When I was 7 years old, I was worried about something most other people my age wouldn’t be thinking about: Is mom going to die?

That was the question I asked my dad as he kissed me good night. He answered, “No honey, she’s going to be fine.” But something in his voice didn’t sound so sure.

My mom was my first grade teacher. She was fun, and I got to make all of my classmates jealous by calling her mom instead of Mrs. Boutan.

That changed when my mom found out she had kidney cancer. She was doing yard work and had such intense back pain that she went to the hospital. It turned out she had a cancerous tumor the size of a baseball in her right kidney.

I was scared when I visited my mom in the hospital after her surgery. She lifted up her hospital gown and showed me the row of 42 stitches across her stomach. Cards and flowers lined the outer corners of the room. Looking at these didn’t make me feel any better. They reminded me of what people brought to my great-grandma’s funeral.

When my mom came home from the hospital she only had one kidney and took the rest of the school year off to recover. At school I missed her. I couldn’t call my new teacher mom.

I started having constant anxiety. If mom could’ve died, then so could anyone else I loved. Each night I would come to my mom with fears about death and dying or just the purpose of life. It wasn’t normal talk for a 7 year old.

As I cried in her arms, she would soothe me while sitting in my great-grandma’s antique rocking chair. She later brought me to a children’s psychologist, because even she couldn’t ease all of my fears.

Cancer took away my mom’s kidney, but it also took a part of my childhood. I learned at a very young age that life isn’t guaranteed. My mom’s scar is a constant reminder that I need to appreciate everyone I have in my life, because all too quickly they can be taken away.