Thou Shalt Not

The beeping was what got under my skin first. Machines humming, monitor blinking—proof that my mother was still alive, though barely. If she had listened to me earlier, we wouldn’t be here. But no, she had to follow her heart, her Bible, her God.

For as long as I can remember, my mother believed hospitals were places of punishment, not healing. Even when the coughing fits started, when her chest burned with every breath, when the signs of lung cancer became impossible to ignore, she refused to go. Instead, she marched to the church every morning. She’d sit there with her little circle of faithfuls, whispering prayers into the air like they were medicines, convinced invisible hands would knit her broken body back together. She would skip meals, miss appointments, but never a sermon.

That stubbornness is what fractured us in the first place. When my father fell ill—just an infection, something that could’ve been treated—she refused to take him to the hospital. She let him waste away in our bed while she prayed at his side, eyes closed, lips trembling with scripture. When he finally slipped away, she called it God’s will.

“Thou shalt not kill.” Isn’t that the commandment she loved to quote? Yet she murdered him all the same—not with a weapon, but with her refusal, her passivity, her faith that denial would somehow save him.

We never spoke of it again, but how could I forget? His ghost lingered in every prayer she uttered, every page of the Bible she turned. From then on, everything was about God. What we could eat, what we could wear, how we should breathe and move and think. No pig skin. No short skirts. No questioning the Word.

I didn’t last long under her roof after that. I wasn’t a believer then, and I’m not one now. My mother used to say it was God’s test, that He sent her two faithless children to strengthen her devotion. She wore our unbelief like some crown of thorns, a martyr in her own mind.

My brother was her greatest scandal. He was gay. Early 2000s, small town, and one Sunday he simply didn’t come home. My mother walked through the door that night and announced, almost triumphantly, that the devil had taken her son. I thought he was dead. For ten years, I carried that belief, until I ran into him in Atlanta—alive, married and thriving. The man he left with that night wasn’t the devil, but his salvation. From my brother’s point of view, our mother was the devil after all.

That was the part I could never untangle: why she clung to a faith that demanded she treat her own children as enemies. Some people turn to religion after tragedy, searching for a comfort nothing else can give. But whenever I asked her what drove her, she never gave me that honesty. She would only say, with that smug serenity, that God had found her.

But if God had found her, what had she lost in return? A husband, a son, a daughter. Her family burned on the altar of her devotion. And still, she prayed. Still, she believed.

I was called home by a neighbor after my mother fainted on the porch. It had been nearly eight years since I last saw her. In that time, I had built something resembling a life for myself—a studio apartment, a cat, steady hours at Walmart. Nothing glamorous, nothing certain. I still wasn’t sure about my sexuality, or where exactly I was headed, but at least, it was mine. It was a life without Sunday bells, without sermons, without the constant weight of her disapproving eyes every time I stepped outside the script of faith.

When the call came, I hesitated. I wasn’t sure I should go. But what else was I supposed to do? She had no one else, and despite everything, despite not being a Christian, I knew the commandment well enough: honor thy father and thy mother.

I should’ve known she’d wear that smug smile the second I walked in. Like she had been waiting all along, certain I’d come crawling back. It almost sent me straight out the door again.

The first few weeks were Hell. Trying to convince her to see a doctor was like arguing with a stone wall carved in scripture. Every protest of mine was met with another verse—an armor she wielded against reason. And now, in my twenties, I could hear the absurdity in her words in a way I couldn’t as a child. Back then, her certainty was terrifying. Now, it was just exhausting.

Then she collapsed again. This time, I didn’t ask. I called an ambulance, rode with her, and sat through the fluorescent purgatory of the hospital. The verdict came quickly: lung cancer.

When she woke, I braced myself for the fight. But instead of anger, she gave a bitter laugh, a cough rattling in her chest.

“I didn’t even smoke,” she said, her voice hoarse. Then she closed her eyes, sighed like it was a prayer. “Must be God’s will.”

And just like that, the old war between us started again. How many more lives did I have to lose before my mother could admit it wasn’t the will of some distant God, but our own choices, our own negligence? Even staring down her own death, she refused to see it.

I was furious, rage like fire in my chest, but beneath the fury there was something else, something I couldn’t shake: fear. Fear of losing her. My mother.

I tried to soften her days in the hospital, to make the chemo less of the punishment she believed it to be. To her, every IV drip, every injection, was penance for her lack of faith. So I humored her. I took her to the hospital chapel, let her bow her head while I sat stiff beside her, staring at stained glass that meant nothing to me. I picked up extra shifts, then another job, just to cover what insurance didn’t. And whenever I sighed, whenever I let exhaustion slip out, she called it punishment too—punishment for my lack of faith. If only I’d left her at home, she said, God would have healed her. Or let her die, as He saw fit.

When she grew too weak to walk to church, I went in her place. At first, I treated it like an act, a performance. I sat in the pews, recited verses with a sharp tongue, mocking under my breath. I was only there to keep her satisfied, nothing more. But then her condition began to improve. Not because of prayer, I knew, but because the treatment was working. Still, she credited me—my prayers, my unwilling service to her God.

I stopped going once, just to prove it didn’t matter. And she kept getting better. The chemo kept doing its work. But she never knew.

Until the night it all slipped. The night she almost died. Machines screamed, nurses rushed, and I ran—not to her side, but to the hospital chapel. To my own surprise, I found myself on the cold tile floor, my body wracked with sobs I hadn’t felt in years. Words poured out of me, words I had sworn I’d never speak. Verses I had memorized against my will as a child, now tumbling from my lips with desperate clarity.

I prayed my heart out. Not for God, not for redemption, but for her. For one more day, one more hour, one more breath.

And in that frantic whispering, that tearing-open of my chest, I found myself searching for something I never thought I’d want—searching for faith, and becoming my mother.