It was October 19, 2008, and as I sat by my mother’s bed, holding her hand, with tears rolling down my cheeks, she asked me to make her a promise.
I was, and always will be, a “Mama’s Boy,” so it didn’t matter to me what she was going to ask. I was going to do it.
If she asked for the moon and the stars, that is what she was getting. But what she asked for was heavier than any planet and brighter than any star.
She grabbed my hand and asked me to continue her fight. To do everything I possibly could to make sure that no other son would have to say goodbye to their mother under the same circumstances that I was going to in those next 24 hours.
Fast forward 8 years later. I am standing at a podium, about to receive the 2016 American Cancer Society’s Sandra Labaree award as the volunteer of the year. As I stood on stage, a good friend of mine Tania gave the introduction. She hosted an event two weeks prior, and I happened to give a speech that night. It wasn’t just any speech though, it was the 100th that I had given, which was surely the reason why I was given the award.
As I listened to her introduce me to the crowd, all I could think about was my mother’s beautiful smile staring back at me saying, “Thank You.” I had spent a lot of time commuting to these events and missed a lot of summer events and holiday parties, but to visualize my mother, in that moment, thanking me for keeping her promise, it was all worth it.
Within those 100 speeches, I had traveled to six different states, dozens of college campus and countless town meetings, all to tell my story of how a Mama’s Boy took a promise to heart. I get upset when people say that they lost someone to cancer, because when we say that, we let cancer win. My mother passed her fight on to me, and although she may not be right next to me physically, her fight is still alive through me, and as long as I’m living, I’m fighting. As long as I’m fighting, we are surviving this together!
– Pat Sullivan