My wonderful mother Nadia

Here goes …

On Tuesday, July 20th, 2021, at 7:45pm eastern standard time, my mother, Nadia Lising, died of cancer at the age of fifty-five. After a four-year battle with the disease, the stupid tumours and cells got the best of a woman who was, by all accounts, both tenacious and an absolute delight.

And that is the part that I want to focus on: “…by all accounts.”

To be honest, I never really got to know my mom until the last two years of her life, and even then - I still do not know a lot about her. It was a weird thing to process. I kept guilting myself, saying “you would never have gotten to know her had it not been for her cancer diagnosis.” But on the flipside, these past two years are full of memories and stories that I will never take back.

Learning about Nadia

At the farewell mass, I said that for the first twenty-one years of my life, my mom was just … my mom. I had her all figured out. She was the strict parent. She pushed me to be a doctor, lawyer or an engineer (or, her dream career for me: all three). And when she saw that I didn’t want to do any of the three, she pushed me to earn some kind of degree. And after all those years of schooling, only then could I entertain the idea of dating somebody.

How very Filipino of you, mom.

So for twenty-one years, that’s how I viewed my mom. But something changed when I graduated in the summer of 2019. It was the start of a shift in paradigm … for both of us. No longer would I view my mom as solely my mom. From this point on, I would learn more and more about Nadia. And in her eyes, no longer was I just her youngest son. She would start to learn more and more about Aidan.

Right off the bat, both of us were fortunate to witness the Toronto Raptors win the 2019 NBA Championship. I spent most of that run watching the games at home, with her and the rest of my family. Sure, in the grand scheme of things sports are pretty meaningless, but OUR team won so … ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Then over the course of the next few months, my career as a freelance graphic designer started to really take off. I was earning more money and my clientele started to grow. However, I was pretty much navigating solo. Aside from one or two mentors, I had no big company or pool of co-workers upon whom I could rely. It was me, myself and I. And this is where my mom and I really related: navigating the business world.

It was at this time where I really bonded with my mom. She and I would talk about all kinds of business stuff: negotiating salaries, filing taxes, charitable donations, leveraging different job offers, etc. All the stuff I saw as “boring” growing up became things that really connected me with her. Funny enough, I found out only months ago that my mom worked two jobs until I was ten years old! I just thought adults finished work at 10pm.

Another aspect in which I bonded with my mom was with housekeeping. Growing up, I hated Sunday mornings or any time before we were hosting a function. It would be my mom barging into my room, begging me to flip the entire house, vacuum, sweep, mop the floor and fix all the shoes at the front door. This woman treated every function as an episode of Hoarders.

But in those last two years - especially since we were homebound for a lot of it - every day that passed, I became more like her. All the dishes that were left unwashed or piled on the drying rack, I loathed. The kitchen floor was dirty? I couldn’t help but notice it. The stairs were full of dirt and hair? Disgusting. The shower was dirty? Give it a brush down during my shower. Even the smaller stuff like putting the couch pillows back in a “presentable” fashion became world-ending problems I needed to solve at that moment.

While I was growing up, my mom would often complain (loudly) about how she was the only one who cared about cleaning. As I took more of the housekeeping responsibility, I began to say that same exact thing. Like mother, like son.

My mom and I also bonded through cooking. When I was about twelve, I called my mom at work and asked her to teach me how to cook an egg. That was the first time I ever cooked anything that didn’t involve a microwave or toaster. From then on, cooking would become one of my favourite hobbies. I now constantly worry if there is dinner for the rest of my family.

In the final months of her life - and I don’t know why it took this long - my mom and I would actually work together to cook her dishes. Classic Filipino dishes: sinigang, pancit, palabok, lumpia, spaghetti (just a lot more sugar), nilaga, adobo, etc. She would sit by the stove and guide me through her recipes - like an aggressive version of the film “Ratatouille”.

