Selfless Love

"I have cancer."

The words hit me like a two ton brick. At first I didn't want to believe what I had just heard, but the look on my mother's gentle, frightened face scattered any thought of disbelief. You could have heard a pin drop in the silence of the moments that followed. Sitting with sweaty hands clenched tightly, my thoughts went blank. After all, what could have been said in that situation. In my mind, there was nothing that I could say that would be benificial to my mother's health at that point......so what was the use? I tried to stop the tears from coming but it was useless. As I cried, the damp drops which rolled down my cheeks seemed to cut so deeply and painfully that I thought I had a disease of my own. In that instant, the pain was so great that I wouldn't have cared.....not even a little..... if I took my mother's disease upon myself. It wasn't the pain itself that made it so unbearable. It was the anger that came hand in hand with the pain. Through that anger.....that channeled anger.....I felt the devil. I heard him creep up beside me and whisper in my ear my innablity to do anything at all. I heard his coarse laugh, as if mocking me in that one ounce of hope that my mother would be cured. I saw his jagged finger, pointed directly at me. I felt him in the deepest part of my soul, attempting to gain a foothold of control.

And he almost succeeded.

But it was in this moment......at my wits end......that something amazing happened. It was in this moment of agony and pain that the foundations of my world were shaken. My mother, with tears in her eyes, stood up out of the chair across the room,and walked over to where I was sitting on our pale colored couch. She sat down next to me, and for the first time I was able to look directly into her glistening eyes. I felt ashamed of my pain as I realized the agony she was enduring was far worse than my own. With a soft stroke of her finger, she wiped the burning tears away from my cheek, after which she kissed me ever so gently. I felt as if she kept her lips pressed against my cheek for minutes on end. I didn't care. The release of her lips from my cheek was quickly replaced by her warm, comforting embrace. Everything changed. I'm not sure if it was simply a mother's touch, or if it was because in that instant I loved the one who gave me life more than anything else in the world. I honestly cannot tell you which it was. Mabey it was a combination of both. Whatever it was, the doubts and fears which had occupied my thoughts beforehand were instantly vanquished. The change was so sudden that for a moment I lost my breath. I sat quietly in my mother's arms. It was as if.......for just a moment.......there was no sense of time. I could feel the thoughts of worry attempt to enter my mind, only to be quickly chased away by the love which my mother had for me.

I will never forget, as long as I live, what she said to me. As I left her warm embrace, she looked at me with her loving eyes, and she said "Everything will be ok......we just have to have faith". It was then that I realized that no matter what might happen to my mother, everything would be all right. This was a woman who would never give up. In this woman's eyes I saw a determination that would stop the devil dead in his tracks. This was a woman who was so full of love that it frightened and comforted me simultaneously. This was a woman who was so full of love and compasion that she was able to look past her own pain, and love and care for me when I was the one who should have been holding her instead. In this love, I felt peace. In this love, I felt strength. In this love.......I felt God.