{ Motherless Daughters } uniting those experiencing motherloss

Our Stories

Paula's Story

On August 12th 1976, I was born. I was born to Linda and John Comey. And so my life began. My name is Paula Comey I am at this time 28 years old. On December 13th, 2002, when I was only 26, what was my seemingly perfect life came to a screeching halt. My mother, my best friend, and my life line ended her courageous battle of cancer. She was 48 years young.

Growing up I had the normal life I had a dog, 2 younger sisters, and a mom and dad. Dad was a mans man doing his own thing. Mom well she was a great mom. She was there to teach me my alphabet, tie my shoes, and kiss better all of my bumps and bruises. All the normal mom stuff. She lived for her children and we were her whole world. As I grew older I remembered thinking ahh parents suck, why can we not stick them on an island and just live our adolescent lives the way that we want to! These are the silly things that we young kids dream up when we are mad at our parents.

When I was 13 I ended up being quite sick. The outcome looked like I may never walk again. Over an 8 month period of time I spent a lot of time in Vancouver, B.C.’s children’s hospital and GF strong rehabilitation centre. My mom was going to school to become an insurance agent, she would go to school every day and then drive an hour every afternoon to see me. It was at this time I realized how special she was and how much she truly loved me. We started to become best friends.

Well I beat the odds and after 3 years of hard work started walking again. I could not have done it with out my mother. Now I was nearing 16, and had a great relationship with mom. Don’t get me wrong, I was 16 and discovering normal life again, so I did rebel a bit and acted like sometimes mom was the worst person in the world, but in the long run she loved me more than anything in the world and was still the closest person in life to me.

As I became a real adult our bond grew. I now looked up to this woman, I started to think wow if I can ever be as great of a wife and mother as her, I will be the luckiest person in the world. As the years passed we shared a lot of our life stories and experiences together. She truly became my biggest role model and I was her biggest fan.

Then in December of 2000 I knew something was wrong, mom did not seem her cheerful and bubbly self. I remember on December 2nd going to my parent’s house when my shift at work ended, to pick up my dog. Mom and dad watched him every day when I went to work, he is a spoiled guy! When I was about to leave, she looked at me and said I want you and your sisters to come here for dinner tomorrow night, I really knew something was wrong now. We were not in the habit of having “Family Dinners” on a Monday night. I remember standing at the front door saying good bye. I started crying and said you are sick aren’t you? Call it mother daughter intuition, but I knew it mom was sick, she had cancer. She remained brave and told me that I was right and to please not tell my sisters and to be there for dinner the next day. I recall going home and looking at my boyfriend at the time and saying. Mom is sick she has cancer and I am scared that she is going to die. I cried the whole night and the whole next day until I had to meet the family for dinner.

Mom reconfirmed what we had talked about the night before. She had colorectal cancer. Our family Dr had misdiagnosed her. It had been there for 3 to 5 years. So now the biggest journey of my life started. I was going to be there for her, as she had been there for me my whole life. It was my turn to take care of her now. So I started everyday taking her to the Surrey BC cancer clinic. It was a 45 minute drive everyday, but one I really enjoyed taking. I was working evenings at my job, so I had all day to spend with her. So every day Monday to Friday we went to radiation treatments, and two of those days we went to chemo. The rest of the day’s mom had her chemo drip from home. The Dr warned us that it looked as if mom would have to have a full hysterectomy and colostomy. To the family this seemed like a very small price to pay to have her around for years to come. Then we went in for the final visit with the oncologist to see what to do next. He gave us great news. They could not find a tumor anymore. 4 months of rigorous and painful treatment seemed to pay off! She was going to be fine and no more surgery. We were elated. All she had to do was come back in 6 weeks for a follow up CT scan to make sure that nothing was hidden but it looked really good for her!! We were at a family gathering a week later, and my mom through tears thanked the family for all of their prayers and love and that she was going to make it and be okay. Mom was a private person so to see her teary was a very emotional thing for everyone. That night about 30 of us celebrated!

Then it came, the results from the follow up CT scan. Mom’s liver was spotted with tumors. The areas where they were located and the amount of tumors made it impossible to operate and remove them. So back to chemo we went. The Doctors and nurses there, did everything that they could. They tried everything. Nothing was working, so now she did Chemo just so that we could have more time with her, and in hopes that something anything would come along to help her.

