My mom paced back and forth.

“Aimee me and your father need to talk to you about something.”

I sat down slowly on the couch. My teenage absent minded self feared the words that escaped her lips. This seat her words were all to familiar. A familiarity I wished would go away. I watched and waited for the worse.


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“Aimee can you come into the living room. We need to talk.”

“Oh man” I thought to myself. What could my nine year old self done this time. I left my baby dolls where they were and slowly made my way to my parents. My ponytail flopped behind me as I crawled onto the couch.

As I sat there something didn’t seem right. It felt as though there was a white elephant in the room. My moms eyes showed a fear.

“I have cancer,” she said. Her eyes watered up as the words fell off her tongue. Her blue eyes turned red as she put her red hair in her hands.

Every thing stopped as if someone had sent a bullet through my heart. Questions soared through my head.

When I was six the doctors said that this thing called cancer would be gone and out of my mommies system. This time it wasn’t just a tiny spot on her leg but a massive area where the spot use to lay.

The smell of grandparents came and went. Lots of food and flowers filled the house with a masking happiness.

I knew she would get better she was a fighter.







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I sat in a new waiting room. The smell of this one was different then the rest. Back in Arkansas people had mild forms of cancer but if they were sent here it was much worse. MD Anderson’s waiting room had a coldness that draped the room with a fear of death in every ones eyes. I was now eleven and the thing called cancer had a name. Melanoma a deadly form of skin cancer. It wasn’t just on my moms pail freckled skin it was in her lung.

“You can come back now,” the nurse said.

I looked in the nurses’ eyes she didn’t want to be here anymore then I did. I stepped into the room. My mom laid helpless on the bed tubes coming from her side, ivy in her arm, oxygen in her nose and a slight smile played across her face.

“ Come on baby-girl come up here and lay beside me,” she said with a timid tone.

I walked over trying to make sure not to unhook anything and snuggled in beside her. Tears burned my eyes as every thing I held back trying to stay strong for her crumbled. My tears were a virus that spread from my mom to my dad and even the few night nurses passing by.

“It is gonna be alright, we are gonna fight through this together,” her words were firm this time. This family was strong and we would all fight this thing together.


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Inhale and exhale I thought to myself. My teenage self feared for the worse. I looked up into my moms blue eyes then into my dads green ones. This time there wasn’t sadness. A weird feeling overwhelmed me.
“ I am cancer free.”

We weren’t completely out of the dark but for now the fight had been won. The value of family is to fight through the bad no matter the obstacles that come your way.