Hello Strangers,
So I’ve been blog awol for a while. I have to admit it’s pretty hard to come back to this place of fun, silliness, and random fires that, let’s be honest, is my life.
February 14th my mom died.
My mother was an amazing force in my life, she was my cheerleader, coach, backer, counselor, confident, and drinking buddy. Not having her in my life is crippling.
The only nice thing I can say about all this is… we had time.
We found out about mom’s “probably benign” tumor in February of 2017. We then had months of chemo, a blessed month of “it’s probably gone”, the return, and then the final 3 months of accepting the end was coming.
I can’t even begin to list all the things I will miss from not having my mom in my life. If any of you have lost a parent you know, for those of you that haven’t, get up, leave your computer behind, and go hug them so hard and for so long.
My mom didn’t hug, she squeezed. She would come right up to me, nose to nose, take each of my arms with her hands and… just squeeze. It’s like she was sending me all her love and strength and confidence through her hands and into my body. I loved that squeeze.
The day I said my final goodbye to my mom, we both knew, this was it, we weren’t going to see each other after that day. My mom got up and took both my arms in her hands. I was keeping a good, fake, front. Big smiles, false optimism, telling her I loved her and I’d call her when I got back home. It was then that my mom did the squeeze. The woman in front of me was a mere shadow of the woman she had once been, but that squeeze, that was an original. It felt like she had gathered all her remaining strength and was sending me her final surge of love and strength and confidence.
It broke me.
I got to my car, drove 2 miles, pulled over, and cried huge, suffocating, gut wrenching, sobs. I had known at that moment that she had given me everything, all of her, to carry forward and keep me strong through what was going to come.
It’s been 3 months and I miss her more each day. There are some days I don’t even want to get out of bed, or shower, or even talk. But on those days I take each of my arms in my hands and I squeeze, and I remember who’s daughter I am… and I go on.
To my mom, the woman who taught me all the important things in life.
