I’ve been reflecting on this a lot lately. Partly because I’ve had extra time with this quarantine and more time on my hands to think, process and truly feel a lot of things that I push aside when life is super busy and hectic. But also because as time goes on and there are more and more things that my mom is not here for, it is a constant reminder that I was not and never could have been prepared for what the rest of my life would look like without a mom.
I was young when my mom died. Way too young. Some of you may have been younger than me, however, most of you were probably older. Regardless of your age, this is not ever something you can be prepared for. People constantly say to me (even seven and a half years later), that they could “never imagine” going through what I have and not having their mom at this point in their life.
And that is my least favorite saying. It is my least favorite saying because there is no way I could have imagined it either. How could anyone? Does anyone spend time actually imagining what it would be like to lose someone that close to you way earlier in life than you ever should? I don’t think so.
Even when my mom was sick, it was hard for me to go there. I was a little more practical than the rest of my family in the sense that I knew my mom was going to die. I knew she had terminal cancer and I knew that no amount of prayer or a miracle was going to change that.
But that didn’t prepare me. I had 7 months to prepare you could say. 7 months of my mom being terminally ill. 7 months of trying to spend as much time as I could with her because I knew that at any moment, it could be our last.
Every time we did something I thought in the back of my mind that it could be the last time we would do that together. In 7 months there were a lot of “lasts”. Lasts that I was not ready to have.
No amount of time spent with her, conversations with social workers and therapists or forums on the Internet could have prepared me for what the next 7 years of my life would hold. No amount of counseling or support from loved ones could continue to prepare me for what is next in a life without her.
Living without my mom has been the hardest reality to swallow. It often doesn’t feel real.
I have grown up a lot in the time since my mom died. I have learned a lot about myself and a lot about life. But nothing I have ever learned could have prepared me for a world without her.
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Also, here are some great resources for anyone who has lost a mother
https://www.facebook.com/iamamotherlessdaughter/
https://www.facebook.com/Motherless-Daughters-153858391294874/?fref=ts