When Love Catches and Changes Us All

Every couple years, the mama would come.

She bought a plane ticket and traveled across an ocean and a continent to spend time with her daughter.

Eventually the daughter had a husband and two little girls and an established home in America and still the mama would come.

Because that's what mamas do.

And the mama worried, because that's also what mamas do. She worried that even though her daughter had a family and a good life in America, the daughter didn't have many friends.

The mama worried, especially after the daughter was diagnosed with cancer.

But the daughter joined an online support group that grew to over 500 strong, with one common denominator: breast cancer.

Several years went by and the mama packed her suitcase again, not knowing when she arrived that most of her time would be spent in a hospice facility, saying final words of loving to her daughter. A final squeeze. A final hug. A final kiss.

After a private funeral, the mama heard that this support group of women wanted to meet to share stories of her daughter. The mama decided to come. Through a translator, the mama heard the stories:

"Your daughter always made me laugh." 

"Your daughter would send me a message when I had a bad day." 

"Your daughter kept track of all of us and our treatments."

 "Your daughter talked with me when I couldn't sleep late at night."

Woman after woman got up to share a story. The mama hugged each storyteller. The mama repeated the one English word she knew, "Thank you. Thank you." 

Thank you for the story. Thank you for the memory. Thank you for loving my daughter. Thank you for being her friend.

After the stories the friends wrote messages on papers and attached them to balloons to let go into the heavens.

"One. Two. Three." The friends released the balloons and off they sailed, around palm trees and lamp posts. A rainbow of colors escaped into the clouds.

All except one.

The mama's balloons - a heart and two pink balloons - caught in some branches and stayed. Of all the balloons, only the mama's balloons remained. Sappy statements could be quoted, like "If you love something, set it free. If it comes back, it is yours..."

but no words can quite capture the magic of that moment, the hugeness, of the love of a mama and the love of countless friends, who came to celebrate the love of a daughter, and when the mama tried to let that love go and release it into the heavens, that love caught and stayed and changed us all.