Holding On

I had another dream about my mom last night.

I was at home and walked into the kitchen. And there she was! Just washing dishes. She looked just like I remember her from about 3 years ago.

I was so so happy to see her. We were both smiling. I ran over to her and hugged her. We holding each other and I didn't want to let go.

So I didn't.

My mom and I walked around the house hugging each other. It must have seemed pretty comical. Then one by one, people in my life tried to convince me that I couldn't hold on to my mom forever. It just wasn't practical. What if I needed to drive somewhere? I'd have to let go of her then.

But I refused to let go. I just kept saying, "But you don't understand. She's my mom!"

She Visits Me In My Dreams

I've been meaning to write about this for about a week now but I'm just getting to it. Sorry about the delay.

About a week ago, I had a dream that felt so incredibly real.

I was starting my first day of school at a new university and everything was going wrong. Absolutely everything. I won't go into all the details, but it was going so horribly that I somehow missed every single class I was supposed to attend. I was freaking out that my professors would drop my from the classes because I didn't show up on the first day of class. I was very nervous and scared.

That evening I was supposed meet my extended family at a fancy restaurant for dinner. I got there and just started crying from the stress of the horrible day. My aunts tried to console me, but it did no good.

Then I overhead my dad tell my grandpa "She hasn't said a word all day. I made her laugh about 4 hours ago but nothing since then." I looked up, and there was my mom sitting at the end of the other table in her wheelchair. (She looked like she did about back in May/June) Her back was to me, so I couldn't see her face. I got up and ran to her and sat in her lap and hugged her. She held me as I cried. We cried together. I said "It's going to be okay, Mommy."

I'll never forget this moment in the dream. I was curled up in her lap with my head on her chest and her arms around me. And she said in a voice as clear as day "It'll be alright, baby."

It sounded exactly like her. EXACTLY like her. Just like she used to say it to me when I was sad.

I started sobbing so hard. And then I started sobbing in real life. It was an absolutely terrifying feeling. I don't know if any of you have woken yourself up by crying in your sleep, but it's a pretty scary feeling. And I wasn't just crying, I was really sobbing. I was whimpering and going "waaahhhhh!". That's how I woke up in the middle of the night.

But after the initial terror passed, I just felt her with me. It felt like it was really her. She was really telling that she's looking after me and that "It'll be alright, baby."

Analysis of Two Corresponding Major Life Events

I had to write an essay for my Health Psychology class about a current streesor in my life. As you could have guessed, I wrote about my mom's death and her diagnosis almost 2 years ago as corresponding major life events. I got the grade back for the essay today. I got 100%! I thought I'd share it with you:

Analysis of Two Corresponding Major Life Events

I am currently going through the most stressful times of my life. This is not because I’m a full-time college student at a challenging school majoring in Psychology and double minoring in Mathematics and Ethnic Studies. This is the most stressful period of my life because my mom died less than three months ago.

Since her brain cancer diagnosis in January of 2011, I have been felt the weight of chronic stress. Not only has the death of my mother been a major life event, but so was her initial diagnosis. The Social Readjustment Rating Scale rates “major change in health or behavior of a family member” as #11, whereas “death of a close family member” is ranked #5. I’ve experienced both in less than two years.

However, I would rank what I’ve been through higher than #5.  For a daughter to lose her mom at the young age of 20 is especially stressful. It has required me to greatly readjust my life. Based on the stress I’ve felt over the last 21 months, I believe my event of losing a parent after a difficult battle with a terminal illness should be ranked #1 on the Social Readjustment Rating Scale, tied with “death of spouse”. However, I’ve never been married so I cannot even begin to imagine what losing a spouse feels like for my dad and others like him.

My mom’s initial diagnosis was extremely unexpected; it had very low predictability. I was at home with my mom for 6 weeks during winter break prior to the diagnosis. Only one week after I returned to school, I got the phone call that my mom was in the hospital for a brain tumor. She had none of the normal symptoms of a brain tumor like a seizure or prolonged headaches.

As you can imagine, I had very little control during this entire experience. The 18 months from the diagnosis to her death seemed to revolve entirely around her. Even when I researched clinical trials that could possibly slow down the cancer cells, my opinion was not respected. I wanted so badly for my mom to beat this cancer, but I felt like my efforts to help her were ignored. The only decision I had control over was whether or not to move back home from school. I was attending a college 2,000 away from home and during the frantic period right after the diagnosis, I made the decision to leave the college I was attending and find a school closer to home.

I also categorize my experience with my mom’s initial diagnosis of stage four brain cancer as a novel experience for me. I had never even known anyone with stage four cancer. Finding out that my own mom had advanced cancer was unlike anything I had ever coped with before.

Following the Transactional Model of Stress, my primary appraisal of my mom’s diagnosis was obviously negative. The event was both a harm and a threat. As a harm, my mom’s diagnosis uprooted my college experience. I was no longer living 2,000 miles away from home. I could no longer hang out with friends. I was always working, studying, or spending valuable time with my mom. As a threat, my mom’s diagnosis threatened her life, and as a result it threatened our family life.

My secondary appraisal during this first event was that I was not prepared. I did not have many internal coping strategies ready for an event like this and my external resources at the time were minimal.

After an 18 month battle with brain cancer, my mom died this past July. This event felt very different than the initial diagnosis a year and a half earlier. But in fact the only difference was that it was expected and not a surprise. I had predicted that she was going to die relatively soon. I had been telling myself for months that my mom was probably going to die. I didn’t want to give myself false hope and then feel shocked all over again, like I was with the diagnosis. However, the anticipation of her death for months before it actually happened was also very stressful. I wanted to prepare myself in the best way I could, but I didn’t know how. I felt like I didn’t have any control.

In fact, I felt like I had even less control than when she was first diagnosed because I could no longer search for clinical trials and treatment options that might fix the situation. In order to maintain some sense of control, I took on the responsibility of planning things like the obituary and the funeral. This helped me feel a sense of control and purpose.

My mom’s death was also a novel experience for me. I had never seen a dead body before. I had never experienced a death of a close family member before either.

My primary appraisal was also obviously negative. I viewed it as a harm, like the original diagnosis. But instead of also viewing her death as a threat, this time I also viewed it as a challenge. I lost my mom. That is a harm I will have to cope with for the rest of my life. But the challenge is the important part, the challenge of incorporating this entire experience into my life perspective and honoring my mother’s life in the process.

This is part of my secondary appraisal. Since my mom’s diagnosis, I have developed a strength that I did not know I was capable of. This is my new internal resource. I feel prepared and I can use this newly developed strength to cope with any future stressor. Another part of my secondary appraisal is my new external resources. Over the 18 months of her battle with brain cancer, I met many people who were experiencing or had experienced very similar situations to the one I am in. I am able to talk with them and get the perspective on how to handle difference situations and emotions.

However, I am also going through a difficult grief process. The sadness and sense of loss I feel presents itself in the form of stress. I am much more easily stressed over daily hassles. Studying for a test sometimes feels like an impossible task. This is because stressors are additive. A daily task of studying for a class on top of the stress of losing my mom makes me reach overload and exhaustion very quickly. I feel exhausted a lot. I have felt exhausted many times for the past year, just as Hans Selye predicted in his model of the General Adaptation Syndrome. I hope in time, as I find a way to cope with my mother’s death, I will no longer feel mentally exhausted as often as I do now. I will overcome this major stressor in my life.