It was 7:15 a.m. on a Tuesday (December 3, 2019 to be exact), and my day started with me getting ready to travel to with my Dad to Louisville, Kentucky to see my beloved Michigan Wolverines take on, at the time, the first-ranked Louisville Cardinals.

However, when I came down the stairs, full of excitement, into the kitchen, I immediately was greeted by my father who had a puzzled look on his face, a look I have never seen before. He told me he had to take my mom to the hospital as it was apparent something was wrong with her. My mom could not stop stuttering . . . . and as my Dad helped her to the car, I told my mom “I love you” but she didn’t respond.

In complete shock, my body felt numb and my mind was out of control; kind of like when you “channel surf” about all the possibilities of what was going on? Was my mom going to be ok? Did my Dad overreact? Why did he have that weird look on his face? Where they going to be home in time for us to leave for the game?

These thoughts and a thousand more rushed through my mind as I waited for my grandmother to arrive to babysit my little brother and me.

As the hours passed, with no response from my Dad, I attempted to distract myself from worrying about my mom by playing video games, watching television, playing with my little brother, and chatting with my grandmother. However, this was of little solace as my anxiety only grew stronger as the hours passed.

Still in a world of unknown and silence, that afternoon I decided to try and move on as I was playing in my first organized basketball game. I contacted my coach and told him what was happening and though I was absent from school, I still wanted to participate. The coach sympathized and agreed to let me play.

So, there I was my first basketball game as a West Hills Middle Schooler for my first basketball game. I sat on the bench at the beginning of the game, hoping to be substituted in at some point. My stomach was in a knot, my legs were shaking, and I couldn’t believe that the day I had been looking forward to so much had turned into a nightmare. At the three-minute mark, I entered the game, found my rhythm and hit a layup to force overtime. The rest of the game was a back-and-forth battle that we ultimately lost. . .

Later that evening, my father returned home and sat me down to break the dreadful news that my mother had a malignant brain tumor. What was a boy of 14 supposed to do? I decided to let my emotions out and broke down in tears. The subsequent days and weeks became a blur, I began to feel like a ghost watching my body go about its regular routine.

Two days later, my mom had an emergency craniotomy to try and remove some of the 13 tumors that were bleeding and causing swelling on the brain.

During the surgery, I spent the hours lying in bed, wondering whether I would see her again? Would she be the same? Would MY LIFE be the same? Later that day, my grandma knocked on my door to let me know that everything had gone smoothly with the operation. I cried happy tears since this was a bright spot in a bleak situation. I was confident my mom would get through this.

As the calendar flipped to February 2020, my mother’s cancer had progressed to her spine, necessitating yet another operation; this time a partial spine replacement. My mother, always the champ, had the surgery and it was successful; the cancer was not going to paralyze her and she would be able to continue to walk.

In the weeks that followed, things appeared to be going well until March 15th hit, when the world suddenly stopped with the onset of the Corona virus. On top of the new normal I just started to get used to (the abundance of my mom’s medical appointments and the absence of my father who was her 100% caretaker) a SECOND new normal was thrust upon me as the world literally shuttered out of extreme caution and need.

I watched as my mother’s health deteriorated noticeably over the course of two, four, and six months. Things were really trying for me as I was forced to stay at home and see my mother in pain without the ability to escape or be distracted by school as the world was in quarantine.

As September rolled in, it was clear my mother was not going to win her battle with cancer. Call it a “sixth sense” or a “son’s intuition”, I wanted to spend September 23rd with my mother in bed. Knowing that death was knocking on her door, all I wanted was to be near her.

During that day, I waited on her bed for an hour before my father left the room to take a phone call when I told my mother “That I was going to be ok and she could let go” . . . she passed away seconds later. It was a wonderful time between her and I, so they say. And I’m glad I was able to be with her in her final moments.

Adjusting to a tragic loss is a difficult and taxing process for everyone. I’ll never get over losing my mom, but I try to focus on the bright spots in life and keep moving forward.

AND it is in that honor and spirit that I founded www.thelisaproject.net, a peer-to-peer mentoring and counseling program for high-school children who have lost or are in the process of actively losing a parent to an illness.

I did not have a peer to help me navigate the journey of my mother’s sickness and dying process so I decided it was on me to “pay it forward” . . . to take the experience given to me and leverage that to help others in a similar situation.

I will always choose and teach that one can and will “Triumph over tragedy” because we all have it in us!