Stuck

One of my favorite bloggers is Faith.   I have been following her since she  first started blogging.  I can't even remember how I found her.  But anyway, this isn't what this post is even about.  On August 8, Faith  
lost her mom to cancer.  I know the date because she courageously wrote about that day here.  Reading that post has finally made me reflect on the passing of my own mother.  I was stuck.   I am going to be honest with  you all.  My life as I knew it stopped October 28, 2011.  After that day, I just existed.  I tried to be strong for everyone.  Saying all of the appropriate things, you know "She is out of pain" , "God needed her more than we did", but the truth is I just kept replaying that whole day over and over again.  I miss my mother so much.  Some days are better than others.  I HAD to leave Atlanta.

We weren't from Atlanta.  I moved there in 1996 right before the Olympics.  My mom came down several times to help me with the kids and whatnot.  Fall of 1999, my little sister moved down there and May, 2000 my brother, mother and sister-in-law followed.  We made the Atlanta metro our new family home.   It's funny, but because we don't really have any roots in the states, where ever we all landed became home.

We made so many memories down there.  So fast forward to May 2011.  That is when we found out my mom had pancreatic cancer.  I was hopeful  delusional.   We found out on the Monday after Mother's Day, and by Thursday she was in the first of her weekly 2 day chemo treatments.   One weekend, after an especially brutal set of treatments, my mom looked at my sister and I and said, "I can't do this for six months."   Foolishly, I corrected her and said "Mom, the treatments are six weeks."  She knew. I am convinced she knew that she was dying.  She knew before the doctors told us. She knew before we all cried together in the living room that August day after we were told she was going to Hospice treatment.  After she told us she couldn't do it for six months, my sister and I went outside into the backyard all the way to the edge of the woods and we cried. We didn't want her to hear us so we went to the furthest part of the yard to weep. For the first time in 41 years, I realized that while I often would roll my eyes when she gave unsolicited advice, I wasn't going to have her anymore.  I wasn't going to be able to pick up the phone and hear "I didn't want anything, I was just calling." 

You know what the problem is with finding out someone is terminally ill?  Everyone stops living and begins grieving.  I feel like I was grieving from May until October.  Even though no one actually uttered the word "terminal" until August, I knew.  Every day I would wake up and wonder if that was going to be the day.  I remember the first time we thought she was going to pass before the morning, it was in August when she was put into ICU.  I wasn't ready.  I cried all night.  Every time she spent the night in the hospital, I spent the night in the hospital.  Those six months were torture.  Part of me hated to see my active mother turn into a shell of herself.  But the little girl in me just wanted her here.

So in August, I called the Can.cer Treat.ment Centers of America.  The closest one was in Tulsa.  I was desperate.  I wanted them to fix her.  They told me since the doctors had taken her off treatment she was no longer a candidate.  I HATED them.  I screamed....I cried...I argued with God  and then I went back to showing strength on the outside while crumbling on the inside.    After my mom passed, they brought a CTCA to Atlanta.  I passed the billboard on the way to work one day....and I pulled over screaming and crying right there on 75 South.  I lost it....I found other ways to work so I wouldn't pass the billboard.   By September 2013, I had made up my mind.  I was leaving Atlanta.  I began applying for jobs back in Maryland.  I needed to get away from there.  I was gone January 2014.  I don't miss her any less, but I have learned to exist with that piece of me missing.  some days are better than others.  Some days I can think of her and smile fondly...but then there are the other days when the tears won't stop.  I just deleted her number from my phone...Doesn't matter...I know it by heart 678-494-9134.

I am not as stuck as I was when I lived in Atlanta.  The tearful days are further apart now.  Life has forever changed for me, but with time I am learning to just live differently.   If you still have your parents, I will pray that your burden be light when it comes time to say good-bye to them.  Parents are the first people we meet, I guess that is why that is one of the toughest losses we will ever face.

Thanks for reading.


MzNewy