Of all of the things that I have ever been afraid of, my mother has terrified me the most. She isn’t a scary woman at all. She has a warm smile and bright green eyes, and beneath she is friendly and empathetic, a wonderful mother and woman overall.

I wasn’t afraid of my mom herself. I was afraid because she was changing, and that is why I waited nervously outside of room 109 of Residence Inn on a cloudy August day. My dad had taken my siblings and me to visit her, and while they were eager, I stood, biting my nails and considered running back to the car in fear. What was wrong? Why was I so afraid? I was only going to see my mother.

We waited for a considerable amount of time, maybe ten minutes, maybe thirty, until at last the sound of the door unlatching rang through the hallway. The round, red face and strawberry-blonde hair of my grandfather appeared at the door. He had come to take care of mom while she was unable to live at home.

“Hi,” he greeted us.

He was hit with a series of questions from my siblings along the lines of, “Can we come in?” and “Where’s Mom?” and “Is Mom here?”

He held up his hand and a veil of curious, expectant silence dropped on us.

“Now, I’m going to let you in, but you have to listen,” he instructed slowly. “You can’t touch your mother, she can’t handle that right now. Try to be quiet, don’t yell. Also, this won’t be a long visit… your mother is tired.”
My siblings and I nodded solemnly. He opened the door wide and we tiptoed in.

There she was, sitting on the couch, head propped up by pillows. We had visited her before, but today she looked drastically different. The most frightening part was that she barely looked like the Mom from a month ago.
I tried to focus on anything but her head. I studied her face. Although she was smiling, she did not look well. Her green eyes were bloodshot from the abundant medication that the doctors were giving her just so she could stay alive. Because her immune system was so weak, she had to wear a medical mask around people, minimizing her exposure to germs. She had barely any eyelashes or eyebrows, and her skin was much pinker than I considered healthy… not that she was, though. A few weeks before, my mom had been diagnosed with leukemia, an unforgiving type of cancer which attacks the very essence of life: the blood. She had recently started chemotherapy, a treatment that could save her life but would cost the high price of her strength… and her hair.
A lump formed in my throat, but I was not about to break down in front of my family. Everyone else was happy to see her, I shouldn’t cry. If I talked about myself I would cry. The past few weeks had been a very relentless bully to my emotions, I had been capricious since her diagnosis.

“Hannah, how are you?” Mom asked.

I snapped out of my thoughts and replied with the cliche, commonly untrue response. “I’m good.”

My eyes abstractedly wandered to her head. She must have noticed, because she said, “It’ll grow back.”

“Can I?” I asked.

She nodded and I reached my hand out. The hair wasn’t completely gone--a very thin and short layer still clung to her scalp. Her head itself was soft, but not in a good way. Nothing was wrong with how it felt, but I hated that my mom had no hair. I hated that it had been stolen by some heartless disease who had planted its ugly flag and taken over. It wasn’t fair.

She looked so different without her dishwater-blonde hair. I could only talk to her like a stranger without breaking down in tears, so for a few moments I made small talk and then my siblings invaded our exchange, and I moved to let them converse with Mom.

We didn’t stay for long.

As soon as we were home, I cried. The strongest person in my life had just sat in front of my eyes in a helpless state. It was a long, relieving cry. All of my anger and grief was released in a violent wave of tears and emotions. I was angry at the doctors for not trying hard enough, angry at cancer for existing, and angry at every person in the world with a healthy mother. It wasn’t fair.

For ten years, I had looked up to my mom, and she had endured through every trial and climbed every obstacle that life had thrown her way. I had just seen her weakened for the first time, but that was not the end of her story.
For another year I watched her struggle to overcome the cancer, slowly gaining back strength. I watched her sleep for hours upon hours. I watched her swallow down enormous handfuls of pills. I watched her laugh more every day. I watched her take off the medical mask. I watched her walk up stairs again. I watched her defy the doctors’ prediction that she wouldn’t live. I watched her hair grow back. This gave me emotional and mental strength, and it was during that year of healing that I looked up to her the most, when she endured through the needles, radiation, pain, loneliness, and loss of her normalcy. Watching her, I knew that I could conquer anything.