I Know a Real Live Hero

I know I’m not the only one, but I could not survive without my mother. In some ways she is like a typical mother, nurturing, sweet and smart. In other ways she is like a sister to me. I tell her more than I tell my best friend. Her role in our family was to be a mother and a father. My dad worked all the time, probably to escape all the problems at home which left my mother to play all of her roles at home with the three of us.

As if three young children weren’t enough for one person, one of my brothers was mentally retarded. He could not eat, drink, go to the bathroom by himself. I am four years younger than my older twin brothers. I never went to school with either of them. One of my brothers went to a private high school and the other one had to go to a special school a half hour away. My mom waited at the bus stop with me, and then my brother, and would drive my other brother to his school in hear van because the bus that stopped by our house for his school wasn’t wheelchair accessible. Doesn’t make too much sense, right? She cooked for us, she cleaned for us and she helped us with homework. She gave us all baths, helped us all brush our teeth and tucked us all in bed. She was like a super hero.

My brother died when I was in fifth grade. The doctors always said that because of his disabilities, he wasn’t going to live very long but fourteen was very young. My mother and father were obviously distraught. My dad’s way of dealing with it was continuing to work all the time. My mother’s way of dealing with it was to drink. It was very hard for my brother and I to get what we needed when my mother was always locked in her room with a post it outside her door that said “watching cartoons”. This was our family’s way of telling each other that you wanted to be left alone.

My mother came home from the doctors one day and told me and my brother that she had been drinking a lot and wasn’t doing very well. She has told me only in the last couple of years that her doctor told her if she didn’t stop drinking she was going to kill herself, fast. After that day everything changed. My mother started going to counseling, taking medication for depressing, without drinking of course, and going to AA meetings. After about a year she had figured out a lot about herself and realized what she needed to do to be happy. She and my father got separated.

I’m so glad that my mother had the strength to do what she did, even if it broke up out family. After loosing her own son, whom she knew the most out of all of us and having to hold up to such standards, she still had the courage to pick up the pieces and get the best out of her life. If it wasn’t for her strength, I might not be here today. I might of not had a mother to guide my through my life thus far and be there for me no matter what. Like I said, I don’t know what I would do without my mom and I’m glad I won’t have to find out.