What my Mom taught me

For the past 4 months and 1 day I have swung from anger to disbelief to sadness and a myriad of other emotions in between. But, most of all I think I have been stuck like a broken record, asking myself...  Why? Why my Mom? Why me? Why so soon? Why didn't I know? Why so much for one family in one year? The simple answer I suppose, is that there is no answer. If it wasn't our Mom, our family, it would have been someone else's. But that doesn't make me feel any better. My Mom, my best friend was 60 years old, and I adored her.

The one thing that struck me this morning while I was out walking, is that for my own sanity, I need to try and see the light in this very dark and bleak situation. But how? The only thing I can come up with is to try and find a purpose from the one thing that happened that I had always dreaded the most, I have to look at my Mom and her life and work out what I have learned and what I could learn from her. She isn't here any more to talk to but she is still with me in my heart and in my memories and I need to listen to her and my heart and live a life that she and I can be proud of. To do that I need to examine it all. I need to be honest about all her triumphs and her failures as well as my own. My Mom and I didn't look alike at all, but inside I believe we were very similar.

I think that my Mom was very tired of life.Things had been tough in our family for various reasons for a long time. She was taken from us by lung cancer, but I think she was tired long before the cancer took hold. The sad thing was that when she was faced with her 2 week life expectancy, she suddenly realised that even though she was so tired, there was still so much more she wanted to do. She bargained that if the diagnosis wasn't as dire as she feared, that she would do things differently. The problem was the diagnosis was dire, and far worse than we had imagined. It was too late. I think that is the biggest tragedy. When a person comes to the end of their life, and has to say 'if only I had'...

There is one thing that sticks in my mind all the time. I was sitting with my Mom while she was still in the hospital and we were chatting. She eluded to the fact that she thought she had lived a 'small' life. That it wasn't a very important life. I told her that she had led and important life! It was important to me and hugely important to her grandchildren. But still, she felt her life had been 'small'. That was her opinion. But, I know for sure, that when I get to the end of my life, I don't want to feel that I didn't contribute or make a difference. I don't want to feel small.

That is why going forward, I need to examine my life and my Mom's to see what has been good and what would benefit from change.

Then at least, there may be some sense to come out of the loss of my Mom, my best friend. It won't have all been for nothing.