My Mom

Jacqueline May Evanson deSouza. My mom was a strong woman. She was half French and half Norwegian. I don't think she was given the opportunity to show her playful French side very often. Not at least when I knew her. In her younger years, she was much more light hearted. She sang in a band in her early twenties, travelled to Hawaii and to Europe. Then she moved away from home and met my dad in San Francisco. She laughed more back then. Still, when we were growing up, every now and then her bright blue eyes would sparkle and she would laugh at something happening around her. Having six kids very close in age did not allow her a lot of time to play as the French are known to do. She was highly intelligent and enjoyed working. I hadn't realized it then but looking back, Mom was very entrepreneurial. While we were still small Mom would do laundry for others and owned a steam press to steam clothes. It was a big machine that constantly had steam escaping from it. It would give professional looking pleats to clothes. It must have been very hot to work around. When we were in school, Mom took a job as the school secretary. Much to the chagrin of myself and my siblings. We weren't hauled off to the Principal's office if we misbehaved, we were sent to my mom's. When we left grade school, Mom went to the work for the City of Seattle in Word Processing where she stayed until she retired. Mom always loved tavelling and encouraged us to travel and see the world. She felt that relationships could wait while we discovered the world.
I think the concept of romance and passion were let go of a long time ago in my mom's life. Her life was based on the here and now and the hardships of raising a family. Dad was present some of the time but being an engineer for Foss, he was also gone for long periods of time. Mostly he was sailing the waters of Alaska up to Prudhoe Bay. Being from Brazil, Dad's concept of parenting and being a good husband seemed at odds with my mom's. My dad did love her though. He told me once mom had the most beautiful color of hair. It was auburn. Though Mom did laugh at that when I told this to her. She said, "It's not my natural color!" Then she showed me the bottle that contained the color. It was our secret. I remember Dad breaking down in tears the day we told him she had passed away. They had been divorced for many years at that point.
We realized Mom was sick upon returning from a vacation. Mom had generously offered to watch the boys while Mark and I got away. She had developed a cold and was wheezing a little. Her cold did not get any better after she went home. After a few more days her breathing became labored. Mom did not like going to the doctor's but she finally made an appointment. She thought she needed some antibiotics to fight some kind of infection. I hoped it wasn't pneumonia. It wasn't. The doctor listened to her lungs and could hear fluid surrounding them. He decided to have some of the fluid drained off and and biopsied. the fluid was full of cancer cells. The fluid called ascites, was caused by tumor growth in another area of her body. A CT scan would show where. Multiple tumors were found in her abdominal area and on her ovaries. Though the doctor's did not know where the cancer originated they called it ovarian cancer and treated it as such.
My family went into shock. We had recently lost my oldest sister to cancer so this couldn't be happening again. But it was happening. Mom tried to keep as much from us as possible as to her prognosis. She didn't believe in worrying us. Unbeknownst to us, she had been given a scant six months to live. While my sister Marianne and I were sitting at the doctor's office he happened to mention she had already lived past that. Marianne and I looked over at Mom. "What the heck?" She had that defiant twinkle in her eyes. Fourteen months had already gone by.
Throughout her year and a half of chemotherapy, Mom hardly ever complained or talked much about the disease. If asked how she was feeling she would undoubtedly say, "Oh. pretty good," or "Not too bad." Mom got progressively worse though. She was losing weight steadily but that was a silver lining for her! It had been a long time since she was down to her pre-kids weight and now she was. She liked having her legs look good again. She would even make a point of showing them off to us. It was funny.
One evening Mom called Marianne to ask her if she had already gone to bed. She didn't want to bother her if she had. Marianne said she hadn't and asked, "What's wrong?" Mom asked her if she would mind taking her to the hospital. She wasn't feeling very well. There was one other time Mom needed to go to the hospital to fight an infection. Marianne calmed her fears by telling herself this was most likely the same thing. She drove the twenty minutes over to Mom's house. She was alarmed to find Mom still in bed. Mom told her she didn't think she could make it out of bed and would she please call an ambulance. This frightened Marianne. Mom was not one to call for an ambulance. She must be really feeling awful. The ambulance came and the EMT's were very considerate of Mom, even asking her if she needed a blanket. Marianne drove behind the ambulance to the hospital wondering what was happening and if she should call anyone. It wasn't until 1:30am that she called me. I was living in Whatcom County, an hour and a half from Seattle. With a slight panic in her voice she asked me to please come to Providence Hospital. She explained Mom had gone into the hospital at about 10:30pm. Mom had felt sick after dinner so had gone to bed early. She had not felt any better so she finally called Marianne around 9:30pm.
I raced down to Seattle leaving Mark to take care of the boys and to call my brother in North Carolina. I don't recall very much of the trip down. I got to Seattle at about 3:00am. I parked my car behind Marianne's, just outside of the emergency room. Mom had been admitted I was informed. She was up on the fourth floor, room 423. I sprinted down the hallway and into the maze of corridors that make up most hospitals. I managed to make only one wrong turn and soon was standing outside of Mom's room. Marianne saw me and walked up to me. She told me Mom was going to be mad because she didn't know I had been called. Marianne said that a doctor had told her Mom was a lot sicker than we had known and chances were she may not pull out of this. "Okay," thought Marianne, "what does that mean?" I walked into my mom's room. What took place in the next few hours would live with me forever.