This is how I survived after my mother's death.

I am Andrea Hernández, and my life changed forever a year ago when my mother passed away
from cancer.

From school, they teach us that the cycle of life is to be born, live, and die. But that last stage is
difficult to understand. We know the word death, and probably understand it but we can never
assimilate it, much less we are prepared to face it. My name is Andrea Hernández, I am 22 years
old, I am a journalist, and thus I have been able to survive the death of my mother.

Cancer? Yes. More than a disease, for me it was always a strange word that would never reach
my life or those of the people I love the most. But yes, it is real and it can touch all of us. It is a
silent disease that when it arrives makes noise and havoc, more than any other.

May 21, 2017, was the day that split my life in two. I woke up in a hospital in the north of
Bogotá as I had been doing for the last 15 days. As usual, the first thing I did as soon as I woke
up was to look at my mom and ask the nurse how she was doing.

That day there was something different in my morning routine. After talking to the nurse, I
asked God with all the strength of my heart to let me see my mother's eyes because she had
been unconscious for two days and I was afraid that I would never them again.

Around 10 in the morning, I was getting everything ready to go home and bring some things for
my mother, when the nurse yelled at me: -Andrea, your mom, look at your mom! I turned to
see her and she had her eyes open. Yes, what I asked God that day came true. But it wasn’t how
I was expecting, her black eyes were no longer the same, they were opaque and cried out for a
break.

I understood that even though I longed to have her by my side for many more years, I should let
her go. At that moment I took the bravery and courage needed to tell God that if HIS purpose
was for her to leave this world, I would respect it.

On the night of that day, at 7:40 p.m. m., my mom passed away.

She left surrounded by her family, her ex-husband, and her daughter. She died when I told her
that I loved her that she had been the best mom in the world and that because of her, I was
going to be a great professional. She died right after my dad told her that she had been the love
of his life. With a sigh, and after those words, she left.

Rochi

Before telling my story I would like to describe who my mother was. Her life cannot be simply
summed up as she was terminally ill with cancer.
My mother was named Rocío Angélica, she was a woman with a life, full of passion, strength,
and joy. She was the fourth of six children. She studied Nursing, Textile Design, and Psychology.
She specialized in Forensic Psychology and worked her last years in Family Welfare.

Like a good coastal woman, she loved the vallenatos of the ‘Binomio de Oro’, egg stuffed arepa,
coconut rice, the mojarra, and butifarra. Yellow was her favorite color and daisies her favorite
flowers.

At her work, from Monday to Friday, she served young people addicted to drugs, abused, or, on
the contrary, abusers. Every day she strived to give them advice and leave a message, she told
them that life was one and that it should be enjoyed, but correctly.

In her spare time, like me, she liked to watch police series, she was a lover of romantic movies
and fairy tales. She loved working out and talking for hours on the phone with my aunts and my
grandmother, who lived just a few blocks away.

Her relatives and her closest friends called her Rochi or Chío. I called her Ma, although she was
not only a mother to me. Mom was just the common word to call her, because other than that,
she was a sister and my best friend. She was the person I woke up at dawn when I couldn't
sleep, the one who hugged me when I cried and told me that everything was going to be okay.

She, even if she was tired, she always came home with a smile. After she would have had a long
day, she was the person who listened to me talk about my problems for long hours. And at the
end of the conversation, I always felt like every single one of them had disappeared.

She was the person who worked hard for many years to make me someone in life. She many
times put aside her happiness for being with me, she repeatedly left her dreams for dedicating
herself to me.

I can't say that our relationship was perfect because there were problems. There were
moments of discussions, but there were also others in which we talked late, laughed, and cried
together. We had a lot of confidence in each other.

Not only were our tastes similar, but, apart from everything, we were the same size. So we lent
each other our clothes and shoes. I have always had few friends and she, without a doubt, was
the best.

How did it all begin?

On May 19, 2016, I was getting ready to go to college when I heard her cry. I approached her
room, where she was, and asked her what was wrong. She didn't say anything to me, I just saw
a few drops of blood coming out of her nose.

Within a few minutes, she told me that she had a lot of pain in her head and that she felt like
vomiting. That day, we decided to go to La Colina Clinic, in the north of Bogotá, the closest to
our place of residence.

In that place, several doctors treated her, performed different tests, and gave her an analgesic
while the results of her were known. At 3 p.m. that day a voice sounded through the hospital's
speakers. They called my mom to deliver her exam results.

I walked with her to the last cubicle in the emergency room of the hospital. We each sat on a
chair and I remember how the doctor stared at us without saying anything. After a short
moment of silence, she told us that the images that she had provided with the CT scan of her
head showed something strange, something like a tumor in the cerebellum.

Then she looked at me and told me that my mother couldn't come home with me that day. She
had to stay to find out if it was a cancerous tumor.

