It was an early on the morning of October 26^th, fog had lined the fields along the roads as we pasted them. It was supposed to be a fun day. I was supposed to be a day of coming together as a team and raising money. I couldn’t sleep the night before because I was so excited, we had made it to the semifinals! It was for the sport I loved and for a charity I now understand. Dig Pink. It was a charitable event in raising money for Breast Cancer. I thought nothing of the illness until that morning because little did I know my own mother was one to carry the illness herself. That morning before our first game supporting breast cancer and with creating this charitable event, my step dad had gotten a phone call with my mother crying in fear. What she had not realized was that I could hear the words clearly through her muffled sobbing mouth. She had been diagnosed with stage two breast cancer that very morning. In that exact moment for me time froze, everything I had had planned or imagined was gone. I could feel each heart beat vividly throughout my entire body as through an earthquake had struck in only my current position. It was as though my mind had shut down and my life had stopped in that present moment that I so desperately wanted to get out of.

My mother and I had never really been close until that day because it was then that I knew my mother was my best friend and it was then that I knew I could never let her down. I made sure from that moment on that she was taken care of and that she always had someone by her side making her smile. Making every moment count in her life as if it was her last, but at the same time keeping that mind set in her and myself that she was going to be okay and going to survive anything that was thrown at her.  I began having night terrors and visions of my mother dying in front of my eyes, but each time I woke up or came back to reality I knew that my mother was stronger than anything this world could throw at her and in the end stronger than life itself. Although I had to be strong for my mother I couldn’t be strong for myself. My so called friends were never there for me when I needed them the most, and when they were around they always seemed to tell me the things I couldn’t stand to hear, “get over it”, “stop lying”, and “who cares”. I felt alone and as though nothing made sense to me anymore. I couldn’t be sad around my mom and I knew I wasn’t allowed to feel anything other than happiness in my home because I could not risk my mom seeing how broken and scared I was of losing her.

That illness as terrifying as it was to go through with her I couldn’t imagine the pain and fear that continuously ran through my mom’s mind. I felt as though nothing mattered to me other than my mom, but what I couldn’t get through my mind was how my mother was actually feeling. How things were going for her and what I could do to help. Although fear and pain rendered our bodies senseless, that illness had managed to bring my mother and I closer than we could ever have been. In those years of near death experience we connected on such a level that is a once in a life time opportunity. I could never imagine life itself without that woman in my life. She made me the person that I am today and she is no longer just a mother to me, my mother is my best friend.