Some people say their mom is their best friend, but my mom was really my best friend. I could talk to her about any and everything, and she talked to me about any and everything, too. We would go to each other for a lot, and we were very similar. I think we were kind of the same person. People would call me “Little Patrice” sometimes. She was 5’1”, but the most feisty woman you would have ever met. She was a very strong and powerful woman. She comes from a long line of very independent women — that’s where I get my independence from, my family. She was my best friend.
When I was in college [insert year], my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was stage two, almost stage three, but they had high hopes for her. She went through treatment, and she stayed so strong and bubbly throughout treatment — her doctors actually said that her personality being so positive was what helped her with treatment.
So to keep her spirits high we did all the things. We did the breast cancer walks, and we did a benefit for her — I’ll never forget the benefit. We had so many people donate, we had gift baskets, and we did a raffle. So many people showed up. My mom didn’t like wearing her wigs. Like they all looked terrible on her, and for some reason that day she wore a wig because someone gifted it to her. Those pictures crack me up because she hated that wig so much. She liked her bald head. Even though that was a dark time, it was a positive time — just seeing her fight through it and still maintain her hope and her positive demeanor.
In August of 2014, my twin sister Brooke and I turned 25. And, you know, 25 is a milestone age. My mom always did birthdays really big for us, but that year, she went above and beyond. She even had our dad come up from Georgia to visit, which was a big deal. We spent the day in DC, and she threw this big brunch for us. And I remember she got us the most sentimental gifts — these engraved jewelry boxes with a bracelet inside, with a heart, with our name engraved, and she got us these really sentimental cards.
I never cry with cards, and I don’t always keep cards, but for some reason, I kept that card, and I actually cried reading it. The card was about a mother’s love for her daughter, and being strong, and just how she sees me. And for some reason, that card hit me really, really hard.
In October of 2014, we noticed her arm was starting to swell more, and some other things were happening. And so she had a checkup — her five-year checkup. They did all the scans, and we found out the cancer was back. It broke my heart, and at that point I [started to grieve her]. They found that it was on her brain. And then it spread to her pelvic area and was spreading throughout her body. And so I grieved a lot in October, November, and then the holidays came.
We tried to make it the best holiday season we ever had because at the time, the doctors were saying they were going to get her ready for treatment. They said, “we need to do some things before we can get her started on chemo.” But it was never any talk of like, “oh, this is really bad, a bad prognosis.” They were still pretty positive. But things happened fast, and so we got to celebrate our last holiday season with her, and then that Christmas, things happened really fast, it was spreading really fast, and her health declined really, really fast.
But God works in really mysterious ways, because my sister actually got laid off at the end of December, and my mom needed someone with her around the clock at that time to take her to appointments, and just be with her, so it worked out that my sister got to be home with her.
So we go through the holidays, and then January comes, and the new year was when things really got rough for her. She was in and out of the hospital. She spent her birthday in the hospital, but again, doctors were very hopeful. They didn’t really say anything. They were like, “Yes, it’s spread, but we’re still pushing through to treatment.” And then the week of Martin Luther King Day, that Monday, I actually got braces. So I went to my appointment, and I get home, and my mom’s heading to a doctor’s appointment, and halfway through that doctor’s appointment, my sister called me and said, “Hey, Mom has to go to the hospital. She’s not cognizant. Like, she’s not thinking straight.”
So we go to the hospital, and that week was when they finally said, “Hey, you guys may need to make some plans and contact family.” And so my sister and I had to make a lot of tough decisions that week and have tough conversations.
They talked to us about moving her to palliative care, which is end of life care. We agreed to maneuver the palliative care, and Brooke and I always said we didn’t want her to struggle. We didn’t want her to be in pain, and that was our biggest fear. We kind of started to grasp that she had cancer, and that she, you know, more than likely was going to pass from it.
That Saturday morning, she moved into palliative care. My sister and I spent the whole day with her, and that night, when my sister was getting ready to go home, I said, “Hey, before you go home, can I run downstairs and get a snack, so I can come back up and spend more time with her?”
