Tag: mother and daughter

My Ultimate Inspiration Comes From My Best Friend.

My dad let both my big brother and I share a short something in my mama’s honor before he gave the eulogy at her memorial service. My brother told a great story– he has an awesome gift of being able to make people laugh, insanely, despite life’s darkest moments– it moved the audience and also, of course, had them chuckling. The big guy, who’s now a software developer by day and stand-up comedian by night, credited my mama for buying him his first comedy magazine, Mad Magazine. He was home sick one day as a kid and she returned home from errands with medicine, soup and the magazine that sparked his love for comedy. She rocked at the doin’ the mom thang. I chose to read a part of a script from my mama and I’s favorite TV show, Gilmore Girls. Weird… I know. It was a segment from the speech given by the daughter, Rory, at her character’s high school graduation. And, it perfectly describes my mom. I’d used it before in tons of captions for pictures of us on Facebook and Instagram.

It felt right to read this in front of a church full of people who knew and loved my mama.

“But my ultimate inspiration comes from my best friend, the dazzling woman from whom I received my initials and my life’s blood, Susan Maynard Doan. My mother never gave me any idea that I couldn’t do whatever I wanted to do or be whomever I wanted to be. She filled our house with love and fun and books and music, unflagging in her efforts to give me role models from Jane Austen to Eudora Welty to Carole King. As she guided me through these incredible twenty-four years, I don’t know if she ever realized that the person I most wanted to be was her. Thank you, Mom: you are my guidepost for everything.”

Happy Birthday To My Bad Mama Jama.

Today marks exactly one year since my mama‘s stage-4 pancreatic cancer diagnosis.

It also would have been her birthday.

Today is bitter-sweet at its very core.

It also calls for joy.

A photo posted by stephrosedoan (@stephrosedoan) on Feb 12, 2015 at 2:47pm PST

Happy Birthday, Mama Goose! I’m so v. thankful we were able to talk you into the silliness of celebrating your “Halfy Birthday!” Not only was it the day you turned a 1/2 year older but it also marked 6-months of fighting cancer like a bad Mama Jama. I am so proud of you! Thank you for being my world, my moon, my guiding star and my entire galaxy for 24 years.

#ThrowbackThursday Mama Goose on the Loose.

“Last night I remembered an incident from my childhood and the memory made me cry.”

For #ThrowbackThursday, here’s a story written by my mom. I stole it from her diary… Um, are ghosts like a real thing to worry about? I think she’ll be cool with it. Maybe.

“It was about a time when I was about 8 or 9, and I was with my (older) brother, Steven. Some kids rode by us on their bikes and called him a retard and started making fun of him. I felt embarrassed and ashamed. But, I remember Steven saying to me, “Sissy, me different.” He looked so sad! And then, I felt so sad, because he was so sweet and innocent and he couldn’t be sheltered from the cruel ignorance of the outside world that could hurt him so much. I hate that!”

My mom was in school to be a teacher when I was a kid– it kind of looked like to me that she was always in school through my entire childhood… so, you can understand my confusion when my own college days ended. She started out her career teaching fourth graders, but her true passion– which I’ll bet had a big something to do with she had love for my Uncle Steve– drove my mama to get her masters degree in special education. The number of parents who reached out during her cancer battle, plus the many more who contacted us after her death, thanking her for impacting, and literally changing, how their kids did in school was endless. At the memorial service, we watched as parent after parent stepped up to the mic to share stories about how their child was failing– grade levels behind– in school. Their kids had rosters of previous teachers who’d either given up on them or couldn’t spare the extra time on students with learning differences. But then, my mom came into the equation. Many called her “an angel” who was amazingly patient and who understood there are many different ways children can learn. Her teaching was not only effective, but also, (and the kids would even admit it) fun. She had a special gift for helping her students to regain their confidence, and eventually, to also love learning.

Here’s another one:

“I feel angry at Brent (my dad/her husband) right now because when I called him he didn’t want to talk to me– he said he’d call me back due to last seconds of a football game. This makes me feel hurt knowing a football is more important than me to him. I hate him sometimes for allowing him to control my feelings– why do I let him do that?! But, I care that a football game is more important to him than me– it’s like, I’ll always be there but the football game won’t. It makes me think and want not to always be there– so there! Hah! Feelings: resentful, worried, angry, hurt, sad, and fear. Fear is usually behind anger, and the fear is that he doesn’t care and if he doesn’t care then our relationship won’t last.”

