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My mother means the world to me. I don’t know what I would do without my mother. She’s the most important woman in my life.
On October 19, 2009, my mother was hit by a man driving a van. I don’t know every single detail because I wasn’t there at the time, but I do know the man was texting while when he hit my mom. Also, the man did not face any jail time. From that accident, my mom suffered two broken legs and a broken right shoulder; she broke her right leg in three different places and she broke her left leg in fifteen different places. Sadly, this wasn’t the first accident she experienced.
Ten years before this, on August 10th, 1999, my mom was working nights as she often did, when her co-worker attacked her for no reason. My mom injured her right shoulder during that incident and has not able to work since then.
My mom was a hard-working single mother that worked full time and also worked over time when she had to. She might have been a single parent, but she always made sure there was food on the table and nice clothes on our backs.
After the doctors told my mom she broke both her legs, she was in the hospital for six days. After those six days, the doctors sent my mom home and ordered her on bed rest on a hospital bed they provided for twelve long months. She hated being in a hospital bed for that long. She wasn’t able to do anything on her own. I hated it as well. I hated going to school everyday knowing that my mom was at home laying down on a hospital bed because all I wanted to do was stay home and be with her.
I would go to school and just about everyday my friends and teachers would ask me how my mom was doing. After several weeks, that started to get annoying and always made me sad. Not that I didn’t care about the support because I was very thankful that people would ask me about my mother, but it just got to the point where everyone at school started asking me about my mom and that made me not want to go to school anymore. I started missing school to be at home with my mom. I missed too many days of school so that led to my school calling home. I ended up failing three of my seven classes my sophomore year of high school.
My mom went to physical therapy for six months and it helped her so much. I’m so happy that physical therapy got my mom back on her feet. She walks with a limp now and she can’t be on her feet for too long but I thank God for letting my mom walk again. My mom struggles to eat most of the time because of all the surgeries she has had. Sometimes, my mom goes for two days without eating. When my mom takes her medication, she doesn’t feel like eating and all she wants to do is sleep so I think the medication is in a way responsible for her loss of appetite. I don’t like the fact that she takes between six to eight pills a day.
The monthly cost of her medication is more than $800. My mom’s boyfriend lives with us and works as much as he can to help my mom buy her medication and keep up with household expenses. My brother also works and helps out. For myself, sometimes I just go out on the streets and hustle for money to help my mom buy her medication, whether it’s picking up cans, doing odd jobs or whatever.
All of the surgeries and all of the things that have happened to my mom affected her as a mother in many different ways. Even with the pain she experiences daily, my mom still tries to cook for the family. She can’t go out to the park and play baseball with us. I’ve always loved football and I played it early in high school but the doctors told my mom she couldn’t go to my football games since they were at night and it was usually cold and that would affect her. She didn’t care, all she wanted to do was go to my football games and support me. Even though her legs would start to hurt during the football games due to the cold, she would try her best to stay and watch me play as long as she could because she knew how much football meant to me.
Ever since my mom’s car accident, life’s been a challenge for my family and I. Nothing will ever be the same for us, nothing will ever be the same for my mom. She struggles with everything she does just about everyday. If you have a family member who had an accident or is otherwise disabled, don’t treat them any different, love them no matter what.
