I have a tremendous desire today to talk to my mom.  It is all I want...and I will never have it again.  I hate brain cancer!!!

A simple year ago

My mom was alive.  Her condition was awful and she was suffering, but I could touch her.  I was able to hold her hand, put my hands in her hair, feel her skin...she was alive.

I sit at home on the eve of the one year anniversary of losing her.  I am in utter disbelieve that a) this is my reality b) it has already been a year and c) just at how unfair it is that I lost her.   I have been thinking about the deep sense of emptiness that I have been feeling for the last year.  Esther and I talked about today how the world seems to overlook the altering experience of parent loss.  "it's the natural cycle of life..." our culture tells us...   However, being 31 and losing my 52 year old mother - there is nothing natural about it.  

Yesterday was really rough.  I was crying off and on all day...when I got home all I wanted was to hear her voice.  I listened to a few of the saved messages I have from her.  Then I moved on to pictures...I was flooded with memories that are still to painful to recall.  Mostly because they remind me how much I lost a year ago.  I finally decided to go to bed to end the night of crying.  I had this urge to fall asleep hugging something of hers.  When I pulled out the blanket from her house, I was not able to smell her on it anymore.  HEARTBREAKING.  

Knowing that the little things like her smell and her voice - are only a memory and i'll never know them in person again - makes my heart ache.  I will never know what she looks like old.  My I will nevers can go on and on...

I took tomorrow and Friday off from work.  I had initially planned to donate food to the Nashville Humane Society, instead I am going to make a financial contribution in her honor.  I am also going to buy a brick and have her name placed on the brick.  I love that I will have something with her name here in Nashville.  I am going to meet Jason for lunch.  I am then going to go shopping and grab a coffee somewhere.  Mom and I always loved to shop together...we loved having coffee together...we just loved being together.  I know that she would not want me to spend my entire day crying and focusing on her.  In the evening I have my neighborhood meeting that I'll hopefully attend, then a few of us typically go out afterwards.  

Tomorrow is not any more or any less sad.  I carry this sadness around with me all the time.  Just some days are a little bit more unbearable than my "new normal" days.  My hope is that tomorrow is tolerable and the anxiety and buildup to the anniversary is the worst part.  

Regardless, Mutti, I miss and love you more than my simple words can express.  

-TT-