Blogging to Heal

My mother died on December 28, 2008. That seems a lifetime ago now, and yet, it is still so fresh in my mind. Every word, every moment, seared into my memory, until they come drifting up at inopportune moments, making me panic, and suck air into my lungs to try to prevent the inevitable shudder and wave of pain that erupts from my core.

I have been threatening to write a book for quite a long time. I may still do that. But at this point, a blog seems easier, quicker, cheaper, and so, I will blog instead. I will blog to try to attempt to heal my soul, and to get some of this out, in order to address it finally, and then, hopefully to let it go, and to survive, to survive death.

My mother, Barb, died in December. She was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer that had already spread to her liver, and outside her lungs to her chest cavity and spine. It was April 10, 2007. She was given three to six months to live if they did nothing, and six months to no more than a year if they did everything in their power to combat the disease. She was basically encouraged to go home, say goodbye to everyone, and enjoy whatever time she may have left.

Barb chose to fight it with every ounce of her being. She endured four different courses of chemotherapy, radiation therapy to her brain after suffering a grand mal seizure from the brain tumor that developed, and a month before she died, she survived a bowel impaction that was so severe she almost succombed to the sepsis alone. Still, she made jokes, never complained, rarely asked for help, and steadfastly denied she was dying, preferring instead to insist that she was going to be the miracle, the one in a million that actually beat the thing. She lasted eighteen months.

I don't know what was worst: watching her die, or being unable to talk to her about her dying. She refused to entertain the discussion. She never let me say what I needed to say, to apologize for ever giving her anything to worry about, for always arguing with her, for not agreeing with everything, for having different taste than her. She never let me thank her for being my mom, even though I have played the ungrateful, little brat card a time or two. She never told me exactly what should happen with her things, other than a couple of key items, and she never answered my questions as to what kind of obituary she wanted.

The only thing she ever said was that she wanted her ashes spread at the lake where her mother's were spread, and so that is what we did. We had to say goodbye to her ashes, because she wouldn't let us say goodbye to her. Maybe that is what is really bugging me. Probably it is much more than that. But that is enough for now.

This blog will be a memorial to that journey that we took together. Every thing I can remember about going through that experience, how I attempted to handle it, how it made me feel, and hopefully, at the end, I will have figured out a way to survive her death and move on.