Undergraduate / "My mother said: 'Don't Cry' and died"- UC prompt #2 [5]

Personal Statement: Tell us about a personal quality, talent, accomplishment, contribution or experience that is important to you. What about this quality or accomplishment makes you proud and how does it relate to the person you are?

I'd like to know if it answers the prompt thoroughly, or at all. Thank you all.

"What do you think?" That's how it started on the couch in the heat of late spring.

I replied, "What about?"

"About our..." She paused. She never pauses. "Our predicament."

"Well mother, it's something that takes some getting used to."

A simple answer, easy enough to let go, but she wasn't satisfied. She loved to delve into the conversation, something I always appreciated, but not this time.

"What about when I'm gone?" A question that a 37 year old woman shouldn't have to ask.

"Well, when that time comes we'll deal with it," I mumbled.

"You can't avoid it. You and I both know it's coming, and soon," she said, "and when I'm gone you will have to do what I do."

I didn't know what that meant, but as always she had an explanation, "You have to take charge, you must be strong. Don't cry. Carry the weight of this family. You and I both know your father

can't do it alone. I'm making it your responsibility to put him back together."

At fifteen, this was hard to hear.

"Mom, we can't think like that."

"Will you do that for me?" she asked, with her effervescent, beautiful smile.

"Yeah Mom, but why me?"

I got the answer I will always remember, "Because you are strong at heart and blessed with a mind that can take you anywhere you want to go, as long as you work for it."

I didn't know what to say. I still don't.

"However, moving on, how is your girlfriend?" She asked, reacting to the entrance of my sister into the room. I laughed at her clever sidestep.

"She's fine, I guess."

She saw right through me.

"Hmm... Not doing so well? Alright, that's fine. I never really liked the girl anyway." That was my mother: the cool, smooth, and fun person that I keep in my heart.

Soon after, the real trouble started. For the next three weeks she was in and out of the hospital.
Thursday would bring agonizing pain leading to the hospital, weekend stay, stabilization and return home on Monday. It became a pattern, but by the third week she was tired of all the hospitals, pain medication and IV's.

Her strength was amazing. She did all she could to try and hide her pain, but she couldn't hide it forever. Once she came home she called me to her room, "Adrian..."

"Yes Mom?"

"You know I love you. I always will. And I know you love me, so for God's sake stop crying. It's not as bad as you think." She was in pain, more than she admitted.

June 5, 2009 started like any other day: breakfast, school, ride home. Yet, my life was greatly altered. When I came home I knew it was our final day together. She lay in her bed surrounded by her husband, sisters and brothers, her mother and myself, helping to ease her going. Emptying the blood coughed up by her lungs, I did what I could to clean up as she spat it out, but it was too much.

My mother died with two words, "Don't cry."

Things in my world are not the same. For almost two years we battled cancer; we fought well, but it won. She was strong and I loved her. Her death brought me to my knees, and dragged me through life for the past year. The struggle was a time of self discovery; showing me how easily love can be ripped from my heart without having any say in the matter, but also how I can overcome the demons of sorrow and replace them with determination to fight on and make something of myself.