I lost my mum on May 2nd, after a battle with cancer. She had battled breast cancer 25 years ago, and recently, endometrial and most recently, lung cancer. In March, she had some palliative radiation that really helped her feel better...she could go out on her walks, breathe better, swallow better, and she generally felt well. She thought she might make it a little longer. But at the end of March, some seizures to one arm heralded a diagnosis of brain cancer, and while she struggled with her breathing, and her appetite, she was a strong, stubborn, and terribly self -reliant woman who kept trying to do her crosswords (cryptic ones!), and wrote letters to her friends and family in the wee hours when she couldn't sleep. The morning my sister and I took her to hospice, she was nervous, but alert, oriented, and lucid. She was ready to be cared for by OTHER nurses now. Ones that had had some sleep.

But I barely got her up to the front door of hospice before she went into respiratory distress (it was being outside with cars, construction...). by the time I wheeled her up to her room, and put her into bed, she arrested on me. and I just had to watch, and hold on to her, as she left me.

And though the healing has begun, there are still some days when I miss her so much, and I think I've forgotten to call her...you see, I have a terribly fractured family. I have 2 sisters, one who wouldn't speak to me before mum got sick, but now she does, and another that I haven't had anything to do with for years, as she moved out when I was 8. And my dad? Worthless. Called me days after mum died to start telling me how it was so much worse for him when he had to take care of his wife dying last year, and that his wife was "a peaceful person", which "your mother was not"...bullsh*t. I haven't spoken to him since, and wont again.

But it leaves one feeling very alone.

And sad on a saturday.