Mother’s Day Is Upon Us

Many people are missing their mothers this Mother’s Day, self included, because of CJD. I have no mother to buy flowers for this year because there is no cure for this disease. I have no mother to talk to when I’m sad because there is no cure for this disease.

You know what kind of woman my mother was? She took care of her family. She worked hard, even on the day we took her our of her home for the final time and off to the emergency room to find out if she had M.S. or Parkinson’s Disease. She worked that day! She could hardly walk, but was sending e-mails to her office. Her coworkers knew something wasn't right with her e-mails to them.

My mother took care of her elderly parents. Her mother had Alzheimer’s disease and her father, for reasons I can’t understand, was unable to properly care for her. My mother took them to doctor appointments, doled out their meds and drove them to doctors. She handled their finances. She was always looking for information on Alzheimer’s disease because she wanted to know everything about her mother’s medical condition.

My mother put my father through school in his late 40’s, working hard at her full-time job, looking after her high-school-age daughter and helping him with homework. That degree was hers just as much as it is his. And when my father couldn’t find work, she kept a roof over our heads.

She loved to laugh. She watched "Everybody Loves Raymond," "Frasier," and "Nick at Nite." She was a huge fan of Anderson Cooper. Her favorite foods were chocolate and coffee.

My mother was Super Woman, taken down by CJD a day after her 56th birthday. She faked it as long as she could until the ataxia (jerky muscle movements) and balance problems got the better of her. This was about a month before she died. I’ll never forget her screaming at me for no reason as her personality changed and I didn’t understand why. I’ll never forget her telling me she couldn’t recognize her own handwriting.

I most certainly will never forget one of her last sentences to my father, “I don’t want to be retarded.” She died about a week after saying that.

This blog is dedicated to all the families who don’t have a mother this Mother’s Day because of this awful disease. This blog is to encourage us all to keep their memories alive and to keep working for a cure so their deaths were not in vain. And this blog is also to encourage safer food in America, so other mothers, children, sisters, brothers, wives and husbands aren’t lost to this disease.

This weekend will not be easy for any of us.