It was like Neo seeing the lines of the Matrix for the first time. All the recipes I once thought were these incredibly complex, mysterious, inaccessible things turned out to be the simplest dishes (relatively speaking). I also discovered that my mom and I shared a hatred for measuring ingredients. Why use a tablespoon when you can just eyeball it? That really warmed my heart.

I will definitely forget the exact recipes, but I will make it my mission to cook more of her dishes. It also helps with me embracing my Filipino heritage- something I have refuted for so long for whatever stupid reason.

Something that I will also carry over in honour of my mother is her green thumb. My mother took pride in her garden, especially her vegetable garden. Growing up, I would stupidly refuse to water the plants while she was at work because I simply couldn’t be bothered (stupid young Aidan). But now, I see why she takes so much joy in planting and maintaining it. Her peonies, hostea and her tomato plants. A good friend of mine gifted me a house plant a few years ago (a Pilea peperomioides, to be exact). Tending to it and watching it grow gave my mom and I both a lot of joy. It helped sparked my very new interest in gardening. To that friend, my deepest, sincerest thanks to you.

My mom was an incredibly hard worker. The irony is that I know in my soul, the last thing I want to do is work my entire life. But it was because of my mom’s tireless love and devotion to our family that I’m able to even entertain that thought. It’s your classic immigrant parent story and it’s one for which I will be eternally grateful.

My mom was one of thirteen children. She grew up in Leyte: a rural province in the Philippines. There was little money for most things, let alone higher education. So from a very young age, my mom busted her ass to save money for school. She was independent and determined. As much as I love and admire her for this mentality, it proved to be her achilles heel.

My mom was so independent that she would refuse almost any form of help or special treatment; she despised receiving people’s pity. When she was diagnosed with cancer, she refused to tell anyone outside our immediate family. She did not tell her bosses, co-workers, and even some of her friends were kept in the dark. My mom believed in mind-over-matter: if she says she’s feeling good, then she’s feeling good.

Unfortunately, cancer doesn’t care about how you feel.

Mom, my family, and chemotherapy

In the final year of my mom’s life, there was a lot of pain and frustration. But let’s rewind a bit more.

My mom underwent a hysterectomy in 2017 to remove a benign mass in her uterus. A few years later, it was discovered that she had cancer cells on her peritoneum. This is the tissue that lines your abdomen and covers your internal organs (in other words, the sac that holds your guts). While the cancer cells themselves were small in nature, she required non-surgical treatment. For my mom, that was chemotherapy.

When my mom began her chemotherapy in the summer of 2019, we were all really nervous. Six sessions with a three-week gap between each one (for recovery). We’d visit her at Princess Margaret Hospital: those sessions lasted the whole day usually. As grim as chemotherapy is, I found myself turning each session into a mini-trip around downtown Toronto. I’d walk around, maybe grab a bite, and go visit my mom at the tail-end of her treatment. This way, I was able to be with her while my dad drove us home.

The two or three days following each session were usually the toughest. My mom would be incredibly nauseous, throwing up and in a lot of pain. She would often describe a sort of numbing pain in her bones. One side effect she was burdened with was neuropathy: a numbing/tingling sensation in the tips of her fingers and toes. It would make it hard for her to be on her feet some days.

And then there was the hair.

Hair was very important to my mom. Growing up, she’d always come home from her stylist and ask me, my brother and my dad how we felt about it. But well into her chemotherapy sessions, a very difficult decision arose: whether or not to shave her head. My mom would keep showing me clumps of hair that she’d pull from her head. When I’d take a shower, I’d notice there was a lot more hair in the drain or even the garbage. Sweeping the floor, there was a lot more hair than usual. She had to make a decision.

And she did it. Her stylist shaved her head.

And so did I. So did my brother, dad and my two little cousins.

It was a very difficult decision for her, but I figured solidarity would be a nice gesture for her. On top of that, I offered to buy her first wig from the beauty store (hair is expensive, man) as well as any head wraps/scarves she wanted from the internet.

