Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul on Tough Stuff by Jack Canfield Page A

died at age fifty-three, and my life would never be the same.
    My mom was my best friend. She taught me to appreciate every day. I think that is the key to life. I try to keep remembering that, to kind of make it a habit. And when I get all caught up in everything, I just stop and think about her.
    I was like her sidekick growing up in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. My brother, Greig Jr., now thirty-three, and my sister, Julie, now thirty-two, were both older than me (I’m twenty-nine), so when they started school, it was just me and my mom together all day, running errands or just hanging out.
    We even remained close through my rebellious period. In high school, I was staying out too late, doing the normal teenage stuff, so my parents sent me to a private boarding school in New Hampshire. I got kicked out after eight months for getting caught in the boys’ dorm. Oops! My punishment was having to go to a small local church school. When I did something wrong, if I tried to deny it or hide it, my mom would get angry. But if I admitted and apologized, she’d be totally cool. She was really fair.
    She was also super-supportive. Ever since I was a kid, I knew I wanted to perform. She was always my biggest fan. She wasn’t a pushy stage mom at all, but she was definitely in my corner. She was really into personal growth (a longtime clothing store manager, she opened a self-help bookstore at one point) and encouraged the people around her to follow their dreams.
    When I decided to move to New York City at nineteen to pursue an acting career, my mom and my dad, Greig Johnson, a car salesman, never said, “That’s risky,” or, “Don’t do that.” Two years later, in 1993, I moved to Los Angeles and got my first TV role as Kimberly, the Pink Power Ranger on Mighty Morphin Power Rangers.
    Everything was going smoothly until the fall of 1997, when my life came to a screeching halt. My mom’s doctors thought she had cysts on her uterus that had grown and needed to be removed. But what should have been a simple hysterectomy turned into something far worse. Mom already kind of suspected. A couple of days before her surgery, she called me up really frightened and said, “Amy Jo, what if I have cancer?” and I was like, “Mom, you can’t say that. No. No. No.” So she went in for the operation. They didn’t expect to find cancer, but it was everywhere. A rare type of cancer, it had started in her appendix, and by the time the doctors found it, it had spread all over her body.
    I’ll never forget the moment when my dad called and told me the news. It was Halloween. In shock, I flew back East to be with my family. I remember sitting up one night with my dad, probably two days after we found out. He told me he knew she was going to die, he just knew it. I was like, “No, we’ve got to have hope.”
    Mymomhandled the news—and her terminal prognosis —with incredible bravery. That Christmas, which she knew would probably be her last, she bought us all tickets to see The Lion King on Broadway in New York. It was really emotional because the story is about the circle of life and dying and coming back again. I looked over at my mom during the scene where Simba sees his father’s ghost. She had tears in her eyes. But she never broke down in front of any of us kids or her friends. I think my dad’s the only one who saw how frightened she must have been.
    In the beginning, we had several disappointments. My mom tried different chemotherapies. She also went to a hospital in Washington, D.C., for a surgery the doctors hoped might give her more time. My sister and I slept on little cots in her hospital room. It was like a slumber party.
    But the surgery was a letdown. They opened her up again and said there was nothing they could do. The cancer had spread too much. Everyone was trying to help, recommending holistic medicines and special diets. We searched on the