Two Februarys stand out in my mind as being “cancer Februarys”, and I cannot forget either one. This particular post is a collection of random memories from one of them — my mother’s last February. They are personal memories I hesitated to share, but as my friend Jackie from Dispatch From Second Base once told me, “Never hesitate to write what’s in your heart, Nancy.” Thanks, Jackie.

It was February 2008 — four years had passed since my mother’s initial breast cancer diagnosis in 2004 — and we had just brought her home from Saint Marys Hospital in Rochester, Minnesota. She had been taken there via ambulance after experiencing complications during a chemo infusion which I had accompanied her on.

We sent her to Rochester, home of the world-renowned Mayo Clinic, hoping for our miracle. People check into Mayo every day looking and hoping for miracles. Some people get their miracles. Others do not. Ours was not to be.

We were sent home a few days later — without our miracle.

That February in 2008 was when my mother’s youngest sister and niece flew in from Denver to visit her one more time. Everyone knew it was a goodbye visit, though those words were not said out loud.

My mother spent the last days she would ever spend in her home that February. I watched her say goodbye to her cairn terrier, Mandi, right before my brother pushed her wheel chair out the front door for the last time. She and Mandi both seemed to know she would not be coming back. 

That February was the last birthday I heard my mother say the words, happy birthday, Nancy.

That February was when I foolishly left my house one snowy night around midnight (against my better judgment) and drove for over three hours in treacherous winter driving conditions in order to get to get to the hospital (a different hospital) in time because my sister had called and said, “Mother’s talking about dying tonight.”

That February was when my three siblings and I huddled together in hospital waiting rooms whispering amongst ourselves about what to do next while nurses walked by offering sympathetic looks and what seemed to us like little else.

That February was when we reluctantly settled on the nursing home option and started visiting several as if we actually had options. It was also the first and only time I ever saw my dad cry when he realized he would not be bringing his wife home again.

That February was when we ultimately checked my mother into a nursing home, and I stayed overnight with her so she would not be alone. When I said I would gladly stay with her, she couldn’t stop crying, so neither could I. I spent the entire night wondering how many nights we had left; and as it turned out, there weren’t that many.

That February was when my family and I decorated that nursing home room, creating a strange hodge-podge of winter and Easter decor. Even the seasons were confused and jumbled together. Easter was early that year. Maybe we figured if we decorated for Easter, too, perhaps she would live until Easter. She didn’t.

In addition to the holiday décor, we carried in lamps, a card table and chairs, pillows, rugs, plants, books, CDs and CD player, a bulletin board, family photos and other miscellaneous things we hoped my mother might enjoy. She didn’t really. She was too sick.

Whenever we could, we paraded our various family pets in, never more than one at a time, of course, in feeble attempts to make things seem more normal. All our attempts at normalcy were merely that, feeble attempts.

By that February, the only thing my mother could stand to “eat” were orange popsicles and sometimes we buzzed for them in the middle of the night, and I would hold one for her because she was too weak to hold it herself.

That February was when my sister and I witnessed a transformation of our mother on one of those over-night stays; a transformation I am not yet ready to speak of or write about. That night in February was a night of desperation and hopelessness.

My mother survived that February. We all did somehow. But time was slipping away.

To most people, that February was just another February now tucked away on “time’s shelf,” but to me, that February will always be so much more.

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