News of your mother being terminally ill  could never hold any hope in its delivery. When my grandmother got sick, my mother stayed by her side day in and day out, making sure she was happy in her last months. Together, my mother and her sisters read to my grandmother and took care of her; they were the familiar voices that chattered her off to sleep each night, where she could find a rare moment of peace.

After experiencing the loss of a parent, it would seem that nothing should really shake you. What you used to consider a bad day just becomes a day. You think that there will never be anything worse — until your daughter becomes ill.

When I got sick my mother took on the role of nurturing supporter. Although the news was what you’d expect in a bad movie twist, my mother tucked her worries out of my sight and helped me cope with the mess. When I needed to laugh and joke my mother would throw in the punch line and we would chuckle together. When it was time to face the seriousness of reality my mother was scribbling notes at doctor appointments and asking all the hard questions. In a situation that often seemed void of any hope, my mother hid her fear so that I could bury mine in her.

Eventually I got better. Life carried on until the day that I learnt my aunt was sick. My heart was broken and I was angry at this disease that nobody in the world could figure out. I immediately wanted to reach out to her and scream from the rooftops that I knew how she felt. It’s funny though, how fear can make you small. It took hold of me and squeezed the air out of my lungs and the hope out of my heart. I was frozen, speechless; I didn’t know what to do.

My mother never lost her strength. From the start, when nobody else knew how to react, my mother was going over to my aunt’s house, visiting and helping her. She was sensitive to the situation but treated my aunt the same way she always had, like herself.

When my aunt passed away the sadness was more than any of us could handle. As I sobbed in the church my mother passed me a tissue and reached out to touch my shoulder.
Heroes come in many forms. They are the people that experience things you could never imagine enduring yourself, and the ones who even though they’re gone, never let the evil in life get the best of them. My hero is my mother, because she is kind and her heart is big. Her strength and ability to take life as it comes are virtues I admire. She would get mad at me for claiming she’s a hero — but that’s just it. My mother is always there for the people who need her, simply because that is where she wants to be. She has helped fight many battles for the ones she loves, for that my mother is my hero.