And she said, “Yeah.” And so I go downstairs and grab a snack, go back upstairs, and my sister’s like, “Okay, I’m gonna head home.” I was like, “Alright, I’m going to stay here for maybe another hour or so.”
So my sister goes home, and I stay with my mom. She wasn’t alert or responsive — she was completely out of it. And I hold her hand, and I say, “Mom, we’re praying for you, and, you know, we, Brooke and I are fine. We don’t want you to be in pain.” And I said, “you know, if you’re ready to go, you can go. If, you know, if you feel like you want to stay and fight, then fight.” I said, “But you know, Brooke and I are fine, and we just don’t want you to be in pain anymore.” And at the end of the prayer, I’m holding her hand, and I take a picture, and I tell her I love her, and I go home. That next morning, she passed — that Sunday morning. She passed at around 6:00 in the morning.
Sunday morning, I get up to head to the hospital. I get dressed, and I’m leaving the house, and I stop to get a coffee, and my sister calls, and she’s like, “Mom’s gone.” And so I didn’t even make it to the hospital. I had to drive to my uncle’s house, because I had to go to the hospital to claim the body.
My uncle plays a big part in this story, because his house is where we all met, and where we ended up staying, and all the things. And so, after I do all of the stuff that morning and get back to my uncle’s house, my sister and I are talking, and we’re comforting each other. I showed her this picture I took, and she said, “Oh, my God, I just took… I took the same picture.” And when I went downstairs to get a snack that Saturday, my sister held my mom’s hand and literally said the same prayer, and then took a picture of her holding her hand. And so, that Saturday night, we both told our mom that we would be okay. And that, you know, if she needed to go, she could.
People always tell us that we gave her permission. And that she was waiting for us to be fine before she left, and she did. She, that Sunday morning, early Sunday morning, she passed away.
God works in really mysterious ways, and that is how my sister and I both have that same picture of us holding her hand. And it was, like, she just waited for us to let her know, it’s okay. They always say that when people are sick, internally ill, they kind of know.
They also say a lot of times, they hold on until they know that their loved ones will be okay.
My sister and I were my mom’s world. We always tell people that we were… I don’t want to say relieved when she passed, but it was almost like a… deep exhale moment, because we did not want her to suffer, and cancer is terrible, and the fact that she was only in that palliative state for one day, and then passed that next day, my sister and I are both very okay, in the sense that she didn’t have to struggle. And then, you know, life shifted drastically after that.
I always wanted ways to honor my mom. I honor her in a lot of different ways — celebrating her birthday, just doing things that she wanted to do that she didn’t get to do when she was here. And then, my tattoos. The first tattoo I got for my mom was a cardinal feather on my wrist, because growing up, my mom always said, “When you see a cardinal, blow a kiss. It’s a sign of a loved one from heaven.” And I would get so excited to see a cardinal. Or she would say, “When you see a cardinal, make a wish, and your wish will come true.”
The day of her funeral, I decided to drive to her funeral by myself, because I just needed some time alone. And there was a little cardinal in the tree, and I just noticed him, as I was driving down the road, and so I got that cardinal feather tattooed just because of what cardinals represent. One day I was at work, and I walked in, and it was about a month or so after my mom passed, and I was like, “Mom, I just really miss you. And I need a little sign from you.” And I looked out the front door at work, and there was a cardinal on the bench at work. I remember telling my manager at the time, and she just started crying. So anytime I see a cardinal, I always think it’s my mom, and I always say, “Hi, Mom.” Cardinals have a really significant meaning to me.
That card I talked about for my 25th birthday, I found it while cleaning up one day, and I read it and just bawled my eyes out. I even have pictures of the card and what it says, and in the bottom of the card, my mom wrote, “I love you always, Mom.” I cried so hard. And, again, I never cry reading cards. I knew I wanted to get that tattoo because that was the last card my mom gave me.
My sister and I both talk about how the cards she got us for our birthday that year were really sentimental. And my sister and I both wondered, did our mom know, you know, at that time, that something soon was going to happen?
The last tattoo I got was our birth flowers — hers is a carnation, which is funny, because I actually love carnations. I also got a poppy for my sister and I, which is the August birth flower, and then my mom’s signature, her handwriting, from the card. So I always just look down and see her inscription there.
