Christine Laperriere

Transcript

Chris it's your dad and when you get this voicemail call me back I don't care what time it is somehow when I picked up that voicemail my stomach dropped and I knew my world was about to change that day my mother was diagnosed with a three by five centimeter brain tumor on the left side of her brain where we hold speech and memory in just a few days she was sent in for an eight-hour surgery where a brain surgeon took each and every particle of that tumor out of her brain after pacing in the waiting room we were thrilled to see the brain surgeon come

out with a big giant smile on his face and he said I have great news I think she's going to recover fully from this surgery but unfortunately less than two weeks later something went terribly wrong she was rushed to the hospital and within a few minutes she was on the table and they were doing emergency brain surgery at that time we were pacing anxiously holding on tight but the same brain surgeon came out of the operating room and this time his face told a completely different story he said in the most apologetic tone we did everything we could we had no choice but to cut

away brain tissue in order to save her life I don't know what this is gonna do to her memory I don't know what it's gonna do to her speech I don't know if she'll walk again we're just gonna have to wait and see it was like someone had taken all of the oxygen out of the room I was thrilled she had survived but terrified for what was next in the beginning she slept a lot and then she started to come to so one day I walked into the hospital and I peeked around into her room and she was sitting upright in a chair actually stabbing

at some food and I thought oh that's a progress that's good she looked like a soldier who had just come home for more her head was covered in these big bandages and her face was very swollen her eyes were all swollen and puffy anyway I took a deep breath I had to stay positive so it took a deep breath and I walked into her room hey mom how you doing and no answer hey mom how you doing today she looked at me and she paused with a complete look of confusion on her face It was as if I was a nurse coming to bring her

more pills to swallow when she looked at me I was a complete stranger and she had no idea who I was up until now I thought the biggest thing to worry about was whether or not that brain tumor was going to kill her but all of a sudden I had a much bigger fear and it was what if in just that 8 hour surgery 37 years of shared experiences had been surgically removed what about from the time I was born to the way that she would call me sunshine to the way that she would scratch my back and the way that she would tell me

this too shall pass when my heart was too broken to heal the way she'd flow for a dream for me on a big day at work the way she would just be there for me when I just needed someone to talk to you what is a relationship without any memory of any shared experience how do you relate to someone if they don't remember any of the stories that bind you just saying I love you to someone even still matter if they don't remember you saying it to them a thousand times before I couldn't leave her side so I sat in the corner of her hospital

room and I began to just weep uncontrollably as quietly as I could I felt like that little girl inside of me wanted to stay there in protest and demand that they brought back my real mom because this could not be her sometimes you don't get to choose your purpose your purpose chooses you and sometimes it is not glamorous it you are in so much pain that you have to find something you can commit to to pull yourself out of the fetal position and that is why at that time my purpose became keeping the love that she had always shown me alive years of being her

daughter had taught me what the unconditional part of unconditional love actually means and it was now my turn to show her everything that she had taught me to stay present with her and to support her and put all of my fears aside and actually show her the comfort that she had always given me for my whole life I committed to loving her with all of the depth that 37 years of practice could provide even if she could never remember enough to return it and with that finally came great power because I finally realized that it only takes one person to keep love alive in a

relationship between two people love is not sitting in the past it's sitting right here and it's right now and it only takes one person to remember it in order to prove that it ever actually existed my mother worked through a very long and painful recovery but she has since gained back her memory in her speech and today we walked together and we talked together and the best part is she still starts every text message with hey sunshine how you doing but today I'm the mom of two young children and I have to say that I think sometimes about what would happen if history ever repeated

itself so today my purpose is to fill their memory banks with as much unconditional love as I possibly can to make sure that they have lots and lots and lots of memories of it so many memories that it's impossible to forget because if one day I'm not able to help them remember it I want them to know how to keep my love for them alive forever thank you

Transcript generated from the recording and lightly cleaned. Some names and wording may differ from the spoken speech.