Sometimes, I decide to write because words repeat in my head.  They seem to need to get out and be heard.  Today’s words are as follows:

Six years ago today – which happened to also be a Friday – I started my day having a mom and a dad and ended my day as a child with only one living parent.  It was a truly horrible day that suddenly seemed unavoidable.  Mom had cancer, she was on chemotherapy, she got a fever and went to the hospital as instructed, she came down with pneumonia, the pneumonia wouldn’t go away, and the doctors said they could not keep her on the life support as she was in ICU indefinitely.  We had to move her to a long-term vegetative care facility or take her off life support.  Dad, Jenny, and I agreed (and it was in her estate planning documents) that she would not want to be on the long-term support.  But it felt like murder to withdraw the machines keeping her alive and watch her try unsuccessfully to breathe on her own.  It is still one of the worst memories I have.  And I don’t think she ever could have done that to (for?) me.

I never went to chemotherapy with Mom, and I am surprised and disappointed by that.  It was her fourth battle with cancer and I really thought she would beat it like she always did.  Mom never met a stranger and I know I was working during her chemotherapy appointments, but if I had it to do over, I would have gone, at least once, to show her I understood what she was going through – that it was significant and unpleasant and a life-or-death battle.  I didn’t go because I didn’t understand.  Isn’t that silly?  I just really didn’t think she would die.  It was completely inconceivable to me until I heard “life support” and a doctor described how much oxygen she was relying on to breathe and how much pneumonia mucus was clogging her lungs.

Six years ago, my life changed forever.  It is not better.  I have recovered and strengthened and moved forward, but life will never be better without Mom.  The world will never be better without Betty Aileen Hood Lynn and the kindness and love that she took with her everywhere, to everyone.  I represent her as best I can.  I look more like her all the time, I still wear at least one dress that was hers, I send cards like a champion, and I still haven’t thrown away all of the things she accumulated.

She has no regrets.  She holds nothing against me.  That’s the beauty of where I believe she is, and it’s also who she was in life – not so much the lack of regrets, but the forgiveness.  I know she is reading this over my shoulder as I write it, hands on my shoulders, telling me it’s OK.  Because she always will be the best mom ever.