Mother Mary Comes To Me

I found myself in a hospital this week, with lots of time to think.

My earliest memory of an overnight hospital stay is at The Children’s Hospital in Buffalo. I was 4, maybe even 3. The memories I have of that experience are fleeting, fuzzy, tentative. I remember Mom and Dad bringing me a big thick paperback book of “Peanuts” comic strips (I started reading at 3, which makes my academic record The Largest Squandering Of A Gift In Modern Recorded History). I remember a big playroom with lots of toys and lots of kids, and a couple kids monopolizing something I really wanted to get my hands on.

And I remember leaving my hospital room.

I had a TV in there, but there must have been nothing on to keep me in bed. I walked down the hall and peeked into other rooms… saw other kids and their Moms and Dads. I think I saw an Asian family, and a black family. We didn’t see too many of either in South Otselic. I don’t remember how my wandering ended…but I am sure it all worked out okay, as I am told that I was incredibly cute back then.

The early 80’s…no longer all that cute, but now having respiratory issues. Back then, apparently the best they could do for a kid with asthma was “take a pill and sit next to a vaporizer”. (I took a vaporizer to college with me!) In two cases, maybe a year or two apart, when things got out of hand, it was hospital time. By this time I had graduated to MAD magazine paperbacks, and Mom let me pick one out at the Jamesway department store before we headed for the hospital. “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions” were always a favorite, because you got to fill in your own snappy answer, feeble as it may be.

So anyway, eventually I got inhalers and, for a pretty good stretch, avoided overnight stays. And then, in 1987, Mom got diagnosed with lung cancer. And I could do nothing to help. Except pray. A lot of people prayed for Mama Mary, and she survived. And got all three of her children through life’s crises, medical and otherwise.

Even as a (pardon the phrase) “grown-ass man”, after moving here to Nebraska I found myself always calling Mom when I didn’t feel good. Not because she had any medical training (paralegal by trade, and notary public to boot!). No, I made the call to stately Wentworth Manor because she would always talk me into going to the doctor. I didn’t want to go to the doctor, because I had seen enough doctors in my first 20 years of life to cover the spread. But I knew it had to be done, and I knew Mom would somehow make it seem like the only sensible option. She got me through 43 years of shots, and pills, and doctors, and sick days, and long, long nights next to the vaporizer.

And then, in 2015, she got very sick.

And I could do nothing to help. Except pray. A lot of people prayed for Mama Mary. A lot of people miss her.

And I find myself at a time in my life when shots, and pills, and doctors, and sick days again loom large in my calendar. And sometimes I feel really stressed out, and overwhelmed. But I try to remember how difficult a road Mom had, and the incredible person she was. Her strength, her tenacity, her intelligence, her kindness, and the love she gave to her family… if she could do all that, AND beat f#$%ing cancer…then, well, maybe I can do this.