The more I look at these pictures of my mom, the more I want to know why her? She kept me grounded. She did everything right. Growing up on a farm on Texas Road in a small town in Maryland, she possessed the need for more. So she joined the military and served for 16 years and retired as a Master Sargent. Raised 4 kids with the absence of my father, in which i have seen one time in my life. Her conservative, and strong christian nature made me feel like Hitler. I would give her every piece of me if she needed it. Although she was only born with one kidney, she new she had a spare that I would give to her without a second thought. I had her back just like she had mine.
It started out so small. It is unfair how it crept right by me so undetected like a serpent in the shadows. I remember her taking some time off in April because she hurt her arm. My mom was so independent that she often tried to do too much just to get the job done. So it was nothing for me to think that she probably was at the office and picked up something too heavy and pulled a muscle. But, the pain didn't go away, and started to get to the point where she was starting to not be able to use her arm. At this point it was time to see the doctor. We would eventually find out that she had a malignant tumor in her neck that then leaded to T-Cell Lymphoma and Bone Cancer.
Through the treatment, things got worse but I was with her. There were times where she wouldn't eat. And I had to give her pep talks. I couldn't allow her to give up on herself. And she would look in my eyes, and listen. In between balancing assisting her, doing my music, taking my little sister to and from school, and dealing with legal stuff from a case I caught early 2008, I was able to get her to stabilize. She was back to being able to eat solid foods after 14 radiation treatments.
During the 2 weeks of rest that she was supposed to get before starting chemotherapy, I took her in for a blood transfusion because she had a really low white blood cell count from the radiation. Afterwords, I took her home and headed downtown for my sentencing for a little paper time. Following that, I would run across the street to the Label's branch office to pick up an advance check, so I could pay some bills off and buy a Macbook.
Back in the courtroom I sat, witnessing something prepared to be a simple signing of a few papers go down hill. Apparently, the weighted GPA score from high school that i reported in my interview with my P.O., didn't match the unweighted GPA score that the public schools turned in. Coupled with a couple more similarly minuscule discrepancies was enough for the judge to tell me to my face that i was a liar and definitely had an issue telling the truth. The fact that this was an easily beatable case in retrospect, and that I plead guilty just to expedite things and get such an infantile charge out my hair, added even more insult to injury. Needless to say, at that point, May 13th, I was brought back into custody.
What bothers me the most is that it seems as if as soon as I got locked up, everything collapsed in my absence. Ironically, from the outside, St. Anthony is less than a mile away from the Jail. My last memory of my mom was a visitation at the jail where I was unable to even touch her, separated by the bullet proof glass. My sister told me that even in her last days all my mom seemed to be worried about was me. In a delirious state from brain damage she would ask my sisters, "Where is Lorin? I need to know that he is okay.." That hurt and still does. Being escorted from my cell to the Chaplain's office and then being handcuffed before having the phone be handed to me; it was a three-way call. I heard two of my sisters and a third man that they were getting off the phone. The word that stuck out was "Mortuary". I already knew. My sister said "Lorin, Mom passed away last night.." In Life there are a lot of firsts. One I hope few people ever have to experience is crying helplessly in jail. The day was June 15th.
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