A mother is a special person in their child’s life. To lose a mother is to lose the hand that has been grasping onto you as you walk through the challenges of life. Last summer, I almost lost my mother. It all happened so suddenly that sometimes it is really difficult to recall my emotions. There are no words to describe what it is like to walk through a hospital behind every member of my family and not know what was going on. They were all sharing a secret, a secret I could tell they were all too scared to tell me.

My senses were turned off and my feet carried me like air. I could only hear murmurs the words “ICU,” and “tomorrow,” seemed to be the only words able to penetrate my senseless barrier.When we walked into the ICU, I recall feeling my blood run cold. My mother’s family was crowded outside an ICU cubicle. The last time they had been like this was a month before, when my grandmother passed away. My knees felt weak because I didn’t know what kind of situation I had just walked into, worse, I didn’t know how my mom was doing.

As I passed through the crowd of aunts and uncles I exchanged sullen looks and tearful grins, each leaving the space to leave me alone with my parents. My dad was seated on a sofa chair, tears and stress evident on his face. Nothing prepared me for what I saw next, my mother was hooked up to several IV’s and laid flat on a hospital bed. Her skin was paler than usual but there was still a faint shade of pink on her cheeks. The shock hit me so suddenly that I don’t remember how it felt to see her this way. I looked down on her and saw a tear run down her face. That’s when she told me that she had a heart attack on her way to the hospital, after experiencing chest pains earlier that day.

It was then that she told me she would be having emergency open heart surgery the next day. I remember what it was like to hear those words. I remember the sudden pang of fear I felt. Looking at the tears welled up in her eyes, I held in my tears because this time my mother was weak and it was my turn to be strong. I remember that night was hard. I didn’t sleep, I spent the whole night praying and checking my phone for updates from my dad.

The next day I walked into the hospital and held my mom’s hand. I was scared that I was running out of time. The hours I spent with her before her surgery I spent memorizing her face and what her hand felt like because I was terrified that it would be the last time. My dad and I laughed and reminisced with her over good and bad memories. Then the surgeon came and there was no amount of preparation I could’ve had for this moment. I gave her a kiss on the cheek and she told me “everything is going to be just fine,” but I know she was just as scared. I saw as my dad fought to keep his tears as he cracked a smile and said “Stay away from the light, your daughter is too high maintenance for me to handle alone.”

My dad and I stepped out of the room and he hugged me close as the nurses wheeled out my mother. As they pushed her farther from me, I began to come undone, realizing that the life of my mom now stood in the hands of a couple of people I had never met before. My father and I stood in the hallway, as if no one else were in the hospital, until the operation doors swung shut. The next six hours my family and I prayed. Then we got the call, the call that my mom was fine and out of surgery. The next few weeks I saw her recover. I saw as they took out every IV from her arm. I saw as my dad kissed every battle scar she received and reminded her that she was still just as beautiful as she was before her surgery. I watched as my mom recovered and gained as much of her old life as she could.

When it was all over I asked her if she was ever scared she wouldn’t make it and she said, “No, I knew I had a family in the waiting room that needed me.” That’s why my mom is my hero because she was at her lowest point but she pushed herself to recover. The entire time she didn’t get better for herself, because she told me she wanted give up sometimes, but she did it for my dad and I. There truly is no love like that of my mother’s. There truly is no mother like mine.