It lasted. My parents were married for three decades, and it was about a week after their 30th anniversary that my mom first went into the ER because of bad, bad, stomach cramps. Another week passed, and she was at a follow-up appointment when her primary care doctor first discovered the tumor on an ultrasound. A week later, my was diagnosed with stage four pancreatic cancer, which is hopelessly terminal, on her 59th birthday. It was 28-years since she’d jotted down her anger over my dad watching that football game– she had no way of knowing, back then, not only would her marriage last, it would survive through so many imperfect life things. A couple months after her diagnosis, my dad left his job, (which ironically, he ended up being an exec at a sporting goods company. Maybe, all that OT watching football paid off… Mama sure did enjoy the heated seats in her Lexus.) He knew I needed help caregiving and also my mama just plain needed him. And he was there. My parents got into a habit during the last months of my mama’s life that was so heartwarming and sweet. They’d both end up waking up around 3 or 4am every night, my dad said, like clockwork. My mama would put her head on his shoulder and let him hold her, and then they’d talk, and they’d remember all the crazy stories from their lasting marriage. (Maybe even the one where my mom almost killed my dad bc he wouldn’t stop watching football.)

I Want My Mommy.

RORY: All I could think of the minute you left was “I want my mommy.” I haven’t thought that since I was two.

LORELAI: That’s natural.

RORY: I’m eighteen. I can sign contracts, I can vote, I can fight for my country. I mean, I’m an adult. Adults don’t want their mommies.

LORELAI: Yes, they do, honey. I’m not a good example, but –

RORY: Everything’s so foreign. I have to share a bathroom. I’ve never shared a bathroom with anyone but you. So I’m gonna be running into people in the bathroom, we’re gonna have to make small talk. I don’t know any bathroom small talk.

LORELAI: Um. . .gee, your hair smells terrific?

RORY: You didn’t socialize me properly. You made me a mama’s girl. Why don’t I hate you? Why don’t I want to be away from you? It’s going to be very hard to be Christiane Amanpour broadcasting live from a foxhole in Tehran with my mommy. I guess you’re just gonna have to learn how to operate a camera ’cause I’ll need you there with me.

LORELAI: I would do that.

RORY: And how did I end up at Yale? I mean, I let Grandma and Grandpa manipulate me right out of Harvard and into Yale. That’s how strong-willed I am. I know nothing about Yale.

LORELAI: Not so – you’ve memorized its entire history.

RORY: How can you be so fine with this? You left here without a care in the world.

LORELAI: That’s not true.

RORY: You couldn’t wait for me to get out of the house. What were you doing when I paged you – turning my room into a sewing room? I should hate you, not miss you. Do something to make me hate you.

LORELAI: Uh. . .go Hitler!

(One of Mama’s favorite Gilmore Girls episodes, 4.02: The Lorelais’ First Day at Yale)

I couldn’t agree more. Life just isn’t fun without Mama. It’s just not. I feel robbed. So many others, too, feel robbed. My Aunt texted me yesterday, saying how she feels robbed of spending retirement visiting, shopping and knitting (well, my Aunt knitting while Mama pretends) together, my dad is robbed not only of growing old along with someone but also of the only person who remembers all the stories they’d collected during 30-years together, my mom’s besties are robbed of decades together spent aging gracefully (and disgracefully, bc it’s them, ha) while giggling through it all, my big brother is robbed of having the mother who– despite not sharing an ounce of DNA and completely by choice– raised him and loved him and lit up outer space laughing at his jokes, my brother and I’s kids (not, like, our kids together… like, kids w/ our spouses… this isn’t GOT… also, I feel like I have to explain this abnormally often in conversations) will be robbed of a Nana who couldn’t wait to spoil them and who wanted nothing more than to be a grandma to her very lucky (and not inbreed) gran-babies, my future husband (or cat) will be robbed of meeting the woman who made me… me and will never know the person who has filled the most space in my life, and I am robbed of the many, many more words we would’ve spoken and the tons of fun adventures we would’ve found, together. Screen Shot 2015-05-15 at 9.59.02 PM