L
ike most people, I was ecstatic when I got engaged. Matt proposed to me on a
snow y night in the West Village, at the spot where we’d shared our first kiss in
New York City, before whisking me away for a romantic evening out. But as I
stepped into a waiting car and took out my phone to start telling my friends and
family, I felt a wave of sadness. I couldn’t call the one person I wanted to the
most, my mother, who’d passed away from breast cancer six years earlier.
My mom was the eldest daughter in a family of 10 children. Raised in a big
farmhouse, she was a second-mother figure to a home full of rambunctious boys and two girls. To
say she was patient and selfless is a major understatement, and when I came along—after she’d
been tr ying for years to have a child—she poured all of that selflessness, patience, and kindness
onto me. My younger brother was born a couple years later, and we were the center of her world.
I watched her fight cancer on and off from the time I was 13. One of the things I admired most in
her was the positive attitude she kept. She would get up, put on her makeup, and go to the doctor,
notepad in hand, with a smile on her face. And—good news or bad—on the way out, she’d be laugh-
ing and holding hands w ith my dad. She was determined to fight the disease because she wanted to
be there for her kids—to help us to adulthood and beyond.
Some of my favorite times with her were the long walks we would take. We’d grab the dog and wander
around the neighborhood in our western-Massachusetts town, talking. After college, when I moved to
L.A., we’d stroll along the beach when she visited. On one such walk, she shared the stor y of how she
married my dad at 29 (“ancient back then”) because she’d refused to settle. “I would hide during the
bouquet toss at weddings because I’d be the only adult out there!” she said. At this point, most of my
close friends were still with their college boyfriends, whom they would go on to marr y, while I was in
no hurr y to settle down. Telling me this stor y was her way of encouraging me to wait for the right guy.FIRST PERSON
PL ANNING
MOM
WITHOUT MY
WRITER
MICHELLE
WARD
TRAINOR
LEARNED
HOW TO FACE
DOWN HER
TO-DO LIST
WITHOUT
HER CLOSEST
CONFIDANT
108 JUNE/JULY 2016BOUQUET: JUSTIN DEMUTIIS PHOTOGRAPHY; INSET: GETTYBRIDES.COM