i'm aware. trust me, i'm aware.

October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month. And I'm aware, trust me--I'm aware.

My mom went in for a mammogram in 2000. She was 59. I'm not sure if it was her first mammogram or not--I just remember that one because she got some "irregular results". They told her there was a slight mass that they wanted to biopsy but that the chances of it being cancerous were low. Under 10%. Except--that it was cancerous.

She had the tumor cut out and all the lymph nodes on her right side removed. She went through a few radiation sessions, then settled into a 5 year regimen of Tomoxophin. There were some side effects from the drugs but, overall, her life (and ours) seemed hardly affected. It was a scare. We caught it early. She was a survivor. The end.

In April 2005, we celebrated her "official remission" with a family dinner at her home. It was near Easter and she sat at the table, surrounded by grandkids, coloring Easter eggs and beaming.

Not everything was alright, however. Over the next few months, she went to the doctor several times feeling like something was 'off'. Despite exercising regularly and being very active in her everyday life, she was having a hard time breathing. At Christmas, she kept asking us to take pictures for her because she had a blurry spot in her eye that was making it hard to see through the camera lens. A few days later she went in to see her Optometrist. He was the one who found the cancer.

It was in her eye. Her lungs. Her liver. Small cell. Stage 4. Metastasized breast cancer. The Tomoxophin had held it off. But now it was everywhere.

I can't get the night she told us out of my head. She was trying to keep her diagnosis from all of us. She was hoping she'd just go to sleep one night and not wake up. But cancer isn't like that. Cancer likes to drag it out and make it hurt. The pain in her lungs was so bad that she finally went into the emergency room. That's where we found out. My husband and I had just finished date night. I was four months pregnant. We thought it was just pneumonia and were coming for a visit to cheer her up.

When they told us the diagnosis, I wandered the halls of the hospital for two hours. The carpet had a leaf pattern on it that I kept trying to make sense of. I called my sister. A few friends. I was numb.

I will spare you the gory details of caring for someone dying from cancer. I can't even imagine the pain she had to endure. It was the most trying thing I had ever gone through, watching my sweet mother who had cared for me all my life slowly wasting away. Especially when she did it all smiling and laughing for as long as she could. She never turned visitors away. She wrote all her children and grandchildren letters to read after she was gone, including the grandson I was carrying that she would never meet. She planned as much of her funeral as she could. She tried to prepare us all. Strong to the end.

It was only 6 weeks from her diagnosis till her death. Only 10 days were spent with her unable to recognize any of us (she just called us all "baby"). I know we should count ourselves lucky--that some people have to deal with this nasty,evil monster for years. But--how could we ever say we were lucky when she was still...gone?

I miss my mom every day. Four years after her death, I still think I see her sometimes at the grocery store. I still have her phone number memorized and want to call to tell her something funny the boys said or did. I know things would be very different for my little family and I after the divorce if she had still been alive. It wouldn't have hurt quite so bad if I'd just had someone to hold me and tuck me in and play with my boys and put all my dishes away in the right place and do all those things that only a mother can do.

I still feel her around me though, thankfully. She told me every time I saw a butterfly-- that would be her--just checking in on me. So, if you ever see me talking to butterflies, that's why.

I go in for my own first mammogram next month. Now I have a "family history" and already had a benign tumor taken out of my own breast when I was 20. My risk is high. Early detection is my only weapon. So, I appreciate seeing all the supportive pink out there but even if it wasn't, I'm very, very aware of dummy stupid head breast cancer. One day I'm going to stomp on cancers throat and kick the crap out of it. Believe it.