Despite all this, my mom made it through those six, cruel chemotherapy sessions. There was a bell mounted on the wall of the chemo wing of the hospital that patients would ring upon completion of their final session. Whenever it would ring, the nurses and patients would all applaud and it was this beautiful moment of encouragement. “F—k yeah, you made it!”

In October of 2019, my mom got to ring that bell. At first she was ringing it in a timid way, so as not to disturb the other patients. But after encouragement from my older brother and I, she rang it with some force. My whole family along with the whole wing applauded her. What an absolute feat.

Shortly thereafter, another patient rang the bell, which was welcomed by even more applause. What was funny was that both my family and the family of that patient were sitting on the same couch in the waiting area. As both my mom and that other patient walked out, both of our families shared a nice moment. We both told each other what the nurses and staff were telling us: “we hope to never see you here again!”

In the following appointment with her oncologist, my mom was no longer required to go to chemotherapy. It was a moment of elation and gratitude. Gratitude towards modern medicine, God, family, the nursing staff at Princess Margaret, any and everything that helped her in this terrible time.

So for a while things were good. Even my mom’s hair started to grow back.

And then things got bad.

World history, lay-offs and metastasis

Around spring of 2020, there was some kind of global, chapter-of-a-world-history-book event that happened. Not even sure if it’s worth mentioning here. After all, it’s only on the news EVERY F—KING DAY.

So while the world stayed inside and grappled with remote life, one of the bright spots was getting to know my mom better than ever before. While we took walks around the neighborhood, I would pick her brain about different things. I would ask her questions I never asked and got answers I never heard before. Of course, this was my mom here, so this would happen in the spare moments between her never-ending work schedule.

And then one day, her scheduled opened up. Completely.

She was laid off from her position at her job which she held for over twenty years (I think?). It was a big deal for her. Like I said earlier, work was this woman’s life and now … it wasn’t. She grappled that maybe this was a sign from the Lord himself that it was time to slow down and take things easier.

Nope.

My mom is insane, but to any coworkers reading this, you probably already knew that! After a few weeks of being unemployed (and potentially retired), my mom got back in the saddle and found another job. And this woman willingly worked in-office! This was in the summer of 2020: a.k.a. well into the pandemic. Do you think she told anybody about her condition? Yeah, me neither.

And then a familiar face decided it was a good time to make its most unwelcome return.

My mom’s cancer came back once again. And this time, it metastasized- which is just a fancy word for “spread”. Even though the tumours themselves were quite small, by definition, my mom’s cancer was now officially “stage four” - which is never something anyone wants to hear. Ever.

So more chemo for my mom, only this time, it would be a different approach. The gap between each session would be different (i forget exactly how much) and the drugs would be different so as to make things easier on her body. Take note of this language, because it came up a lot in the ensuing months.

To be honest, I forget if my mom was laid off or if she quit that subsequent job. All I know is nobody at that workplace knew she was battling cancer either. Maybe it was my mom’s way of trying to give it the least amount of attention possible. Lord knows I didn’t want to think about it too much as well.

Boy, did we try to push it aside.

This part hurts to write

(Fair warning, this part is really sad- so feel free to skip over it)

The next few months were full of a lot of pain, frustration and hope (that would slowly wither away).

Suffice to say my mom’s condition worsened. She would go through a lot of different treatments (more chemo, radiotherapy, bottles of prescription drugs) that would ultimately yield no improvement. Because she was going through new treatments, she asked me to shave her head once again- which absolutely broke her heart. For a few months, her CT scans would say something along the lines of “no significant shrinkage in the tumours”. However, we would spin that into a more positive light: “same is better than getting worse.”

And then it got worse.

A subsequent CT scan showed that there were cancer cells that appeared in her liver. Her doctors gave her this at-home treatment where she would inject herself with some medicine (i don’t know exactly what) every day. As if to make things worse, on a subsequent scan, the dosage of those syringes was too high and actually yielded blood clots in my mom’s lungs!

