Mike Flacy

As I sat in the dim room at the Cornerstone hospice watching my mother cope with the continuous stream of brutal pain from her final bout of cancer, I can’t see my mother anymore.  She’s frail, tired and wisps in and out of consciousness.  She sees us and hear us, but has lost the ability to respond to our questions due to lack of brain function.  The combination of chemotherapy and radiation treatments have destroyed her bone marrow and slowly disintegrated her resistance to the tumors growing all over the insides of her body.  Neurophy has spread from her feet upwards to make her skin ache to the touch and she moans in pain every time someone has to move her.  She’s my mother, cruelly trapped in a dying body.

Even though I can’t see her anymore, I’ll always remember the woman that used to chase my kid sister and I around the house in Easley, SC pretending to be a ferocious monster.  My sister and I would hide in closets as my mom would bellow boisterous groans and scare the living daylights out of two children who couldn’t stop laughing hysterically.  I’ll always remember the woman that accidentally got us locked out of the house when we went swimming our new pool and we huddled quietly in the tool shed for an hour while it poured down rain.

I’ll always remember the woman that cooked the best country fried steak that I ever had in my life and cooked that dreaded chicken & apples dish that made me throw up a little in my mouth every time I smelled it. (Or “the fence” as I called it; catching all food before it went down my throat)  I’ll always remember the woman that taught me how to read before entering school and would take us to the library a couple times a week to check out books like C.S. Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe or Charles Dahl’s  The Great Glass Elevator.

I’ll always remember the woman that made me finish all my homework before I could watch the Cosby show, despite my annoying screams of protest.  I’ll always remember the woman that would get me a giant cookie, chocolate chip cookie cake for my birthday each year and the woman who used to hide from all forms of cameras during special occasions, but always relented with a kooky pose.

I’ll always remember the woman who would always act shocked and surprised when we gave her our gag gift each Christmas (15 years straight), a sealed VHS copy of Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction?.  (which to this day has remained sealed as she vowed never watch it, a kept promise)  I’ll always remember the woman that forgot to wrap the clock radio under her bed for one of my Christmas gifts and was embarrassed to hand it over after all the gifts were open.  I still have that clock radio.

I’ll always remember the woman that used to attend all of our school functions, elementary through college; school recitals, band concerts, Lindsey’s twirling performances,  our high school & college graduations, etc..  I’ll always remember the woman that loved to play Scatagories, Outburst, Pictionary, Cranium and Scrabble at every single Thanksgiving and Christmas.  I’ll always remember the woman that loved to watch the Amazing Race and always wanted to tryout for the show every time a new season would come on.

I’ll always remember the woman that went back to college while we were young so she could get her teaching degree.  I’ll always remember the woman that would always try to get the attention of every single baby in public places and make their little faces light up with happiness.  I’ll always remember the woman that broke away from her life in Spartanburg to pursue a life of her own in Florida, if only to become truly happy for just a brief moment.

But most of all, I’ll always remember the woman that I spent 4 days with one week before she was admitted to the hospital for the final time.  She couldn’t move very well, but we could talk for hours.  We quietly watched all her favorite game shows and would comment on when we would have taken the money on Deal or No Deal or 1 versus 100.  We would run errands when she was feeling well enough and sit on the couch eating Mint Milanos when she wasn’t.  We would talk about my new life in Los Angeles and about her twirling friends in The Villages.  The last movie that we watched together was The Legend of 1900, laughing when 1900 beats Jelly Roll Morton and crying when 1900 chooses to die by his own decision.

A few hours before I had to leave for the shuttle to return to Los Angeles, we both broke down and cried.  We both knew it was going to be our last rational face-to-face conversation, but tried not to believe it.  She told me how proud she was of me and I told her how lucky I was to have her as a mother.  We pretended that she was going to get better and made tentative plans for her to visit me in L.A.  I held her hand and tried to be strong, but we both knew that the end was near.  I hugged her goodbye for 5 minutes and left slowly.

My Mom took her last breath this morning at approximately 7 a.m.  I slept beside her bed last night, helplessly trying to be there for her.  During the night, I held her hand, told her I loved her and everything that I was going to remember about her.  I told her exactly how the rest of my life was going to turn out, so she wouldn’t have to miss anything.  After I could think of nothing more to say, I gently put one of my headphones on her ear and played this song:  Link

Goodbye Mom. I love you.