My mama had her first bout of cancer at the age of 40. I was sixteen. I graduated early from high school and worked part-time for a doctor at the University of North Carolina Medical School. I was biding my time to start college, for even I knew I was too young at sixteen. When I wasn't working, I was helping out with Mama. She'd contracted hepatitis from a blood transfusion after her mastectomy. I won't go so far as to say I ran the house for her, I didn't. But I did what I was asked and helped where I could, and one thing was to keep her company as she lay in bed on doctor's orders while her liver healed.

Her second bout was two years later: a new tumor in the same place as the last one. I had just finished my first year in college. We spent the summer together in a small apartment in Houston, Texas while she underwent radiation treatments. Mama was raised in Houston. I met many people from her childhood and relatives I probably would have never met otherwise. She handled her treatments bravely, and by summer's end she seemed to be free of the disease.

Mama was a large lady. Her illnesses didn't help. It also didn't help that she was one of the best cooks anyone could know. And she always cooked. I remember lean years when Papa was in graduate school, but once they were better established, food at our table was not only delicious but abundant. We were raised in a home of over-eating. Food was about celebration. Extra people were forever surfacing at our table, sometimes even displacing various ones of us from our bedrooms while they "stayed awhile." People loved my parents' parties. Out of the seven of us (parents and kids), there was one thin brother. I won't say I was fat because I wasn't, but the habit of eating a lot was nurtured in me early and that didn't seem so bad when my metabolism was racing along in my teen years. Things change.

I went back to college, but I was not without fear for her and by the spring semester I was not happy with the gloom of the Indiana winter. I left one school and started another, in Colorado, closer to home. That didn't last either. Wandering was becoming second nature to me. I ended up going to New Mexico State where my father was on faculty. I lived at home. I wasn't going to let go of Mama any easier than she was going to let go of me, I guess.

Time passed, I graduated, found a job in Dallas, my dad took a sabbatical to St. Mary's College in South Bend, IN. It was the school I'd started at. Full circle. It would be Mama's last home. I went back to South Bend in January 1978 with the full knowing that she was in her final battle. She was gone by late May, just after her 48th birthday. It was my challenge and lifelong blessing to have cared for her in her last six weeks. Thinking of her still makes me cry. Her death is probably the one single event in my life that has had the most influence over who I am today. Grieving is never really done, it just gets easier to handle. That is one of my philosophies. I believe it to be true.

Everyone who loved my family and my mama wanted to feed us when she was gone. We were invited to numerous tables, by cooks with varying culinary abilities. But we had been well taught in the way of being guests and we always cleaned our plates. It is a hard habit to break. We sat with friends at their tables, and we tried to eat away our grief. We all grew larger, except for the thin brother, and his is another whole story that I choose not to tell. After all, this is about my journey.

Before I move onto the next part of this story I would like to quote some of Mama's philosophies as they are worth sharing. They are things I have heard countless times. One she even painted on a board and hung over the door between kitchen and den.

"The measure of true love is love without measure."

"Honey, go out into this world and when you face it, be yourself and nothing can beat you."

"Every old crow thinks her baby is the blackest."

"You can do anything you set your mind to."

Mama had a way of sharing strength. It's just taken me a long time to figure out how much.