And while that was all happening, my mom had a very difficult time holding down any kind of food. She lost about thirteen pounds in the span of two weeks. You need to understand that my mom was not the best at keeping a proper eating regime. Before all this cancer stuff, she never had the biggest appetite and would often work on a very empty stomach. And she did this for years.

Now her doctors were telling her to eat more frequently? To eat more than she ever ate before? An impossible task. But dammit we all tried.

My mom was starving, but she couldn’t physically eat. I would ask her what she wanted for lunch and she wouldn’t know. I would go through every cuisine known to man and it wouldn’t matter- she wouldn’t know. On the rare occasion that she did know what she wanted to eat, the minute I came home with the food - the craving was gone.

Sometimes she would look at me with tears in her eyes, a pleading expression on her face and she would ask me “Aidan, what can I eat?” All those bottles of Ensure she threw up and Canada Dry she kept by her bedside. All the JELL-O she never wanted, all the rice puddings she never ate, all the small bowls of food that she would barely touch. That was so frustrating. My family, friends and therapist would tell me that I’m doing all that I possibly could. But dammit, it wasn’t enough.

There would be days that she could actually hold down food. But the effort to get her to eat a decent serving and then distract her for the twenty-or-so minutes it takes for food to enter your digestive tract was grueling. It was a monumental effort. But it was worth it.

But more often than not, that effort would be in vain. Her cries of pain echoed throughout the house. The sound of my mom throwing up would ring throughout the halls. Sometimes those vomiting sessions would be followed by sobbing, wailing and pleas to God.

“Why God? Why do you give me this pain? Why can’t I eat?”

That stuff was hard to hear. Oftentimes I would put on my headphones and blast music to drown out her pain. I felt bad for doing that. I was upset, angry and frustrated with everything. I’m not as religious as my parents, but I would sometimes pray. I’d ask God to give me the pain instead. There was actually a moment where she and I were both crying on the floor together and she said “I want to make it to at least sixty! Please God!”

I think the toughest thing for her was the fact that her life followed a path that is seen by many as “proper”. She worked and studied incredibly hard, was a devout Catholic and did not drink, smoke or do any drugs. And yet … she was given the short end of the stick. It seems incredibly unfair, but whether or not you believe in a higher power, that is the nature of life. For those that do, then “the Lord works in mysterious ways.” For those that do not, then “life is random chaos and it has no concept of right and wrong." (That might seem like I’m trying to appear deep, but trust me I’m really not that introspective).

Trying to retake control

So if you made it through that last section, it may seem like that would be enough to keep my mom down.

Well, then that goes to show how little both you and I know Nadia.

My mom’s birthday (May 18) was a very tough day for her. Friends and family were dropping off food and presents and they wanted to see her. My mom refused to come out or even pop her head out the window. I could tell that the only thing on my mom’s mind that day was “how many more birthdays will I have?” She was very sad that evening, despite it being a day where she would normally celebrate her life.

Well, unbeknownst to my entire family, somewhere between the gift deliveries and her existential crisis, my mom accepted a job. Despite being incredibly morose, this woman said “no time for tears, I gotta get to work.” And she did.

The next few weeks was an incredibly awe-inspiring sight. This woman, who was getting weaker by the day, barely able to eat and in an incredible amount of pain, was filing paperwork, talking to clients or doing video meetings like nothing changed. (BTW, in case it wasn’t already obvious - she never told anyone at her new job she had cancer).

My whole family shook our heads in a sort of awe-inspired disbelief. For me, I was frustrated because somewhere in her body, there was energy to appear as a normal, healthy employee. So why couldn’t she translate that energy into eating and holding down food?!

I just wanted mom to be okay!

Making lemonade

There were moments where my mom had a decent amount of energy to actually do activities, albeit for a short amount of time. We had to make the most of a pretty crappy situation; when life gives you lemons and all that.

On May 24, I woke up and went downstairs to discover my mom was in the living room. Her being downstairs was a great sign because it meant that she wasn’t in her room, stuck in bed, barely any energy to go anywhere. She was texting her friends and she showed me a picture of one of their lunches.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Oh it’s something called Cheung Fun,” my mom replied. “Your tito Leo got it from this place in Chinatown.”