After she passed, when people would ask me about her, they would say, “How can you talk about her without crying?”
And I would say, “When I get to talk about her now, I get to relive her memory. I’ve kind of already grieved her before she was gone.”
For birthday gifts and Christmas gifts, I’ve never really cried before. The birthday after our mom passed away — it was the day before our birthday — my sister was being really weird. She was like, “Hey, do you want to open something now?”
And I was like, “No, like, I’ll open this tomorrow.”
She’s like, “Oh, I can’t hold it. Like, I really want you to open this.”
I was just like, “Okay.” And she got me this handmade necklace on Etsy that has the same signature on it. It was a little circle medallion in the middle. It said:
“I love you always, Mom”
It was on this cute little chain, and I cried. I mean, like, cried. And I wore that necklace all the time. I ended up ordering my sister one, so we both have the same necklace. It was the best birthday gift ever because it was just so unexpected.
So there’s a lot I do to honor my mom and have her memory go on.
Pictures are big for me, and I’m always, every time I go to a family member’s house, the first thing I do is pull out their photo album. My family jokes that I’m the family archivist because I love photos, and I’m finding all the photos of my mom when she was younger, and photos when she was a little older, too. I just always try to find ways to celebrate her. The only thing we don’t have is a lot of photos post cancer.
I went to VCU and my twin sister went to Virginia Tech. There would be times my mom would call us. She would be talking to Brooke and ask, “Oh, how’s your day? What are you doing?” My sister would say, “Oh, I’m making such and such for dinner.”
And she’d be like, “Okay, let me call your sister.” And so she would call me, and I’d be like, “Oh, hey, Mom, I’m just making dinner.” She would say, “What are you making?”
And I literally would be making the same thing my sister would be making, and my mom would go, “Wait, which one are you?” And I’d be like, “Brittany!”
And she’s like, “Oh my God, I was just talking to your sister and she said the same thing.”
As far as, like, now… I think a lot of times, you know, when I text my sister and say “I miss Mom and I’ve been thinking about her,” it’s almost like she and I think about our mom at the same time now. Or like when we text each other, I’ll say something, and she’ll be like, “Oh, my God, I literally was just thinking about that.”
The other day I sent my sister a little money to go treat herself. And she’s always like “why are you sending me stuff?” And I’m like, “if Mom was here, she would do the same thing.”
We talk a lot about the little things our mom would do. Brooke has two little ones, and with her son who is the oldest, she really missed mom being here, but raising a daughter without a mom is, like, a different ball game. She misses her a lot. But it’s just crazy, again, how God works, because my sister’s son looks just like our mom, and we always just laugh about that, how she is continually living on, because he makes faces sometimes, and we’re like “oh my gosh, you look just like…” And he knows all about her. We had this big picture of our mom, and people would sign it when we had her memorial of it. He walked in her bedroom one day when he first learned to talk, and he pointed at it, and he said, “Mommy’s Mommy.” So he knows all about her. She also made a book for him and it’s all about grandma, and it’s got all of these pictures in it, and she got a onesie for him that says “hand picked from heaven, from your grandma.”
So we always make sure, and even with her daughter who’s still a baby, we make sure they know about their grandmother. That is a tricky part — my sister having kids, my niece and nephew, and raising them without our mom — she would have been the best grandma because that’s all she wanted. She wanted grandchildren so she could spoil them. We talk about that a lot. When we’re together, we’ll say, “Mommy probably would have had them doing this, and she would have spoiled them…” it’s a lot of happy memories.
Of course there are sad moments, but our family has honored her in different ways. Our mom’s house was the hangout house — she made charcuterie boards before they became popular. Every time there was a party or family event, she was bringing over a meat and cheese tray or a fruit tray. She was a great cook, and she loved hosting people. My uncle has kind of taken on that role now. He loves to cook and host, and do all those things.
My two older cousins loved my mom so much, they’ll say, “Oh, I do this now, because Aunt Patrice did this.” She was, like, everybody’s favorite person, so we all honor her in different ways, the best we can.