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More Life to Live

My mother sat precariously on a narrow examination table in the doctor's office, her blue hospital gown tied in the front. The surgeon examined a hard lump in her right breast, then he turned to me.

"I strongly suspect cancer," he said. "I'll get her into hospital as soon as I can."

As a nurse, I'd expected as much, and yet I'd clung to the dim hope that since there was no history of cancer in our family, the tumour might not be malignant. Were we about to lose mother? I shuddered. During the past two years I'd lost my marriage, my home and my job. Was I about to lose the one person who'd supported me through it all, if not in words, in presence?

No Fear of Death
Hearing the doctors words, however, I realized I needed to focus on mother. How would she take the news? In her 86 years, she'd been in hospital only once, for an overnight observation. Back in Ukraine she'd given birth to her four children in a birthing house with a midwife attending.

On the way home, I carefully explained how the surgeon would do a biopsy first, and if the tumour was malignant, he would operate.

"I don't want an operation," my mother said with finality.

"Then you will die," I replied.

She fixed her bright blue eyes on mine. "I'm not afraid to die," she said. "I've had a good life."

How Did She Do it?
I wondered how she could say that. She was born a few years before the Russian Revolution; her early childhood memories were of soldiers surging through her village and of bandits ransacking the family home. One morning, her uncle killed by a bandit's saber, was tossed from a hayloft to the street below.

During Stalin's terrible two-year famine, her teenage body became so weak she couldn't lift her swollen legs into bed by herself. Yet each morning, after drinking a watery "soup," she'd stumble to the fields of the collective farm to work. Finally a day came when she was too weak to get out of bed. In the evening young girls ringed her bed and sang hymns.

"I'm going to die," she thought.

Miraculously, she survived the famine. She married my father and moved to another village. Soon Stalin's purges robbed her of her two brothers - who were sent to labour camps in Siberia - and killed two of her uncles.

Then came World War II. My mother lost my father, her home and her country. For two years she fled with four small children across Europe, the fighting front never far behind. Often she endured her children crying out from hunger and cold. Eventually we immigrated to Canada where mother worked as a farmhand in British Columbia until she turned 65. "Mom, how did you do it?" I sometimes asked.

"Do what?"

"Live through all that turmoil."

"Lots of people were worse off than I."

How typical of my mother. She quietly accepted whatever God sent her way. She never asked, "Why me?" As far as she was concerned, she'd had a wonderful life.

"Are you tired of living?" I now asked her.

Mother's cheeks flushed slightly. "My neighbour gave me some bulbs," she said. "She told me the flowers are very beautiful. I want to plant them and see."

"You'd better have the operation then," I said quietly.

The Surgery
My mother agreed. A few days later, the surgeon performed a total mastectomy. I hurried to the hospital, wondering how I would comfort her. But when I arrived on her ward, she was not in her room.

"Where's my mother?" I asked the nurse.

"Probably gone exploring," she laughed. I began searching the corridors for a small woman in a red house coat. When I found her, she assured me she felt fine. But in her eyes, I detected a deep weariness and I encouraged her to go back to bed. In her room her gaze fixed upon me.

"I don't feel like a whole person anymore," she said quietly. I winced at her humiliation.

"Yes, I know," I said, trying to steady my  voice. "But to me you're as beautiful as you always were."

Road to Recovery
As mother's health improved, she began working in her garden again. She planted bulbs and geraniums and petunias and a myriad of other flowers, rejoicing in each one that graced her garden. She carried bouquets of flowers to her church or across the street to her friends in a seniors home.

Soon she was as busy as ever, entertaining company, helping out at church functions and sewing for her grandchildren. I relished our times together.

Almost a year later, after a thorough examination, the cancer specialist said, "I find nothing to be worried about. You need not return unless your doctor finds something suspicious again."

On the drive home, mother was clearly relieved. But having accepted yet another trial without self-pity or bitterness, she'd already dismissed it as of no importance. "It's done me no harm," she said.

For the rest of the trip home, mother chatted happily about future plans. There were more flowers to plant, meals to cook, clothes to sew. As for me, I have been granted a priceless gift to cherish - my mother.

Related Reading:
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Reprinted with permission from the November 2000 Reader's Digest.

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Helen Grace Lescheid, author of numerous articles and two books published worldwide: Lead, Kindly Light and Treasure in the Darkness. She resides in Abbotsford, British Columbia, is a retired nurse, mother of five children and grandmother of three. Click on her books in the right margin to order.