How My Mom Saved My Life

I can pinpoint for you the exact moment when my entire life changed.

It’s 2019, senior year of high school. I’m over at my friend Jose’s house. Six or seven hours into a Madden marathon. It’s around 10 at night. School night. My phone buzzes. It’s my mom. She’s texting me: “It’s late!” “Where are you????”

I text her back. “Almost done here.” But she’s heard that before. She knows better. Mom gets in her minivan and drives over to pick me up — honking the horn all loud in Jose’s parents’ driveway. 

I come outside and jump in the passenger seat. And then … nothing happens. 

We’re just sitting there in silence. 

She’s not starting the car. She’s just looking at me. 

She asks me about my dad. About an argument he and I were having back at home. About how things seemed to be getting even more hostile. I tell her I don’t want to be at the house. I don’t want to be around him. That’s why I’ve been staying out so late. 

We both start bawling. 

My mom’s looking to broker a truce. Trying to figure out a way for me and my dad to somehow get along and see eye to eye. But we’re not getting anywhere. I’m not making it easy. And then….   

Things switch over to talking about me. About my future. 

That’s when she hits me with it. Out of nowhere. 

“Yax,” she says, “I want you to do something for me.”

I have no idea what she’s going to say next … but I absolutely do know that I have nothing at all going for myself at that point. I was still “attending school,” in that I would walk in the front door of the school. But that was about it. And since I was playing video games constantly and wasn’t getting to bed on time, I was basically sleeping through every class. When I wasn’t sleeping, I was trying to be the class clown. Making it from one grade to the next by literally like one point every year. Getting suspended for two or three days at a time. I wasn’t even allowed on the basketball team because my marks were so low. It’s like I was doing the bare minimum, and sometimes less than that.

And I knew that my mom was at her wit’s end. At one point things had gotten so bad that she went into my room and took out literally everything I had in there. All of it. Gone! No TV. No game system. No lamp. No dresser. No clothes. No pictures. Nothing on the walls. Bro….

No door.

Like she literally took the door off the hinges and put it somewhere else. That’s how bad it had gotten. 

When you’re young, you don’t even really know why you’re being bad. I’m still trying to figure it all out, but I think it had a lot to do with my grandfather dying. There was so much tension with my dad, and my grandpa was my guy. He was my second dad. He was just.... I don’t know. He understood me. Then, when I was 7, before I even really understood what death was, he had a heart attack and passed away. 

I remember coming home from playing outside with my friends, opening the front door, and seeing my mom laying there on the living room floor.

Sobbing.

It was so sudden, and I was so young...... I was just never the same happy kid after that. I basically lost all motivation to be good at anything. Like … for what? Every year on his birthday, I would sit on my bed and cry and cry. Everything just seemed … dark.

So yeah, by the time I’m 17, I’m going nowhere, and I’m in the front seat of my mom’s minivan, and she’s giving me HELL. She’s giving me THE TRUTH. 

She’s crying some of the realest, saddest tears you will ever see in your life. 

And me? Hearing that? And seeing all those tears? I’m unable to contain my emotions. For real. The whole bottom of my T-shirt is soaked because I have to keep wiping the tears from my eyes. 

Everything’s breaking down. For both of us. Right there inside the car.  

“You need to do what I tell you right now, Yax,” she says. 

Then she proceeds to tell me there’s no more time to mess around. In order to graduate, I would need to complete 10 courses at a local community college. In one year. So that’s what it’s gonna be. 

And of course my first instinct is … I’m not having it. I’m like, “Mom, come on. What?!?!?! No way.” I’m starting in about being away from friends, and all that schoolwork, and any other argument I can think of for not doing it.

But then, somewhere in the middle of all that, this one moment happens where I stop talking for a second and just … look at her face. 

And everything changed for me right then. 

I remember this shiver coming over my entire body and just being like: This is no joke right now. Nobody is smiling here. You have your mom up in this minivan crying her eyes out because you don’t know how to be a good son. Your own mom! Who does everything for you. Works two jobs. Shows you love no matter what. And this is how you’re being?!?!?! 

