Days of My Life

Reason 500, 600 million and one why I’m ready for 07 to be done. Last week while pops was in ICU, my little brother called and told me the doctor wanted to send his mom to hospice. Jackie had beaten breast cancer, and the doctor recently, like a few weeks ago, found another spot. She began chemo without radiation and a few weeks later, hospice? That seemed unreal, almost dream nightmare like. Totally from another planet.

We agreed to keep each other’s parents in prayer and didn’t talk again until this morning when he told me that Jackie was gone. Funny thing that I woke up around 3am and couldn’t go back to sleep until after 5am, the time that she died. My mind was racing and all I could pray was, “Dear God, help me to get back to sleep.” I fell apart in the dentist’s office the same way I’d fallen apart a few years ago when I heard that his grandfather had died and had already been buried. My heart sank.

I wanted to make you laugh today or make you think, but all I can do is pay tribute to the woman I know as “Mother.”

I met Jackie J. in 1992 when her son brought me home to meet her. She was a soon-to-be single mother of three, and I was dating her oldest son who was more like her friend. I dated her son through high school and college before we parted ways, but our bond was already well established by then. After all, I’d spent more hours of my teenage years in her home than my own. I’d traveled, loved, and lived with her family for years, and I was always at home. She loved me in a way that was uncommon, hoping the best for her son and me up until the time that he said “I do” to another. She was like her father in that regard whose last conversation with me was to plead for the sake of his grandson that I reconsider our relationship. That choice was out of my hands just as Jack’s passing was partially out of hers.

At this time of year, I recall all the years she was on my Christmas list and how like the rest of her children I was on hers. She let her son keep my dog Candy while I went away to college my first year, and she didn’t kill us when we ran up the bill so high that their phone was cut off. She made her son work to pay it and never chastised me for my part in the collect calls. She was an excellent baker and whatever cake I liked was sure to be on the Christmas table. She made sure I was included in every family event and was there to guide her son and me through our many ups and downs of just trying to grow up. Even after he and I were done, she made sure every chance she got to let me know that she still loved me and that I was still family.

A few weeks ago I was looking at old pictures and going down memory lane, saying goodbye to an era in my life, and who’s picture did I see at every turn but Ms. Jackie’s? She not only sacrificed to attend my college graduation, but she brought her mother and my little sister (her biological daughter) too. She was just as proud as my mom and dad on that day and her being there meant the world to me. I will never forget her presence there. Our smiles in the pictures were real. Her love for her other daughter was sincere. Her love for me made her whole family love me to the extent that I still can’t go home without running into one of my other family members and embracing in the mall, at Walmart, at weddings, or wherever we may find ourselves. It’s a love that has sometimes made me uncomfortable as I’ve moved on to other relationships, but it is also a love that persists to keep on giving. To an adoptee, I can’t tell you how much that means.

If I ever fall in love again, I will be sure to pray that my man’s mom will love me just like Jack. While some mothers can be possessive, jealous, and mean, Jack was always kind, supportive, and willing to let us make our own mistakes without getting involved. She is so rare that I have yet to meet another man’s mother like her. She just wanted her children to be happy and she always thought of how she would want others to treat her sons and daughter. She certainly lived the Godly life that some others only sing about in their songs. And as she entered into her new role of grandma a few years ago, she was as caring and compassionate as she’d always been with her own children. I know it’s possible to have no desire for a person but to sincerely wish you could just marry the family instead. I would’ve gladly taken vows to have and hold Jack as my mother-in-law until through death we did part. In fact, I recall that her son and I did exchange those vows on the day that we became each other’s firsts and vowed to love each other’s families as our own. I have never forgotten my vows. I have never forgotten Jack or Kee-Kee or Jamie or Kenny. One never forgets or stops loving family.

I saw Mother last at my little brother’s wedding. My ex’s younger brother and sister are still family to me, and his brother IS my brother. We talk all the time, even lived together for a while. When he got married in June, Mother was right there, cancer free and grooving on the dance floor. That was a happy and memorable day. Several years had passed since my last visit with her , but I would often call whenever my path led me home. And Thanksgiving past was no different. I called her cell to wish her well in the next phase of her battle but only got her voicemail. I should’ve known something then. I left her a message that all would be well and to tell her I love her.

I was on point on both counts. All is well with her soul, and love her I definitely do. For all of my tears that she dried, the nights that she listened, the fighting and arguing she put up with, the refereeing she did, the fighting to make ends meet all alone, the holding her family close and dear, her embracing a new daughter-in-law while never letting me go, her insistence on seeing good and not evil, her unending sacrifice, and innumerable memories that I will never forget–I sincerely love and will miss you Mother. I will be there with her children as she is laid to rest, always remembering how much she loved me and how she never stopped being my other mom.

Maybe we’ll laugh tomorrow. Until then, I must prepare to go down home.