Chantel Grant, senior political science major and international student from Jamaica, is features editor for the Current.
As cliché as this may sound, my mother is best my friend. From the day I was old enough to understand what the words “makeup” or “stilettos” meant, I adored my mother. After my parents divorced, I moved in with my mother. She is a petite woman, around 5’5 inches tall, with glossy hair and a million-dollar smile.
Everywhere we went, someone would always stop and comment on her shoes or how pretty she was, and each time I heard someone compliment her, I was slightly jealous but happy that she was my mother.
When I left Jamaica to attend school, she would fly to Florida every weekend to take me shopping or to get a manicure — we just had to be around each other. She knew how much I needed and loved her, and the distance between us only made our bond stronger.
However, one day, when she came off the plane, I realized her glossy hair had dulled and her million-dollar smile was sealed away behind thinned lips. I didn’t want to ask her what was wrong, but it bothered me that she looked like a shadow of herself.
When we got home, I called my brother and tried to ask him what was wrong, but, like me, he had no idea why our mother was withering away. Eventually, on one of our lunch dates, I finally mustered up enough courage to ask her what was going on. She stared at me over her sunglasses for a few minutes, drank a sip of wine and then muttered, “I’m sick. You don’t need to know the details. I’m going to see a doctor, and don’t even start worrying.” Immediately, I started to think the worst. I felt a lump in the back of my throat as the tears started to well up in my eyes. My mother was sick, and she refused to tell me what was wrong.
I remember the day she went in for surgery. I took a week off from school and planned to be there for her until she was healthy enough to fly back to Jamaica. Her first day out of surgery was tough; I slept in an armchair beside her bed. Every other hour or so, a nurse would come in and check her vital signs.
It was scary to see my mom in that situation, and I hated leaving the hospital to go home. It felt as if every second I spent away from her, something bad could happen, and I wouldn’t be there to save her. That’s how I found myself thinking for the next couple of weeks that, after she was released from the hospital, she had to stay with me in Florida so that she could visit her doctors.
Even in the comfort of my apartment, I was always paranoid that something would happen to her, and she would a take a turn for the worst. Most nights, I would pull up a chair beside her bed and sleep upright holding her hand. Sometimes, she would wake up in the morning crying because of the pain, and I would just have to sit there in the dark praying that she would feel better.
In the mornings, I would spoon feed her porridge and read her the news as I tried to stir up some type of reaction from her. Her recovery period was slow and taxing, especially since it was a secret that only she and I shared. She forbade me from telling the rest of the family, so everyone thought that she just took an extended vacation.
Regardless of how she felt, each day I got up, and I was determined to make sure that my mother was taken care of. I didn’t care about school, and I didn’t care about getting good grades — all I wanted to do was help my mother get better. I found myself at school watching the clock because I wanted to make it home in time to give her her medications. At 19 years old, my life was no longer about me because I had become my mother’s keeper. She depended on me.
In retrospect, I don’t know how I managed to drive my mom to her doctor’s appointments and physical therapist, be home to help her take her medicine, and still manage to get good grades. I did it, and I never realized how much more I would have done for my mother if needs be. A child taking care of her mother is not an anomaly, but, for me, it was the hardest thing I ever did. Before my mother got sick, I was afraid of my card declining in Urban Outfitters or not being able to get my favorite drink at Starbucks. Afterwards, the only thing that scared me was losing my mother.
My mom was sick for almost a year, and it was the most draining year of my life, but I would do it all over again because, today, my mom has fully recovered. She still goes to the doctor and gets lethargic sometimes, but, for the most part, she is as normal as could be. Her glossy hair is back, and her smile has improved from a million-dollar smile to a priceless one.