I literally remember thinking….

Why would you do this to your own mom?

For those 10 seconds, or whatever it was, it was all pain. But … that was it. 

I’ve never been the same since. 

Seeing my mom in that moment, and catching a glimpse of the heartbreak she was feeling over what was happening with me — it changed the trajectory of my entire life. In the blink of an eye, I went from yelling and arguing and fighting tooth and nail about not having to take all these community college classes to being like….

“You know what, Mom, you’re completely right. I need to be better. And I promise you I will be. I get it. For real.”

Everything has been different with me since that moment. 

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My mom pretty much saved my life that night.

All that I do, anything I have or will accomplish, I owe it all to her. She is my guardian angel. My hero.

And, just to be completely real with you, everything she means to me … I value and appreciate it now even more than ever before because one night a few months ago, my mom called me up on the phone and told me she had been diagnosed with cancer.

That kind of thing, when it happens … you never forget it. And in that moment, like after you hang up that phone, you can’t help but start thinking about all the different experiences you’ve shared with that person over the years. The ups and downs. All the things that person has helped you get through. 

With me and my mom, it’s been a bumpy journey we’ve been on together, but I am beyond grateful for everything she’s done to look out for me over the years. And on my end, things definitely started to smooth out with those community college classes she had me do. 

I’m not gonna lie, taking all those classes at once … it sucked. It really, really did. 

But a promise is a promise, right? 

Plus, I knew that if I did all those classes, and put in that work, I’d be able to play basketball again during my senior year. And honestly, it seems like ever since then I’ve been on some rocket ship or something.

The story with me and basketball though … it wasn’t love at first sight. Actually, my first love was baseball. But I’d play hoops because my friends were playing — almost as a way to fit in — and since I was always pretty big, I could hold my own. I had this cousin who basically became my best friend during middle school, and he’d constantly be playing hoops. So just from hanging out with him, and wanting to be a part of things, I got better and better. 

Then flash forward to my senior year — I’m doing all those classes, I get cleared to play for the high school team at the end of the season, and it’s like … I’m freeeeeeeeeee!!! I was rusty, obviously, but still doing my thing. Our team won like 10 straight, and we made the playoffs. Mom was in the bleachers screaming for me. It was super fun. 

But, honestly … that’s all it was for me. Fun. I wasn’t thinking about basketball as something I’d be doing beyond senior year. I was seeing those games almost like 2K, actually. That playoff game, I remember I did well, but we still lost. Season’s over. All my teammates are in the locker room crying. And me, I’m thinking … Yo, that was so fun!!! Where we going to eat now??? Like, don’t get me wrong — I’m one of the most competitive dudes you’ll ever meet. But I just wasn’t thinking about my future at all. 

My mom, though? She had other ideas. 

I didn’t know a thing about it, but once I got reinstated, she was working the angles like crazy behind the scenes. Just doing her Dominican mom thing and hustling to find a way for everything to pay off for me. Making phone calls. Sending emails. Trying to get me tryouts with coaches. Telling anyone who’d listen that her son was a great player. 

I remember this one night, I’m up late playing video games, and get to bed around 4. The next morning, she comes into my room at 7, shaking my pillow. “WAKE UP!!! We gotta go!” Mom somehow got me into this basketball camp near New York for Dominican kids. (Completely behind my back!) She drags me out to the minivan, and we hit the road. Then we get there, I play in the camp, and when it ends, they make this announcement, the list of “top performers,” and they call my name. I’m like: Oh, cool. That’s great! Let’s get back home so I can get up on some Call of Duty. But mom … she’s not having it. She’s over on the bleachers meeting with these JUCO coaches, these NAIA dudes, anyone who was willing to talk to her, basically.

Next thing I know, she comes into my room and is like, “You’re going to Arizona!”

Whhhhhhhaaaaaaaaat?

“Arizona Western. Junior College. For basketball. You leave in two weeks. Get packin’.”

No lie, I’m crying hearing this. Bawling. Like: “How could you do this? I don’t want to go to Arizona!!!!” Real tears like…. “You can’t just make me do this. All my friends are here.”