“Ooh it looks good,” I said.

A brief pause occurs. An idea sparks.

“Do you want to go?” I suggest excitedly.

“Where? Chinatown?” my mom asked confusedly.

“Yes,” I reply with excitement. “Let’s go later today!”

“What about your work?”

“Screw work,” I said with excitement. “I’ll just finish this one thing and we can go.”

So our evening was set: we would go down to King’s Noodle restaurant on Spadina and Dundas. We would grab some delicious Cheung Fun (which is just a rice noodle roll; a typical find if you were to get dim sum) and come home. For the record, we live in Scarborough, so it would be a twenty-ish minute drive just to get this dish, despite the fact that Scarborough is littered with some great Chinese restaurants.

I put on my orange WNBA hoodie, some whatever-shorts and my Seattle Supersonics hat: y’know, casual grab-n-go attire. My mom had other plans for attire.

She comes out in this beautiful red sundress with matching coloured shoes and her floral headwrap. And in typical Nadia-fashion, she also brought her Burberry cashmere scarf. She looked phenomenal and she also said she felt just as good.

It’s a beautiful late spring evening: the sun out, clear skies and the temperature is in the low-twenties. Driving downtown was a breeze: nobody was taking the highway to get into the downtown core. The Don Valley Parkway felt like the damn Autobahn.

We get to the-street-soon-to-be-formally-known-as Dundas and as we approach Spadina, I decide to park on the side of the road. The plan was to walk the rest of the way to the restaurant, come back and we’d eat by the car. So that’s what I did.

When I got back, my mom was standing outside the car, trying to take in the downtown air - it had been a while since she’d been here. We entered the car and, despite my mom being a clean-freak about her prized vehicle, we ate in the front seat. And my mom actually ate!

At the time, she was really into mukbang videos (where people record themselves eat) and so, on a whim, I popped my phone onto the dashboard and starting recording us eat, much to her amusement. For the record, the Cheung Fun was delicious.

After eating, we decided to return home. However, I asked my mom if it was okay to take the scenic route back. She was cool with it. So instead of returning to the DVP to get to the 401, I decided to go north on Spadina to visit … Casa Loma!

We parked nearby and we both made our way towards the castle; she was leaning on me the whole walk. I took pictures of her in front of the castle - she looked absolutely gorgeous. Her red dress against the beige bricks with the clear blue evening sky up above. You already know I took a ton of photos of her.

Typically, I wouldn’t push my mom to walk further than she could handle - I didn’t want her to expend all her energy. However, today I felt like being pushy. I asked my mom if she could make it to the top of those steps that lead up to the castle itself. When you stand at the highest step, there is a beautiful view of downtown Toronto. My mom begrudgingly agreed.

She told me there was a shortcut through the parking lot and insisted we take it. Upon realizing the door to the path was closed, she needed to take a seat to recoup. I was worried that was all she had in the tank, but with some badgering, I encouraged her to stand and walk around the wall to get to the little parkette that led to the steps.

She made it.

I took her picture (wasn’t as good because of the low light) and we both took a moment to admire the view. I then ran back to the car while she waited on a nearby bench. I honked the horn and she made it to the car. I told her how proud I was of her, being able to walk all the way to the steps. It was a monumental achievement at the time. Then we drove home.

On the drive home, we tuned into the Leafs playoff game on the radio. It was game three between them and the Montreal Canadiens and the series at that point was tied. We ended up taking Avenue Road to the 401 to get home. When we arrived, we got settled and watched the rest of the game in our own rooms (my heart cannot do playoff hockey with other people. It’s too much emotion). The Leafs ended up winning that evening! It was a very close game, and it reminded me of watching those Raptors playoff games with her.

