Stand Up To Cancer

I remember the day that I realized that my mother was not 28 years old. I was outside one spring night, running down the stone fence outside the Coughlin's house. The fence dead-ended in a pokey hedge that, when jumped correctly, landed you on the other side in a heap, two painful feet lower than you started. If you jumped it wrong, you got all tied up in the bush. It was a lose-lose situation, and I did it every time I could.

On one particularly creative go, after I hit the bush and the ground in the same jump, Mrs. Coughlin came out to patch me up. She was young and pretty, like my mom. I'm not sure how we got on the subject.

"How old is your mom?" she asked.
"28," I said.
"Really? And how old are your brothers and sisters?"
I thought for a second. "Jimmy is 17, and Carolyn is 24 and Linda is one year younger."
"So then your mom can't be 28, honey."

She smirked, I scowled. I know for sure that I scowled because I remember the new band-aid on my forehead got all pinched up. It was 1977, and I was probably the only kid in elementary school with a mom in her mid-40s. She'd been telling me she was 28 every year for as long as I could remember. Why? As the youngest of four, I instantly assumed I was being teased: how long could they sell the baby on this ruse? Or, maybe, some part of it was to ward off the neighborhood judges - of Mom and of me.

I will never know why my mom did the things she did because I never really knew her at all. It was not for lack of trying. My mother was a private island. Even if the rough sea between us allowed my little boat to sail over, the jagged coastline would crush any boats that tried to run ashore. My mother was full of pride, and full of fear.

Maybe something happens when you turn 40, or maybe it's when you first look down your belly at your own precious little babe. I imagine there is point for every woman where she starts to understand versus underestimate her mother and the choices she made. One unfathomable decision my mother made was to go through her final days alone. It was almost exactly Mother's Day 2007 when the brain tumor overcame her lucidity. Ever proud, she did not want us to see her so attenuated. It's a decision I understand even less now than I did in the days she made it, over and over again, as she refused my company while the brain cancer took its three months to kill her.

I will never know what it must have been like in 1968 for my mom to be 36 years old and pregnant. In 2010 as a 42-year-old single mom, I feel more passe than judged or brave. My daughter, Isabella, was born on November 4th, 2009. She too will never know my mother.

It's Mother's Day again, only now I can't help but dream that the love of this beautiful little baby would have finally broken the ice that surrounded Marion DiBiase for the 38 years that I knew her. There's so much I would like to say to my mom now, so much I'd like to ask her. We would laugh and swap baby stories. As if somehow the ground on the other side of the hedge would suddenly reveal itself to be two feet taller.

On this Mother's Day, let us remember all those moms we've lost and all those in the fight. One out of every three women is affected by cancer. Today we stand up in memory of all those moms we've lost, and all those moms who are in the fight against this vicious disease. Launch a star in memory of someone you love here.

--Jules DiBiase