February 22, 2008

It feels important that I write this blog tonight on the date I had to face one of my biggest fears fifteen years ago. February 22, 2008 at 11:25 a.m. my mom passed away.....died....took her final breath, never to breathe again in this life. So dark and final. She was far too young to leave us at the age of 58, only days away from her 59th birthday. She use to always joke about how she hated getting old and she never really seemed to truly enjoy her birthdays. In her words, turning 60 meant she was OLD!!  I bet if she could have known that she would never get to be sixty. She would have viewed turning sixty differently. I know I do now that I am approaching fifty.  As of today I am ten years away from being the age she was when she died. Ten years doesn't feel long enough to accomplish all my dreams. I can't imagine not being here in ten years from now. Yes I know none of us knows how long we have left, but we hope to live the maximum life expectancy possible. 

So hard to believe my mom has been gone one and a half decades now. I want her here to see how her grandkids have all grown up and what they are up to as young adults. I want her to see how well my brother, sister and I are doing in our lives. There is so much she is missing out on. Losing her was one of my biggest fears ever since I was eight years old. I had a brother who died at the age of four years old from a rare cancer around that time period and that was my first understanding of what death meant. it meant your brother was gone forever! One day he was here and the next day he was lying in a casket looking like a  wax figure, that looked like my brother and yet didn't look like him. I developed this fear of dying and the dead. I remember for the longest time I was afraid of looking at pictures of my baby brother. They gave me this scared feeling, like I was looking at a dead person. Well into adult hood his framed picture at my dads place gave me that fearful feeling.  My mom was the most important person to me in my life and I did not want her to die and leave me.  

I had a nightmare when I was about 9 or 10 years old that I can still remember. We were back at. our house that we lived in when my brother died. These men came and took my mom outside the front door. She was crying and looking at me with so much sadness and guilt. It was like she was being taking away to jail but in my mind I knew she was going to die.  I was screaming and crying for them not to take her and someone was holding me back from running to her. I watched as they opened a heavy metal circular lid from the ground in our front yard not far from the front door. I walked closer to the hole in the the ground where they were putting her in. It was like a large sewer access hole you find in the city streets but it was in our yard and my mom was being put in there and the lid closed down tight. I knew I was never going to see her again and there was nothing I could do about it. 

I woke up screaming and crying. My mom came running into my room asking me what was wrong. I tried to tell her my dream. I can't remember what she said to me but I remember she just held me till I stopped shaking and crying. She reassured me that she was not going anywhere and that she was right here. I have never forgotten that dream and have often thought about it at different times in my life.  Usually during a movie when a characters mom is dying. I am sure it was brought on from the trauma of losing my baby brother at such a young age. I eternalized my fear of the very real possibility of my mom dying too!

When my dad passed away suddenly in 2003, five years before my mom. I remember feeling very guilty over my thoughts - if I lost a baby brother and now my dad then that means my mom is safe! Oh how I believed my mom was safe.  I felt like there was no way the universe could take three of my family members too soon! 

Five years after my dad passed away, my mom was gone too! Cancer is a cruel beast! My best friend and one of my top favorite people of all time is no longer here. I don't know where to begin to describe how much she meant to me. There is a big hole in my heart in the shape of her and not a day goes by that I don't miss her. It doesn't get easier with time, it just becomes a part of you. It's like I woke up in a slightly different  reality that I am forced to live in. A reality where my mom no longer exists and I had to learn to live without her. 

But she is not really gone. I see her in my kids mannerisms, likes and dislikes. I see her in me. Sometimes I hear her voice come out of my mouth. Usually when I am scolding one of my kids. She is here with us always and that is comforting. But I would give anything to sit on the couch with her and talk for hours about this crazy world we are living in and what her amazing grandchildren are up to in their lives. I would take her on travels across the ocean something she was never able to do. Since I can't have her here in person, I will take this day to hold her memory extra close. 

Facing my deepest fear in life in losing my mom has shown me that I am strong enough to make it through anything I set my mind on. It gave me the courage to file for my second divorce and do what it takes to break free from a toxic marriage and recreate a life on my own that I am proud of and love. A life filled with so much joy that I fear I won't have enough time to do all the things I dream of doing. Like being a master on the drums, writing that book, or traveling the world. 

Fifteen years later and I can feel my mom here with me cheering me on in life. "Life is too short to be anything but happy" she wrote me in her last letter.