And so that capped off a pretty extraordinary day. A spontaneous drive, a spontaneous meal, a spontaneous sight-seeing/photoshoot stop all wrapped up in a neat bow of a Leafs playoff win (Yes I know how the rest of the series panned out, but on that night, they won). I messaged my mom, thanking her for being able to come out that day. She was also very thankful that I took her out, saying she cried happy tears. Our hearts were filled with so much warmth that evening. I will never forget that day.

This was the last cherished memory I have of my mother.

A change of language

**sigh** This part is also very hard to write.

At the start of July, my mom went to the hospital for a blood transfusion and a colonoscopy thanks to the encouragement of my amazing nurse aunt (my mom’s sister). She was admitted into the hospital so they could monitor her vitals. This turned out to last a few days, but this was seemingly nothing out of the norm. In the previous month, she was also admitted to the hospital for about five days for the same reason (Admittedly, these weeks where she wasn’t at home served as a “dry-run” to see how it would feel without her).

Well this time, it was different.

On Thursday, July 8, my dad and aunt gathered my brother and I to tell us that mom’s condition worsened. On this most recent visit to the hospital, they discovered that the cancer had spread to her colon as well (had it not been for my aunt’s encouragement to get a colonoscopy, they would have never found that out). They told us that mom’s cancer is spreading very aggressively and given her current health condition (unable to hold food, low hemoglobin count), any scheduled chemo sessions would be cancelled. She would be placed in palliative care immediately.

If you’re unaware, palliative care is a medical department aimed to improve a patient’s quality of life. For my mom, this meant the language changed from “we are trying to stop her cancer from spreading” to “make things as comfortable as possible in her final days.” And when my dad said the priest came in to give mom her last rites … that broke me.

The doctors told us she had about a week left, maybe two.

Damn.

Her final days

I always try to look for the upside in any situation. I don’t like harping on the negative as much as I can. So in this situation, I am so incredibly thankful that the COVID situation in Ontario has improved compared to, say, March or April. Vaccines and lower case counts meant that slightly looser restrictions on the province and the city.

The visitor policy was usually one person per day. This was tough because my mom had a big family and a lot of potential visitors. However, the admin staff at Princess Margaret Hospital was gracious enough to give us some leeway. My mom was able to have more visitors in a given day. Her best friend from Vancouver flew in and painted her nails! That was such a huge boost for her. My brother, dad, aunt and myself would rotate day by day. I took time off work. Yeah I’d lose a ton of money because I’m freelance and there is no paid leave, but whatever, man - money is not important here.

On Tuesday, July 13th, I visited mom for about seven hours. I brought my headphones, a book, a little questionnaire book that I would try to get my mom to answer (if she was able). Although it took a lot of energy for my mom to speak, she was still lucid enough to interact with me. I would just talk at her and recall memories we shared, particularly the day I graduated - which was also the same day the Raptors won the title. I would also let her stroke my hair because it was the longest I’ve ever grown it. It was nice for her because she got to run her fingers through hair again, and it was nice for me because it felt like being a baby in my mother’s arms again.

The toughest part about the visits was that I would have to say goodbye to her, potentially for the last time, every time. So to soften the blow, I would say goodbye for now- giving myself some hope that I would see her again.

I visited her again on Friday, July 16th. This day was different, but still okay to handle. She was still quite lucid, but barely spoke. In fact, she slept for most of the visit, which was fine. Keeping her company was quite pleasant. Once again, I said goodbye for now and went home.

My next visit was Sunday, a mere two days later, and it was by far the toughest. I was only there for four hours in the morning, and my brother would switch and take the next four. But those four hours were incredibly difficult to handle. My mom was quite restless that day. When she wasn’t sleeping, she was reaching in the air, trying to grab at things that weren’t there. Oftentimes, she would try and stand up. She would call upon me to help her sit up on the bed, and then potentially stand. This was considered dangerous by the nurses; she would be prone to falling.

And this was the most heartbreaking part for me. Do I help my mom stand up- something she desperately wants to do- even though it would be quite dangerous for her? She got frustrated with me, pushing me away, slamming her arms onto the bed. Meanwhile I’m crying, calling for a nurse to come help.