But Mom was. Not. Having. It. She literally threw me a going-away party without asking me. Or telling me about it. Invited all my friends. Baked a cake. Everything. Like …. Adios! I’m at my own party crying like a baby. Trying to smile through it. I can’t even explain how crazy it was. 

A few days later, I’m crying in the minivan on the way to the airport. Then I’m bawling on the airplane looking out the window. And then I’m crying because I don’t know anybody in Arizona and I’m sometimes shy when it comes to meeting people. And then I’m crying because there’s no Dominican food in Arizona, and then….

I get on the basketball court in Yuma, Arizona, and everything just clicks.

A few years later, when I made it to UAB as a transfer? To be real with you … I felt like I had officially made it. Like things could never ever, ever get any better than that. After everything I’d gone through, I was going to be a D1 college basketball player. Like: Yaxel Lendeborg, D1 Athlete — I was super proud of that. 

And I was so happy at UAB. Just literally going through every single day with a huge smile on my face. And soaking it all in, too. They have me out there in the club doing line dances. I’m eating the best barbeque that you could ever imagine. (Strong shout out to Joe at Full Moon Bar-B-Que. Ribs to die for! Mac & cheese!) Dunking on guys. Collecting double doubles. Having fun. Every day. 

And then … the rocket ship keeps zoomin’, right. People start saying I’m the top player in the portal. Schools are calling me constantly. Texts like crazy. People sending letters in the mail. Like … the actual mail. With stamps! Schools offering ridiculous amounts of money. 

But I’ll tell you the truth about all of that. Every coach I talked to, I’d listen close to see what they were emphasizing most. And I know this is gonna maybe sound crazy, or you maybe might not believe me … but if a coach was focused most on the dollar amount they were offering, I’d cross that school off my list. Because what I cared most about was how a program would make me a better player, and help me to grow into a better NBA prospect. Like, for me … all the money that places were offering was more than I’d ever imagined seeing in my entire life. It was all life-changing money to me. So then it became: Where will I be the happiest? Which school will allow me to grow as a player and person? 

And when I asked myself those questions, it wasn’t a difficult call at all. 

It was Michigan for me pretty much right from the start.

I was already a big fan of Coach Dusty after playing against his FAU teams. It was clear he knew how to draw up plays and all that, but what I noticed the most was how he interacted with his players. You could tell he genuinely cared about those guys and wanted to see them shine.

And then, I don’t know if it was something about growing up in northern Ohio, not too far from Michigan, or what, but there’s always been something about that Block M for me. That legacy. And every conversation I had with Coach May, it all just kept sounding better and better. Plus, Mom was excited about Michigan. Always talking about it and smiling at me. I ended up committing without even taking a visit. 

Everything since then has been even better than I’d imagined. 

Coach May, especially. That man, he’s literally the nicest coach I’ve ever played for in my life. He’s great with Xs and Os, obviously, but even just forget basketball … he’s in here every day molding us into actual men. With high standards and a sense of how to treat people. I’m so thankful for that. It’s an honor to be coached by someone like that.

And then, the players. My brothers! So much skill. Morez. Aday. My guy Roddy Gayle. I could literally go down the whole roster. So many smart players. Also … I’ve never been around so many tall people in my life. No, seriously, it’s like: How are these dudes so big? You know Aday Mara is 7’3”, right? Crazy. And this isn’t one of those 7’3” guys where all they can do is dunk. He’s making behind the back passes. No looks. I’m like: I didn’t know they actually made people like that. And then he’s a beast on the other end, too. Early on in practices, he’d be blocking my shot every time. I’m talking to my coaches like, “Um, maybe I suck? I can’t score on this guy.” I had to go back to the lab and figure out some new moves. And that’s how it is with pretty much all the guys on this team — they’re always doing things that make me want to work even harder just to stay at their level. We’re always pushing each other. And any given night, any of us can go off, which I think takes the pressure off of us as individuals. It makes everything so fun.  

Now it’s just a matter of continuing to get better as a group, and of course putting it all together in March. If we do that, I really do believe that we can win a national championship.