We went to one last Dr’s appointment at the clinic in Surrey. When the oncologist walked in the room we knew what he had to tell us was not going to be good. Then he said it. It was incurable, they had run out of options, Linda you are going to die………..

I remember that moment as if it were yesterday. Sitting there with my mom and my dad around a conference table and listening to the Drs words. He said I will give the 3 of you a minute and he left the room. I tried so hard to be brave, I tried to not cry, but I couldn’t do it. Mom was so brave she shed only a few tears, holding me, playing with the hair at the nape of my neck, as she had since I was a baby, it was how she always calmed me down. I refused to believe what he had just told us, even though I knew that what he was telling us was true. As we left the hospital that day, I remember seeing a couple of the chemo nurses that mom and I had spent many days joking around with. They looked at me crying as we left, and I could tell by the saddened looks on their faces that they knew what we had just been told, I will never forget how amazing those women were to us.

The next thing that my mother did was unbelievable. This is what made me look up to her more than I have ever looked up to anyone in my life. She now really and truly was the most unbelievable and selfless person I have ever met. Vancouver General Hospital’s Cancer clinic had approached my mom. They had a program for people that had run out of options and were going to succumb to the disease. They could be in a way guinea pigs. They could subject themselves to experimental chemotherapy. You see in order to approve a new drug and treatment, it takes around 10 years. Mom readily accepted this challenge. Her thinking was, this disease may kill me, but if I have the opportunity to help find a cure or even approve a new drug, this could help my own children, their children, or even friends and people I have never met. She decided to do it. She became very ill, lost her hair, and still kept a smile on her face. Never ever once in the 2 years that she was sick did I ever here her say, why me, or I am scared, she only worried about the people she was leaving behind. She was so unbelievable through it all.

Mom now made a huge decision. The experimental treatments were no longer helping her, they were just making her sicker. She decided that if she were to be able to live a few months longer, she needed to have the quality of life over the quantity of life. She decided to end her chemotherapy, she was getting to sick, and it was becoming too dangerous. I fully respected her decision, but had a hard time with it, knowing that this meant that the end of her journey would be nearing.

For the next 6 months we made sure that mom had a great time. She went on a cruise with dad. My sisters, one of her sisters, a sister in law and my cousin, took her to the Cancer Benefit Concert in Vancouver she had a blast. She my sisters and I stayed in a hotel and yapped like friends all night long. For an early Christmas present, because we didn’t know how much longer she would be with us, I took her to her first Canucks Hockey Game. She had always been a fan, but never gone to a game. We stayed the night in a hotel again, and the next day we shopped, had lunch, and coffee at starbucks, we just hung out. That day I told my mom every secret that I have ever had, good and bad. It was November now, and I was trying to fit the next 40 years into the next month or so. We shared a lot, and I was running out of time.

For the whole 2 years mom and I were almost inseparable. We had tea every day before I went to work, and she was the first person I called when I woke up every morning. Some days she must have gotten so sick of me but I didn’t care. By Mid November mom was taking a turn for the worse. Her tumor was so big it looked like she was 9 months pregnant, we used to joke about that. Her legs swelled she had so much edema she had a hard time even walking or getting up off the couch. Now is when I started to get really scared, it was sinking in. I always knew she was sick and it was going to end someday, but it never felt like it would really happen. I always had hope….. Now I had no choice but to face reality. It was time to get mom some in home care.

The hospice society was called and everything was set into motion. Mom now had a hospital bed at home and a nurse that was there every morning. Her sister in law, my amazing Auntie Teresa, took charge at making a schedule. Mom would never be alone, one of us would always be there. For the next month and a half, I dropped everything. Mom was my full time priority. I would get up at 8am go to the house, make sure the nurse came, help out where I could and visit with mom. I would go home get ready for work, go back to her place and visit some more. After work I would stop by the house at around 1 or 2 in the morning and make sure everything was okay. This was the next month of my life. I spent every moment I could with her, I wanted to take care of her the way she had taken care of me all those years as I grew up. And to this day I would not trade that for anything, I wish that there could have been more hours in the day.

