Crisis

An essay assignment for one of my classes that was about a crisis in my life.

My life has had its fair share of high’s and way, way low’s, but just a few years ago took the cake on everything… so far. At the end of September 2006, I received a phone call from my brother and it sounded like he was crying and trying to get himself together. I remember sitting in my living room and it was dark out already and I thought it was strange that he was calling me since my family became so text dependent. “Mom has cancer, breast cancer”, he said to me followed by dead silence which felt like it lasted forever. I just remembered flashing to seeing my father taking his last breath in front of me and my sister when he lost his battle to bladder cancer. I was never really the emotional driven one in my family; my sister took care of that department pretty well and my brother was pretty great with the dramatics. I wanted to break down, but I couldn’t I went into support mode for everyone else. Consoling my brother the best I could from where I was. I was living in Portland at the time.
We found out the evening of my sister’s birthday and we contemplated whether or not we should let her know the news then or later. I let my brother make that decision and shortly after we got off the phone he sent me a text saying he, “she knows.” I called her after receiving the text and just the sounds coming from her side of the line made me respond to her that I’d give her a few minutes and call her back. I called my mom right after that.
My mom is very similar to me where she doesn’t show much emotion. It takes a lot to make her breakdown and this situation was no different. It was very easy to talk to her and ask her what happened. She had been mentioning the last few weeks that she had to keep going back for lab tests and such, but you hope for the best. All I can remember is getting logically upset with her about was why she didn’t go get checked out when she first noticed the lump in her breast about a year earlier. However, I maintained my calm demeanor and continued to be the best support I could for her while she informed me of the surgery, chemo, and radiation therapy she would soon be under. She mentioned my dad and how she said that she’ll give it one shot and if it comes back, let it be. My father didn’t. He was already in his mid 70’s at the time and even though I was barely in my double digits, he felt no need to try to fight his battle and let it take him away from me slowly for several months.
I started making arrangements to come back home that next morning. I was working as a manager with The Cheesecake Factory, so luckily getting a transfer wasn’t going to be hard since there were a couple to choose from in the valley. I moved back home on October 14, 2006 and was happy to be reunited with my family. Apparently my mom’s cancer diagnosis wasn’t enough of a test to put all of us through to make sure family bonds stay strong. The evening I moved back home I stayed up until the late hours of the evening with my brother talking to him about his 2nd troubled marriage. It was hard on my side to try to defend the woman since we were all opposed to the union to begin with, but I tried my best to give my middle view input for him. You could tell that he was just a little off though, but I didn’t think anything of it at the time.
The next morning I headed to Disneyland with a friend that was visiting and my one of my brother’s best friends was getting us into the park free since he was an employee. I didn’t have his friend’s cell phone number, so I just went through my brother to get eta’s and such. The two times I spoke with him he made sure that I heard and acknowledged the phrase “I love you” when ending both calls. My family never showed affection to each other like that until I was about 16 years old. I was dating a guy that was really close to his mom and I thought that it was so nice that they’d say “I love you” and hug and stuff… So, I tried it on my family and luckily it caught on. That was the last time I spoke to him.
The following weekend, he was supposed to come down to take out his kids from his first marriage, but none of us had heard from him. So, I tried calling him when they got to our house and I left him a message. I was weird that all of us were in the room. My mom was saying that she wondered where he was this time, the hospital, jail, a friends, etc. My brother had a harder than normal life to say the least. Then his wife at the time called us.
It was around early afternoon time when she dropped the news. My mom asked her the same questions… “Was he in the hospital, etc.” and she simply responded back in a straight voice, “he’s dead”. The most ill sounding wailing erupted into the room, I never forget it. The first time I saw my mom scream and die at the same time. “They found his body this morning and came to notify me at work yesterday, I went last night to verify the items they found with him. He has been gone for a day or two, so the body is already in decomposition and they wouldn’t allow me to see him,” she continued. Once again, I went into damage control mode. I called a close friend (like a sister) to have her pick up my sister’s son from school and hold onto him for a little bit and told her why. I then started calling key cousins that I knew could get the message spread like wildfire and sent an email out to our family in the Philippines from my phone. It was so surreal and we were receiving the new from the worst possible person.
Needless to say things didn’t get any easier with trying to get the body back to my mom and it was one family up against another. We got through it though and my mom was able to bury her oldest child, her only son in peace finally next to her mother as well as her assigned gravesite. His four year anniversary has just passed, my mother is doing well and in remission, and all of his children are working their way through jr. high and high school right now. It was a trial for all of us and I almost lost my sister since she was so grief stricken, but we have all bounced back by coming together and realizing that the only thing the my mom, sister, and I have is each other first.