So I asked the nurse working that day, Carolyn, for an update on my mom’s status. She told me that all this restlessness was a result of delirium and that meant she was close to the end. That hurt to hear. I could barely look Carolyn in the eye as she explained it to me. I then asked her what it would look like when my mom would pass.

Carolyn told me it usually happens in one of two ways:

• Her breathing would stop suddenly

• The time between breaths would get longer and longer

So I went home that day, and updated my brother on her status. It was really difficult to tell him that mom’s delirious and that meant she was close to the end.

The next day, Monday, I wasn’t scheduled to visit, but I got a call from my dad in the morning. He told us that mom wanted to see my brother and I. We both raced to the hospital to see her and relieve my dad and aunt who returned home to sleep.

My brother and I were in the room together and were just with her. We were going through all these memories together while my mom was just there in bed. Her eyes were closed but her breathing appeared laborious. It was a tough sight to see.

When my dad and aunt returned to switch, I asked my brother if he could leave me alone with mom so I could say my final goodbyes. I told my mom that I was so incredibly thankful for her love and care. I told her she was a fantastic mom and that she raised a pretty good son in me. But the main message I relayed to her was to rest. Be at peace. I told her not to worry about anything anymore. Everything would be taken care of. The only thing she needed to do now is to let go.

I kissed her forehead and said goodbye. Her body was cold, man. It was unsettling. I decided definitively that, regardless of whether or not she would still be alive in the next few days, this would be my final visit to my mom until she finally passes. I couldn’t bare seeing her like this anymore. I’m grateful that my family understood my perspective and respected it. So I went home that night, knowing that for the rest of the week I would be on-call to the hospital.

The next day, Tuesday, went on about as normally as I could make it. Then at around 7pm, my dad called me to say that there was about a four-second gap between her breaths. I knew exactly what that meant. I called an Uber immediately and made my way to the hospital.

I arrived at 8pm, got up to the 16th floor (16P to be precise) and made my way to her room. Nurses told me “I’m sorry” but I thought that was just because they knew it was a dire situation. Nothing could prepare for what actually happened.

I entered the room and immediately saw that the drape was pulled so as to conceal the bed. Auntie and dad were there and the first thing I see is my mom’s lifeless body laying on the bed followed by my dad telling me, “she’s gone, now. At 7:45, she passed away.” I broke down.

Then my brother and uncle (mom’s brother) came into the room and we told each of them what happened. Dad’s wife, auntie and uncle’s sister, me and my brother’s mom: Nadia Lising was gone.

She was gone.

Relief and peace

As incredibly sad and upsetting a situation this was (and it very much was), there was this overwhelming sense of relief that the five of us felt. For the past few months, my mom was in so much pain. She was in so much sorrow and misery. But now, seeing her body, she was at peace. No longer did she need to worry about her cancer, chemotherapy, cleaning the house, the car, watering the plants, her job (she brought her laptop to the hospital!!!), taking care of her mom, the list goes on and on. She no longer had to worry about any of that anymore.

And neither did we. No longer did we have to worry about trying to feed mom, hearing her vomiting, her cries, seeing her pain, hearing her cries to God, seeing her struggle with walking, the list goes on and on. We no longer had to worry about any of that anymore.

There was peace. It was oddly comforting.

We prayed over her body and then we broke the news to family, friends, coworkers. Thankfully (and as painful as it was), in these past few days, my dad and his sister had been organizing the wake and the funeral mass while all of this was going on. This made things a lot smoother because it would have been incredibly heavy to have mom pass AND THEN deal with the logistics of the ceremonies.

At around 9pm we left the room, I left a thank-you note on the dresser, we thanked the staff and we went to our respective vehicles. My brother and I walked down University Avenue towards the Shangri-La hotel where he parked. It was a cool, breezy evening, which was a contrast to the rest of the day where it hailed. My dad said the moment mom passed, the rain stopped and the sun shone through for a brief moment. Maybe that meant something, I don’t know.

