The Girl with the Purple Teddy Bear

“Hello my name is Ann,” I said.

She said, “Nice to meet you, my name is Jade.”

I didn’t know it but she would soon become my best friend that would help me through the worst year of my life.

A couple years before I went into third grade my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. I wasn’t told until the summer before my third grade year. That was probably the worst thing I have ever heard in my life. When I found out, I didn’t act different around her because I knew she would tell me she’s fine and that it was all going to be alright. I started to get rides from my dad after school, and he would take me down to the daycare center she worked at. I knew all of the teachers, they all knew me, and they were like family to me. She was the principal so she had an office and her secretary worked in that office as well. When she’d have to go do something important I would sit in there with her secretary and spin on my mom’s chair and play pinball on her computer. When all the kids were picked up I would help her clean up and lock up the doors. I knew she liked me being there, and I liked being there with her.

Sometimes after work she would have to go to the doctors because the medicine she took made her arm swell up, so they had to wrap it up to keep the swelling down. I would sometimes be allowed to go with her and when I did I would take the old wrapping and wrap it up for the lady. Eventually the wrapping started to not work so great, so they wrapped up her arm and put it in a cast to keep it level. When we would leave the lady would always give me a sticker for helping out. I had a sticker book to keep my stickers in from when I would go to dance class so I had a separate page for my stickers from the doctor. She’d seemed fine. She acted like it didn’t bother her at all.

Some nights when she tucked me in bed I would ask, “why isn’t it hurting u?”

She would reply, “Because I have you, your brother David, and your dad supporting me.”

I would then smile and tell her, “your one tough cookie” and we would both start laughing.

She had the prettiest laugh. She always seemed like it didn’t hurt her to know she had breast cancer, but I knew that it had to hurt knowing that.

I screamed, “It’s time!”

It was that time again when the fair was back. We live right next to where the fair is so we walk over to the fair every day. Me and my mom loved going to the fair. We would look at the animals, eat funnel cakes, and walk around looking at what people were selling inside the tents.

We would walk and hear kids on rides screaming, and vendors yelling, “Funnel cakes,” and “five darts for three dollars!”

We always had to go and play The Birthday Game. This time we were lucky and won!

He asked my mom, “What prize would you like?”

She asked me which one I wanted.

I said, “I want that purple bear.”

He gave me the bear and we were on our way back home. That night we went back home and set next to the fire.

         Throughout the school year my mom was getting worse. The medicine she took made parts of her hair fall out so she shaved her hair off. She started out wearing a bandanna then went out and got a wig. I continued to go to school, and my mom continued to go to work. Sometimes, before thinking, I would go up to my room and think about how much I hated my mom if she made me mad.

I would always think in my head, “I wish she wasn’t my mother.”

I would later soon regret saying that.

         Only a few days after the fair, my mother got very sick. She was taken to hospital and wasn’t doing very well. At first she was fine, she would talk and eat and it was like she wasn’t even as sick as they said she was. It soon got worse.

         After school my brother and I would get taken to the hospital by my Aunt Leah. We got there one day and we had to wait in the waiting room because she was getting medicine. When we were finally allowed in the room my dad told me that she didn’t open her eyes all day. I said hi to her and she turned her head and opened her eyes. I was frozen like ice. She looked as white as a ghost and she had multiple tubes in her arms and stomach. I slowly, but surely, went up to her and held her hand. She smiled the smallest smile I have ever seen her smile then closed her eyes. Her lips were small and her hand was freezing. I couldn’t help but shed a tear as I held her hand. Her hand let go of mine and, like she knew I was shedding a tear through her closed eyes, brushed the tear from my cheek.

She said, “Don’t cry I’m still here.”

I said, “I know mommy.”

         Until later that night I stayed there and sat at the end of her bed. I tried to soak in all of her as I possibly could.

My dad walks up to the bed and says, “I think we should let her sleep a little and you need to go to bed to.”

I looked at my mom again and said, “I guess so.”

I gave my mom a hug and kiss her stone cold cheek.

She said, “Ann, I hope you know that I will still be with you no matter where you are.”

She laid her hand on my heart and said, “I’m right here.”

My dad then took my brother and I back home.

The next day at school we were watching a history movie when I got called to the office. I was told to bring my stuff with me.

As I walked down the hallway I kept saying to myself, “I didn’t do anything why am I getting in trouble.”

That thought kept popping in my head, but as I walked into the office and saw my Aunt Leah and Uncle Sam and little brother I was so confused. They signed my brother and I out and took us to the car.

I kept asking, “Where are we going?”

They just kept saying to the hospital. They didn’t give us any other information. The whole ride there it was silent. When we got there we walked down the sidewalk, and at the end of the sidewalk was my dad standing there. I run down to him and he kneels down and hugs me. I see that his eyes are red and puffy. I think about it for a second and I started to cry like my eyes were a leaking fire hydrant. I knew my mom had died. We just stood there in the parking lot crying and hugging for what seemed like forever. As we walked up to her room I kept thinking of how much I’m going to miss her. When we finally get up to her room my whole family is there. I could tell all of them were crying and laying there in the middle of everyone was my mom’s lifeless body. I walk over to her bed and just look at her. I sit on the end of the bed and just think about what was going to happen after this. I think about what if I hadn’t said that I didn’t want her as my mom those times I was mad at her. It was probably the worst feeling in my life to see her laying there. No smile. No laugh. No nothing. I felt like my life just dropped like a broken elevator at the top floor. No one would, or should, have to feel what I had to felt that day. All the tubes were out and the monitors were all off.

My aunts would sit there with me and she would make me feel better by telling me stories of her like, “When we were little girls your grandma would always laugh when she went to school because she always stole my clothes and didn’t know how to wear them.”

I would laugh and she kept telling me stories, and then she would tell me to try to count how many freckles were on her arm and then we would try to connect them to make a picture. I knew my mom would be laughing if she saw this.

A few days after this we had her funerals. It was on three different days and I made sure that I was there each day. Each day I went it was hard but I didn’t really cry at all. It was just a calm type of feeling. I felt as though everything was going to be fine and that I knew she wouldn’t be hurting anymore. When the people who she worked with showed up on the second day of funerals, I looked out the window to see my favorite teacher Mr. Gary.  I looked at him through the window until they started laughing and he turned around to see what they were laughing about. As soon as he saw me he smiled and I hurried and closed the curtain. When they got inside they gave me hugs and told me that she was a great person and that were going to miss her very much. I knew I was going to miss her the most though.

On the third day of the funeral at the end my brother, my dada, and I sat in the front row as the pastor said a prayer. He then told us to give our final good-byes. We walked up to her casket and each said our good-byes.

I gave my mom a hug and kiss and laid my hand on her heart and said, “You will always be in my heart.”

I then watched as my mom got lifted out of the room and into the funeral truck. We followed the car to the cemetery where I watched her get put into the ground. I stood there holding the teddy bear my mom won at the fair just a while before she went to the hospital. It was pretty hard on me for a while. I didn’t go to school for a month after this happened. My friends would bring me my homework, and my friend Jade would try to teach me the stuff but I got it pretty easily. I missed her every day and my friends and family were there to cheer me up whenever I got sad. She is my one and only and no one can or will ever replace her.