I had decided that the 3rd week of December would be my last week of work. The Dr had told us that we had probably till sometime in January. Mom was a fighter. My sister Kim’s birthday was on December 19th, Christmas was of course the 25th and then my other sister Megan’s birthday was on the 29th. She really wanted to be there for one last time. On December 9th I was at mom and dads house, it was my day off and I would spend the whole day there. Mom really wanted a Pork roast and I was going to make a not so good but valiant effort at making her one. At this point she was not eating much so it meant a lot to me that she wanted it. At this stage she was starting to get really confused, didn’t make a whole lot of sense sometimes and slept a lot. On this particular evening I was helping her to the washroom. It took us a long time to get her there. When we were in the washroom she looked at me and said, Paula I can’t do this anymore. I tried so hard to fight back the tears, it was the first time in the 2 years that she had ever said anything like this. I looked at her through my own tears and said, Mom I love you so much, you have fought so hard, if you need to stop fighting that’s ok, you can only fight so much. There for the next hour We held each other, we both cried, we did not talk except to keep telling each other I love you. That was so Hard to me. It was the first time I had seen her break down.

The next day I called the Dr and said I don’t think that mom is doing so well. He made a house call and confirmed what I had thought. It did not look like she would make it through the week. It was almost as if she was asking me for permission to stop fighting that night, the next few days she totally deteriorated. We called all of our family and close friends and said if you need to see her, you need to come now. On December 12th, dad, myself, my 2 sisters, my moms 2 sisters and My auntie Teresa spent the day with her. That evening I knew it was going to happen. She was pretty out of it and making no sense. I remember feeling so guilty, because at one point I thought God please take her tonight, I can’t handle seeing her like this, this is not fair to her. I quickly felt guilty and tried to take my prayer back. God heard me, that evening as we sat with her, I held her hand and stroked it for her so that she knew that she was loved and that I was there with her. In the late evening she had a moment of lucidity. My uncle who Is a Catholic priest was in Toronto at the time, I held the phone to mom’s ear. He prayed with her, she tried to say as much as she could, she said Paula is here, I was so happy that she knew that I was there with her. She then talked of a man in the corner of the room and kept saying I have to go home. As much as I hated god at this time and felt that I had no faith, I was moved by what I think was god calling her home, and telling her it would be okay. In the very late evening early morning she finally looked at me and said Paula I am scared, I said mom why are you scared? She said I can’t breathe. Not long after that mom passed away. It was 3:27am. Mom was gone. We phoned family and they all drove out to say their final goodbyes, and to look at her peaceful and beautiful face one more time.

The last 2 years and 4 months have been so hard. At times I feel so selfish at the things that go through my head.

I ask myself all the time still why someone so good had to be chosen. She was so young and way to young to die. There are so many old miserable cranky people in this world. Why was she chosen? She had so much more to offer to the world, so much more love kindness and knowledge. I am left with the thoughts of; she won’t meet the person that I spend the rest of my life with, nor will he get to know this amazing person. She won’t be here to help me plan my wedding, and be there that day. She won’t be there with me when I have my children, they will never get to see her and hear her stories. She won’t be here to help me plant a garden or graduate from college. So much she will miss.

I never get to hear her voice, see her face, or listen to her beautiful laugh. I never get to hold her and say I love you and hear it back. No one is here to play with my hair at the nape of my neck when I am sad, stressed out or can’t sleep. No longer do I have that person to go to for advice. She was the one person in the world that could make everything okay. I envy people when I hear them talk about or see them with their mothers. I could go on for hours and hours about these things.

What I do have to remember is the tremendous love that she has given me. That I was lucky enough to get her stuffing recipe and still be able to make it the way she did. I am lucky that I got 26 years with her, and that we got to be best friends.

Not a week goes by that I don’t get at least a little teary thinking about her. I can look at her pictures and sometimes I smile and just say I love you, yet at other times I cry and ask why still? It will never become easy, but it does become easier over time I guess.

If I could have just one more minute with her, I would tell her how much I love her, how brave she was, how much I envy and look up to her. And that if I am ever given the opportunity to have a family of my own, that I will hope that I can even be half of the mother that she was to my sisters and I. I do wish I could be as wonderful as her. She has taught me so much about life, even now that she is gone, she is still teaching me about life, morals, values, and all of that good stuff.

So that is it, that is my mother, Linda Ann Comey, an angel to soon, and my own personal angel and saint. She was a very young 48, to young to be taken from this world. Anyone that knew or met her would agree. She was a truly remarkable woman. I will leave it at that. Mom is my favorite subject to talk about and I could go on forever. I just thank you for reading about Linda Comey, and letting me tell the whole world how unbelievable she was!

LINDA ANN COMEY ~ An Angel To Soon~ February 18th 1954 - December 13th 2002.

I will always love you mom and you will forever remain in my heart...

© Paula

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