What was odd was that while walking towards the car, the only thing I could think of was “do any of the people we’re passing on the street have the faintest idea that my brother and I just came from our mother’s deathbed?” I don’t know why, but that helped me rationalize things a bit. You really don’t know what a person has going on in their life in a given moment. For my mom, that was something she took pride in. She played her cards incredibly close to her chest.

We got Taco Bell on our way home and upon arrival, I had to explain to my two little-but-not-so-little cousins what happened. That their Auntie Nadia was gone. She had died and would not be coming back home anymore. It just sucked that they never got to say a proper face-to-face goodbye while she was in the hospital.

I kept it straight with them. No cushy metaphors. They deserve that.

Ceremonies and visitors

The wake and funeral mass were incredibly emotional on a lot of levels. For starters, these are innately depressing ceremonies. There was not a dry eye in the house for either one. But what was really incredible was the sheer volume of people that came to visit. Like I said before, I’m thankful the COVID situation has improved and people can get vaccinated because at the wake, we had a room that could hold 120 people inside. We filled that no problem. AND there were more people waiting outside. And there were definitely more people who probably couldn’t have made it. There were people I haven’t seen in years! People from high school, people that used to go to the weekly prayer meetings that mom and dad would take my brother and I to. It was a bittersweet reunion.

At the mass, dad, my brother and I said our eulogies (my brother was the only one who had something written). It had been my first time hearing mass since the pandemic started. It was sorta comforting going through the motions of a mass once again, receiving communion and all that. It just sucked that it ended with sending my mom away in the hearse to be cremated (we’re not allowed to be there due to health protocols) and a long line of condolences. Like I said, bittersweet.

After the mass, a bunch of family went to a park for a picnic. I originally didn’t want to go but my dad wanted me there, so I went. I ended up staying the entire duration. It was so nice catching up with family again. There was this little splash pad that I kept taking my cousins through (I was drenched by the end). That day, I was just speaking to my relatives like adults (if that makes sense). I just had conversations with them. Nice conversations too. Not like the awkward hellos you give tito what’s-his-name and tita who-are-you at Christmas.

What now?

At the wake and funeral, I heard so many stories of my mom that I never heard before. I really never got to know Nadia as well as I could or should have. But you know what? I do not regret the time I spent with her. Whether it was the twenty-one years where she was just “mom” or the two years where I got to know “Nadia”, I loved all of it.

But I do want to hear more and more stories about her. Unfortunately, that’s all I have of her now: memories. Actually that’s not quite true.

So whenever I have to tell people a “fun fact” about myself, I always tell them that my name (Aidan) is my mother’s name spelt backwards (Nadia). I love seeing people spell it out in their head and then come to a euphoric realization. So in some poetic way, I am literally a reflection of my mother. If you put my name to a mirror, you will see her name, and vice versa. That’s a pretty neat way to keep her memory alive. I thought about getting a tattoo of that, but the irony is my mom hates tattoos.

So what now? How do I feel? I feel surprisingly okay. Maybe it’s because I’m helping my dad out with all the documents and affairs that need to be done. Maybe when we’ve settled all that stuff, I’ll be in a different state. But for now, I am okay. That "relief” I felt last week is slowly starting to dissipate and the feelings of holy-crap-I-miss-my-mom-so-much are starting to creep in.

All I know is whatever I feel, I’ll feel. Whether it’s sadness, anger, despair, happiness, I’ll embrace those feelings fully. And I won’t be afraid to use my support system either (family and friends). So, if you ever tell me “I’m here if you need anything.,” I will take you up on that offer. Fair warning ;)

If you’ve made it this far, thanks for reading whatever the hell this was. My mom, Nadia, was a great mother and from the fairly little I’ve gathered, a phenomenal woman, wife, sister, daughter, co-worker and friend. I’ll miss her so much.

Rest now, Nadia. You’ve worked your whole life for it.

I’ll always love you, mom <3