Extraordinary, Ordinary People: A Memoir of Family

chapter twenty

We were all looking forward to the coming hockey playoffs in March 1970. Denver was a powerhouse and stood a good chance of capturing their sixth national championship. I knew that Mother had a doctor’s appointment that Friday but didn’t think much of it.

Daddy always dropped me off at school each day and picked me up afterward; school ended about three-thirty. That Friday I waited and waited, and as more than an hour passed, I became concerned that something had happened to him. In those days, which were well before cell phones, there was no way to reach him. When he finally arrived, he explained that he’d been at the doctor’s office. Mother had gone to Dr. Hamilton because she’d felt a lump in her breast, and she was still with the doctor, who was doing some tests.

When Daddy and I arrived at the doctor’s office, the doctor explained that he couldn’t be sure but the lump felt like cancer to him. In those days, you didn’t wait for second opinions and analysis. Mother would have surgery on Monday morning. It was likely that she would lose her right breast, and then we’d see what else could be done.

That weekend was consumed with preparations for her hospital stay. I’ll never forget the sight of Mother cooking and cooking, making and freezing chicken and beef roast and vegetables so that we would have enough to eat while she was hospitalized. I suspected she was trying to get her mind off what she was facing. In 1970, cancer was considered a death sentence. I could tell that she was scared. I could tell that Daddy was scared. And I was terrified. Not frightened in the same way that I’d been by the bombings in Birmingham. This cut much deeper. I could not conceive of life without my mother.

Mother was admitted to the hospital Sunday night. My parents decided that I should go to school that Monday. I think that was the longest day of my life. By the time I reached my one o’clock Latin class, I just couldn’t wait any longer for news. I asked Mrs. Winters if I could go to the office and call my father, explaining that my mother was having surgery. I waited for what seemed like an hour in the principal’s paneled office. Finally the nurses reached Daddy, and he said that the surgery was over and it was indeed a cancerous tumor. He asked if I wanted to leave school. I said yes, and he picked me up shortly after.

When we got to the hospital, Mother was awake and more relaxed than either my father or me. She was relieved to at least know the facts, and Dr. Hamilton was mildly encouraging that the cancer had been caught early. “Early” in those days meant that it had already spread to at least two lymph nodes. She’d need to undergo radiation therapy, which would start in the hospital and continue when she came home.

My father called my grandmothers, aunts, and uncles with the news. A steady parade of family began to descend upon us. My mother’s sisters, brother, and sister-in-law all arrived. Grandmother Ray wisely stayed home. I love my extended family and we needed them, but after a while it felt like a bit of an intrusion. Mother stayed in the hospital about ten days. On the day before she was to leave, I arrived home from school to see my aunt Mattie moving the bedroom furniture around. “What are you doing?” I said. She explained that it was good when people came home from the hospital to have things look different. Certain that my mother wouldn’t appreciate coming back to a rearrangement of her carefully decorated bedroom, I protested and insisted that the furniture be returned to its original position. My relatives stayed a few days longer. They were trying to help, and for a while they did buoy Mother’s spirits. But then it was time for them to go home. Mother and Daddy and I just wanted to get back to normal. We needed to do that as a family, just the three of us. We even went to the hockey game the night the last relative left—only two weeks after my mother’s surgery.

But when your mother is diagnosed with cancer you have to find a new normal. Once cancer enters your family’s life it is a constant and unwelcome presence. I prayed every night that Mother’s cancer would not come back. And there were Mother’s periodic checkups, first every month, then every three, then every six, which provoked an indescribable anxiety as they approached and only temporary relief when they passed without incident. I once asked my mother, just before one of these periodic trips to the doctor, if she was afraid. “It’s not so bad. I’m only nervous just before the doctor gives me the news,” she responded. After five years, when cancer patients were thought to be “cured,” we all celebrated. But frankly I never believed that the struggle was behind us, and I was right.

As the daughter of a mother who had breast cancer, I can confirm that the perpetual anxiety caused by a parent’s disease is passed on to a child very directly. When Mother was first diagnosed in 1970, the genetic implications of the disease weren’t as well understood as they are today. But over my lifetime the fact that my mother had breast cancer has persisted as a dominant factor in my own health prognosis. I started getting mammograms before I was thirty and have had several scary results leading to multiple biopsies. The promise of early detection (and the prayers that go with it) has become my talisman against this devastating disease.

The cancer altered Mother’s life in other ways too. Though she never complained, I know that the drastic change in her physical appearance took a toll on her. Remember that this was a woman who took pride in her physical beauty and elegance. It was not standard practice then to do immediate reconstructive surgery after a mastectomy, and so Mother lived the rest of her life with a prosthetic bra. Moreover, the removal of several of her lymph nodes caused her left arm to swell to almost twice the size of her right. She covered the swelling by always wearing long-sleeved dresses. I remember one day when Mother went shopping and tried on a dress, the sleeve of which was too tight for her disfigured arm. The saleslady innocently asked what had happened. Mother addressed the situation directly, explaining that the swelling was the result of breast cancer surgery. The startled woman fumbled for something to say and then just said, “God bless you.” Mother, gracious and calm, simply replied, “Thank you.”

I learned a lot about Angelena Rice from how she faced these challenges. She didn’t allow anything superficial to matter, brushing off the physical disfigurement and the psychological toll of living with the disease. She was grateful to be a survivor and to continue her life as wife and mother. Mother was strong in ways that I cannot to this day fully fathom and am certain that I couldn’t reproduce. Her strength allowed us to go on with our lives.

My father was deeply affected too. He told me that his prayers had been answered. When he’d learned of my mother’s diagnosis, he’d asked God not to take her, wondering, “How will I raise a fifteen-year-old alone?” He did not have to. Over the years, Daddy more often gave voice to his fears than Mother did, telling me, for example (but apparently not my mother), that the many doctors he’d spoken to had informed him that cancer never really goes away. “Those little seeds lie dormant and you never know when they’ll strike again,” he said. The fact is, from that brutal Monday forward our tight-knit family’s sense of security was shaken by the infiltration of cancer into our consciousness. That was the new normal.