Today, when I learned of the death of Patrick Swayze, I was overcome with sadness.
I was sitting in a hospital room with my mother at the beginning of March, 2008, as we watched the news that Patrick Swayze had been diagnosed with Pancreatic cancer. On that night, we knew that my mother had been diagnosed the previous August with the same disease. What we didn't know that night was that my mother had less than a month to live.
On that evening, my mother talked about how handsome he was, what a good dancer he was, and how she enjoyed his movies. She speculated that he would probably have the surgery she was unable to have due to her age and the risk. Because my mother never accepted that she would die from this horrible disease until two weeks before her death, she didn't accept it would take someone as young and healthy as Patrick Swayze either.
The day Luciano Pavaretti died of Pancreatic Cancer in September, 2007, my husband called me in my mother's hospital room with a rather frantic "Do NOT turn the news on today". She had only known for a month this was her diagnosis too, and we were all trying to wrap our minds around what this meant. So, I kept the television in her room off that day and tried to engage her in other activities. I left that evening as she went to sleep, only to return the next morning with her first question being, "Did you know Pavaretti died yesterday from the same thing I have?".
From August to the following March, my sister and I were glued to our computers, researching anything and everything we could find about the disease. Nothing we read was encouraging. In fact, the more educated we became, the more discouraged we grew. But it was weeks before we could speak aloud the inevitable truth to one another. We knew our mother's fate, just as we knew what the outcome would be for the young and vibrant Patrick Swayze.
And while this living hell kept my mother captive for eight months, two months longer than the average lifespan after diagnosis, Mr. Swayze had youth on his side and was able to battle for 20 months after his initial diagnosis.
So, even though we knew how our mother's story would end, her death at 1:04 pm on March 31, 2008 came as a heartbreaking jolt.
I am sure that the family of Patrick Swayze felt the same way today.