From that day on, she spent 7 days in the hospital. There they discovered that what she
suffered from was breast cancer, but that it had metastasized to her cerebellum. That that
tumor on her head - which made her vomit, nosebleeds, and pain - was very bad and
aggressive.

After those days, one of the neurosurgeons at the clinic operated on her to remove the tumor
in the cerebellum. The intervention, which lasted 8 hours, was not a success. According to the
doctor, the tumor was already deeply ingrained and thus it was dangerous and impossible to
remove it completely.

So it was there that she proposed to my mom, her family, and me a few cycles of chemotherapy
and radiation therapy to control and possibly one day cure her of the advanced cancer she had.
Without hesitation, we accepted and that was where a new and unknown life for me began.

Our life after diagnosis

After the diagnosis, even though she was unable to go back to work and do the things that she
usually did in the day, my mom remained the same. With a smile, she showed that everything
was fine and that she was going to fight cancer.
She lasted a year with that disease, and in every moment of those 365 days, she held out hope
and faith that she was going to get better. It was at this time that she most demonstrated her
strength to me.

But although she remained the same, I did not. Although she tried to hide it, watching her
process was very difficult.

The tumor, the chemotherapies, and the radiotherapies made my mother not have the strength
or the motor skills to walk. They made her talk tangled. That she couldn't write well. For her to
lose her hair. For her to lose weight and vomit whatever she ate. Being there, next to her,
seeing all this, filled me with helplessness, anger, pain, and sadness.

I tried to continue my normal life, attending university from Monday to Friday. However, my
days were no longer as peaceful or happy. I wanted to do something but didn't know what or
how to do it. The only thing I did after the diagnosis was to give her my smile and tell her that
she was going to come out of the disease very quickly.

In the many nights that I had her with me, she never mentioned that she wanted to leave, nor
did she ever give me instructions on what to do after her death. On the contrary, we promised
ourselves many times to be together until becoming old women.

The confidence she had that she would get better made me feel a little better in the midst of
what I saw during that year.

My mom lasted 8 months with chemotherapy and a month with radiotherapy. But apparently,
that did nothing to her, as her cancer was already quite advanced.

By May 1st, she started to get worse, she started to get the flu and we decided to take her to
the hospital because she said she couldn't breathe. That day the doctors told me it was not the
flu; the tumor in her cerebellum had grown in size and was pressing on her spinal cord.

Without anesthesia, without stuttering, a doctor told me that there was nothing to do
anymore, they couldn't operate on my mother because she was very weak and they couldn't do
any more chemotherapies. They told me she had less than a week to live.

At the time I didn't believe it. I still saw my mother there on the hospital gurney and it was hard
for me to understand that that unfortunate end was my turn.

But that's how it happened, in less than a week, on a Sunday night, my mom left.

I don't remember the day of the wake and the funeral very well. When I think about those
moments, the only thing that comes to mind is people I didn't even know telling me that they
were very sorry for my loss. I remember her coffin and how she looked: incredibly pretty, with
her favorite accessories and clothes. Those two days, I felt my mother with me.

He felt it in her heart.

How did I survive?

At the time she was with cancer she knew that her death was a possibility, but I never prepared
for it. Now, a year after her passing, I have survived.

How I did it? It has not been about a few minutes, nor a day. It has been a process and a
constant struggle.

I've been able to get out of this by following my mom's example. She taught me to have
strength amid difficulties and I have tried to do that.

She taught me to see the positive amid the storm and that has allowed me to see that, although
she misses her every day, she is better now. Remembering and doing what she would have
liked me to do, treasuring her advice and her words in my heart has also helped me.

The accompaniment of my father, my mother's family, and my close friends has been
fundamental. Surrounding myself with people who at some point have gone through something
similar has also been part of the process because I feel that they understand me more than
anyone else.

Talking to her, telling her my things, and asking her for a sign has helped me. I don't just do it
when I visit her in the cemetery, I always do it. I feel like she is with me at all times.

Attaching myself more to God, talking to him, crying, and even arguing with him, are other
things that have helped me. Amid all this situation He is the one who has given me the strength
to get ahead.

What have I learned from this situation? When you go through something similar, when a close
person dies of cancer, you understand that you cannot be selfish. In this case, with her
departure, I was able to understand what true love was because it didn't matter how much I
wanted her with me, what mattered was her and how cancer, unfortunately, was consuming
her.

Now, after her death, I have understood that life passes in a second and that has made me
value more people, moments, and the little details of life. It has made me see that material
things have no value, that there are more important things. That many times we spend it
complaining about what we lack and we do not enjoy or are happy with what we have.

I learned that everything has its purpose. And even if I don't see it now, one day I will know why
my mother had to die when I was the age of 21.

After May 21, 2017, I have lived each day knowing that she died, but feeling, at the same time,
that she did not and never will in my heart.

I will love you forever, mommy.

ANDREA HERNÁNDEZ BACCA

Editor of ELTIEMPO.COM

andbac@eltiempo.com

Checked by Ernie.