I was listening to a bit of “All Sides” with Ann Fisher this morning as she talked to the deputy director of the new James Cancer hospital about how amazing this new facility is and what it has to offer patients.

It brought a flood of emotions. The scars that I can never get rid of. This is a dump of some of them.

It brought me back to countless hours spent in the old James, in the room where my mom was receiving some sort of experimental stem cell treatment. It was a very isolated ward, we had to be especially careful to wash our hands before entering and I remember the nurses telling me the smell of canned corn was normal.

It brought me back to the day in our living room, I was very small, that my mom first realized she couldn’t move her arm. The memory is fuzzy but I think that was the first symptom of her bout with cancer, this one of the bone.

It took me back to the days of staying with grandparents, aunts, etc. while my mom was in the hospital.  I remember having a pizza party in the lobby on her floor and someone giving me a book of jokes to practice.

It brought me back to the day we got family photos taken my senior year of high school. We had just found out about her brain tumor and she wanted them taken before she began treatments again.

It took me back to the day the phone rang during dinner. The news from the doctor that she had a brain tumor. She sat back down and kept eating. What else is there to do?

It brought me back to the month(s?) during my last year of high school that my mom spent unresponsive in the James after surgery to remove that brain tumor. Every day after school I would pick my dad up from work and we would drive the hour to Columbus to sit in her room. Her room overlooked Ohio stadium but unfortunately it was spring. We survived on dinners from Wendy’s quietly eaten.

It took me back to the times she said all she wanted was to see me graduate. She died 5 months after I walked across that stage.

I remember caring for my mom once she began to wake up and was eventually transferred back to Zanesville. I administered her medicine through a PICC line. I washed her hair, she always wanted me to scrub so hard. I helped her up out of her chair. I went on a senior trip with my friends during which she had a seizure and my dad had to call an ambulance.

I went to college and she got sicker.

One time I came home to visit she was back in the hospital. I remember the doctor pulling my dad and I in the hall and telling us it was time to transfer her to hospice. Part of my life was enjoying the first few months of college, the other part was a dying mother.

I remember a week or so later, the end of another weekend home. My godmother and another very good friend of my mom’s took me to the pizza place across the street from hospice. They told me I shouldn’t go back yet. Her health was too bad. She died a few days later, the night before her birthday.

I had taken to sleeping on the couch. The phone rang after we had gone to bed, maybe I was still up watching TV.  Of course I knew what it was.  My dad answered.  Came in to tell me.  We spent the night talking about her.

So many of these memories are fuzzy and confusing. My mom had so many different cancers at so many different times of my life I can’t really keep the facts straight.

Sometimes I think, “Did that really happen? Was that really my life?”.

These scars have healed for the most part but they will always be visible, always there. I’ve tried to hide them, forget about them. Pretend I had another life in which my mom didn’t have cancer for most of it and didn’t die.

But that’s not my reality. I have to let my scars be there. I have to let the reality spur me on to something good.

My aunt was shredding documents at her courthouse job when she came across emails my mom had sent over 11 years ago.

It said nothing interesting but for some reason it was just such a nice reminder to see this.  To remember that she was alive and had a real life and that at one time I got to share it with her here on earth.

After nearly 11 years of her being gone it’s easy to forget what everyday life was like and to remember only the sickness or the important moments.  But these everyday moments, emails at work, are something to treasure.

We’re having a third child, which means a third round of months debating the same names over and over again.  I mean we have some new ones in there but for 5 years Brad has been trying to throw Robin in the mix.  I just can’t do it.

I feel like some couples have the easiest time naming their kids.  They know right away what it will be if it’s a girl or if it’s a boy.  This has never been us and I’m envious of the quick namers.

To me naming seems like such a huge deal.  I probably make it out to be a bigger deal than it needs to be.  I remember nearly driving myself crazy when it came to finding a name for our second.  Then, just before he was born I suggested Ira again for the first time in months while at the park.  Honestly I had forgotten it as a candidate because Brad disliked it, but this time he said “Yea, maybe.”  So we talked about and by the time we left Nelson Park it was settled.

Even though I felt complete peace using the name Ira we chose not to tell people until he was born.  I am always open to the idea that I will see this baby and feel they’re someone completely different.

With our first we had a girl name we were certain we would use (we didn’t know the gender) (it was Eleanor if you’re curious) but had several boy names and couldn’t pin one down.

One night in bed, just a few days before he was born I remember Brad saying, “What about Theodore?”.  Huh, I thought.  That’s good.  And Theodore he became.

With Theo I didn’t consider the name meaning too much before deciding to use it.  I do remember looking it up either right before or right after he was born and feeling struck with how perfect it is for him.

In Greek, Theodore means “A gift from God” and he truly was my gift. You see, Brad and I had not agreed on whether or not we were going to have children.  He really didn’t and I kind of did, so I remember many nights silently praying that things would change and I would be a mother someday.

Lo and behold I am a mother and I am grateful for my gift.

Once we found out our second was a boy our name search became difficult once again.  We always seem to come up with a girl name no problem, that time it was Lula which was the name of my great-grandmother.

Once his gender was discovered, I felt very led to choose a Hebrew name.  So I searched.  And searched.  And literally scoured those internet baby name sites texting Brad suggestions and finding a few we liked but nothing that was “perfect”.  Until that night in the park.

Ira means “watchful” and he surely is.  He has always been taking in the world around him, an active participant in life.

So with this baby I feel led to a certain type of name as well, with a certain meaning. I hesitate to talk about it once again, because welp, you just never know.  I pray about it and have ideas about what we could use but I’m certain the the decision will not come until right before this one arrives as well.  I need the time to get to know this boy or girl in my uterus (it’s going to be a surprise!) and to take the time to listen to what God wants him or her to be called.

For the one thing I know is that this child is a gift to me on loan from the Kingdom.  I believe their names matter and that God has a whole bundle of awesome things in store for their lives.

I just have to listen.

Theodore Albert : “a gift from God”; “noble and bright”

Ira Stephen : “watchful”; “crown”