And, for me, personally, that goal, the ultimate goal … it actually means something extra right now. Because it coincides with something that’s even more important to me than all the national championships in the world combined. 

It coincides with the fact that — now even more than ever — I’m playing for my mom.

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So yeah, about that phone call from Mom a few months ago.

I’d known for a while that she hadn’t been feeling well. Each time we’d talk, she’d mention feeling run down, or how she had a cold. At first, I thought nothing of it. But then she’d be going to the hospital to get checked out. Every time I’d ask about it, she’d tell me not to worry, or just change the subject. 

Then one night my phone rings. I see that it’s Mom. I answer … and it’s one of those things where, immediately, I knew something was up. From her very first words, I knew it was something bad. 

She kept telling me she loves me. Over and over. And that she cares about me more than anything. And is proud of me. That she never wants me to let anyone dim my light. I can still hear her saying all that stuff in my head. I swear she told me she loved me four or five times in that first 30 seconds alone. 

I was terrified about what was coming. At one point, I couldn’t take it anymore, and I was basically like,“Mom! Mom? Stop! What happened? What’s going on?”

I was so scared. Trying to predict what she was about to tell me. But even as scared as I was, I didn’t expect to hear the word “cancer.”

My heart sank as soon as she said it. 

And, I hate to admit it, but, if I’m being real, what I thought was … It’s all over. 

She said she had kept it from me, and didn’t want to say anything, because she knew how important this season was for me, and she didn’t want to mess it up. Didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize my future. It was so sad, man. But it says so much. She finds out she has cancer, and … she’s thinking about me. 

I broke down crying immediately. 

These days, my mom isn’t able to make it out to our games as often as she used to. It’s been a long, hard process. As I’m sitting here writing this, she’s finished up her ninth session of chemo. Three more to go. 

She’s the strongest person I’ve ever known. So I know she’s going to be OK. 

I’ll also be honest though … for me, as her son? I’m a wreck. I’m always trying to do what she says and “be strong” — I try to do that for her. But it’s just really, really hard right now, you know what I mean? It’s not easy pretending to be OK, and acting like everything’s fine, when you’re worried about the person you love more than anyone on this planet. 

I can promise you that I’m going to do the best I can with that — for her. Like I said, everything I do, it’s for her. But in some ways, that’s kind of out of my control. Because I’m gonna feel what I feel. I have no control over that, really.

One thing I can control, though, is I can do everything in my power to make sure my mom knows how much she means to me. I can make sure she understands that I’m so grateful for everything she’s done. And that all I’ve ever wanted was to be someone who my mom could be proud of, someone she is proud to call her son. 

Sitting here right now, during this amazing season we’ve been having … I’m just so thankful that basketball has allowed me to do stuff for my mom that I know she never would’ve imagined back in the day. (Definitely not back when she was taking my door off the hinges!) We still haven’t officially retired that old minivan, but I was able to get her a new Jeep to ride around in. And I’ve been able to pay off a bunch of bills, stuff like that. And now that we’ve been playing all these games on TV, it’s so funny … Mom, back home, it’s like she’s a local celebrity. She’s rolling up to Chipotle and behind the counter they’re like, “Hey, aren’t you Yaxel’s mom?!” They’re giving her burritos for free. Extra guac!!! She’ll call me up like, “Yax, guess what?!?!? I’m a famous mom now.” It makes me so proud every time she says that. Knowing that I can do something that makes her feel happy. 

And of course, I know that more than anything else, what makes my mom most happy is seeing me happy. Seeing me accomplish my goals. And I know there’s nothing I could do right now that would make her happier than seeing me keep working hard, keep playing my best, and help bring a national championship to the University of Michigan. So that right there is my focus. I want more than anything to cut down those nets — for so many reasons, but most of all for HER.

Because there were literally hundreds of times over the years when my mom could’ve given up on me. Times when, honestly, she would’ve had every right to give up on me. 

But she never did. And now here I am. 

Here we are. 

And now that we’re here??? Man … I just want to be the kind of person who was worth not giving up on. I just want to be the player she always believed in me to become.

I just want to make her proud.