“What Broke Your Heart Completely?” 30 Stories

My mom died when I was 15 after a 10 year battle with recurring oral cancer (she never smoked a day in her life either, just got unlucky). Her death was incredibly painful, however there was something that happened a couple of years prior that I think broke my heart first.

Bit of backstory: My mom was a children’s librarian (she also worked at a children’s bookstore for a while) and one of her favorite parts of her job was getting to do “story times,” for the kids where she’d read to them and they’d do activities she prepared etc. For as long as I knew her she’d read to me and my sister, sung us lullabies, and was always there for advice or encouragement or any other reason we had for talking with her. Words are a very important part of my life and were always central in my perception of her and the way she showed love.

Then they had to remove her tongue.

When she first told us and once it had registered that I would likely never hear her voice again I completely broke down.

That said, she did still manage to speak some – I strongly believe there was nothing that could have stopped her from that – but it was nowhere close to how she could before. She actually made some audio recordings for us the night before her surgery. Personal messages, my favorite lullaby that she used to sing to me, and a couple of my and my sister’s favorite picture books that she used to read for us. I still have them to this day and I am forever grateful they exist.