't lying to me.  She wasn't acting.

She was fucking terrified of having to go back to the needles and the nurses and the shitty food and the hard beds.  I had stopped listening though.

Finally, she agreed.  We would go to the hospital the next day.  She wanted to spend the night at home.  It was her birthday, she wanted to sleep in her bed.  In the morning, we would go.

We did.  The day after her 61st birthday, I called an ambulance.  For the 3rd time that year, fire fighters, about 8 of them, filled our house, carried her out, loaded her in an ambulance, and then we would rush to the emergency room.

When we arrived, I told the doctor her history, like ever other time.  I knew her medicine.  I would run down our hospital stays, how long, what hospital, and what for.  I would list the various surgeries, for what, when, and where.  I knew what doctors they should speak to at what hospitals to fill in any blanks.  I had this routine down.

This particular time, I told the doctor I was leaving.  "Listen dude, I have to go to work.  I don't know what the fuck is wrong with her, I just can't take this anymore, I need to take off.  Just...Just call me when you don't find anything."

The doctor said, "No problem, Mr. Contreras.  You go ahead.  I just got her blood work back, everything does look normal.  I'm gonna run a few more tests and then I'll call you.  Have a good afternoon."

I left the ER, got in the car, left the hospital, pulled over and called my Godfather.  The closest thing I have to a father.  I broke down.  I was convinced she had gone insane.  He agreed.  Maybe we needed to face the fact that she had in fact lost her mind.  Maybe for the good of everyone involved the next stop, after the ER, was a psychiatrist.  After all, nothing was wrong with her.

The day after her 61st birthday, at about 3:20pm, I found out that her ovarian cancer had spread.

The doctor told me that my Mother had 13 brain tumors.

She died 7 months later.

I work hard to move past her death.  I make an effort to be positive.  To remember the good parts.  To move on and not let this moment in my life define who I am.  I am not entirely there yet.  Fuck, I don't even know that I am close to being there yet.  I do know that I know that I will always miss her.  I know that I loved her, and that she loved me.  I know that she is not suffering.  I know that I am alive.  I know that she would want me to live.  I know that she would want to know that I am not suffering.

Not today though.  Her 63rd birthday is still to close to her 61st.

I will go to the gym.  I will go to work.  I will go to that dinner meeting and talk art.  I will live.  But I will hurt.

I will hurt so fucking much.  A pain that I can't explain. A pain I don't wish on anyone.  A mix of headache and loneliness and body ache, and fuck, fuck, fuck, God Damn it I fucking miss my Mom.  There is no getting around it.  I am human.  This is how it works.

I will also remember though, in that pain, how much she loved me.  How much I loved her.  It wouldn't fucking hurt as much as it does if we didn't love each other as much as we did.

Feliz Cumpelanos, Madre.

Te quiero, tanto...

Tanto...

Tanto.

(If there are spelling error or grammatical mistakes, for give them.  I needed to get this out, I just can't go back and read it right now.)