Living Past the Age at Which My Mother Passed Away

And realizing that she did cancer well

This essay is part of the Between Chapters project, inspired by the book. What chapters are you between? How did you get from one chapter to another? Share your story here.

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What Chapter Are You…

Leaving:

Seeing my mother through the lens of her death.

In:

Reaching my mother's age.

Entering:

Deepening my relationship with the woman she became.

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I always understood that my mother died too young, which didn’t stop me from thinking of her as old. She made it to sixty-four. As my birthdays came and went, I knew — or, at least, believed — that one day I would reach an age she never did. I wondered what that birthday would feel like. If there would be sadness. If I would resent friends my age who still had their mothers. If crossing into the years she never lived would somehow change our relationship.

Last year, I turned sixty-five. And suddenly that woman, my mother, seemed incredibly young. For the first time, I stopped thinking about the loss, or even the age at which she died, and started thinking about all that life she was able to live.

When people ask about my mother, I usually begin with her diagnosis. Stage IV ovarian cancer. She was fifty years old. The doctors could have caught it sooner, but for months they told her whatever she was feeling was because of her weight. By the time they finally took her seriously, they gave her two years.

In a rare moment of agency, she looked at them and said, “You don’t know that. You don’t get to tell me how long I get to live. I’ll decide.” And so she did. For fourteen more years.

Recently, I came at the math differently. (That’s my father’s side of me at work.) Fourteen years is nearly a quarter of her life. My mother spent almost twenty-two percent of her life living with a terminal diagnosis. I had never thought about her life that way before.

I always loved my mother’s story, not simply because she beat the odds, but because she did cancer well. She gave herself permission to do things she had only dreamed about, or things that scared her. She took up acting classes and wrote poetry. She discovered facials, became a grandmother, and started to remove a port-wine stain birthmark from her face. She joined a woman’s support group where newly diagnosed women looked to her for hope. The woman who had spent much of her life doubting herself became someone other women believed in.

For most of those fourteen years, we lived on opposite coasts. My parents were in Los Angeles. I had moved to New York. There were phone calls and visits. I flew west to watch her perform a scene from the play “‘Night, Mother” at Roxbury Park in Beverly Hills. But there was so much of her life I never knew. I didn’t even know she had cancer until after her first surgery. She didn’t tell anyone except for my father. Not my brothers or her friends. Not even her own sister or mother. She needed to know she was a survivor before letting anyone in.

At first I was angry. She didn’t tell us? Not even me?

Then I realized my feelings weren’t about my mother, they were about myself. My fears, not hers.

Several surgeries followed as the cancer spread to her spleen and other areas. Through it all, she slowly stopped auditioning for her own life and simply started living it. When the cancer found its way into her liver, a three-year-window became three days. And when she left, I thought the lesson was simple: Life is short. Just a few months later my understanding started to change.

Independent of my mother’s death, I had decided to do something completely out of character. I had never liked massages, spas, or meditation. My workaholic ways were worn like a badge of honor. But I had begun to understand they weren’t sustainable. So I booked a week at Canyon Ranch in Tucson and attended their Life Enhancement Program. Without realizing it, I had arrived during Mother-Daughter weekend, an experience my mother and I never got to share in any form.

Photo by Tyler Delgado on Unsplash

At my first-ever hypnotherapy session, the therapist said, “I don’t usually say things like this, but I do feel your mother is with us.” She put me into a relaxed state, eyes closed, body reclined, and guided me down a staircase.

“On the bookcase there’s a black book,” she said. “I want you to reach for it and pick it up. It’s heavy.” She told me it held all the sadness and tears I had been carrying for my mother since I was little. “She wants it all back now. She’s strong enough to hold it herself.”

From there, I wandered into the gift shop. I don’t like jewelry, but I do like to look at it, which is what I was doing when I heard the two voices.

“Can I help you?”

My eyes were focused downward, studying the jewelry.

“Yes, please let us know if we can help you,” said the other.

I looked up at the two saleswomen standing side by side. One wore a name-tag that read Ellen. The other was Ruth. My mother’s name. In that order. Ellen Ruth.

It was our first mother-daughter weekend after all. Over the years, my mother has kept finding me. On a trip to Merída, Mexico, I found myself writing about her in Spanish. A shift in language helped me understand her with generosity English never had. Each encounter has felt less like remembering her and more like meeting another part of the woman she became.

One year ago, she found me on stage, the night before summer solstice. June 21st was her birthday. I had been invited to perform spoken word at Grand Performances in downtown Los Angeles. The theme was “What is a Woman?”

“Ellen Ruth. Maiden name Groer. Tonight, I want each of you to know her. So join me in this moment. A word that begins with mom.”

Standing at the microphone, less than three months from the birthday my mother never got to have, I shared her story. Or perhaps I should say, we shared the stage.

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