Joyride

The spring is the season when I feature the best student work from my essay class at Atlantic Cape Community College. This week’s column was written by Jessica Patrick of Tuckerton.
Working as a cashier, I get comments about the butterfly tattoo on my left forearm. Apparently, 19 years old is still too young to make any permanent decision.
During my sophomore year, between chemistry classes and running the mile, my 65 year-old grandmother was diagnosed with colon cancer. Somewhere in her younger years, she received electric shock treatments for a diagnosis of schizophrenia. Later, she battled breast cancer, where she went bald and became thin, but her faith never strayed – dementia set in by age 50.
After they treated her for lack of red blood cells, which left her looking like “Casper the Ghost,” she went in for surgery to remove the cancerous part of her colon.
With my grandmother having dementia, my mother and I decided not to tell her she had cancer. She continued going to her adult day care program. She played bingo and was thrilled to have a priest come every Thursday to enhance her love of God.
A year later we were all sitting around the table eating lunch when she asked us, “Do I have cancer?”
“Yeah, Mom, you do,” said my mother. Grandma looked at me and asked, “When am I going to die?”
“Whenever the good Lord wants you,” I said.
“I was hoping for another 20 or 30 years to see you go off and get married,” she said with a smile on her face.
We started praying every day with her at her bedside. She continued to be a woman of strong faith. Her room was adorned with a cross, a huge rosary on the wall and figures of Mother Mary placed carefully around the room.
A year and seven months later, the cancer had spread and her body began to fall apart. She was at the house permanently now, and her medications from Hospice increased. Praying became more frequent and heartfelt.
But soon, she was confined to a hospital bed in her room and her chest would only rise once or twice a minute with air.
That same day we had dozens of monarch butterflies swarm our porch. They just sat around, fluttered on some flowers and mosied about. My grandmother couldn’t talk or walk.
Two days later, I went to check on her. Sleeping as usual. Five minutes later when my mom went in, she was gone.
The butterflies were back as we prepared for her funeral. They stayed mainly on the porch and fluttered around late past sunset. After her funeral, we walked out to see dozens of monarchs all over the small walkway.
Since my grandmother’s death, there have been butterflies at every important event in my life. I have seen monarchs surround me at speeches, horse shows, Relay for Life events and even school functions.
And the butterfly on my forearm is always there with me—just like my Nana.
Keith Forrest is a tenured assistant professor of communication at Atlantic Cape Community College. His late Mother Libby Demp Forrest Moore wrote the Joyride column for this newspaper for 20 years.