When I started this blog, it was meant to be a release for me… a way to get things out and off my chest. For the most part, I’ve done that, but I have been holding off, for one reason or another, on writing about a very important sad hurtful tough emotional subject, which is my mom.

My mom passed away in 2013. I had just turned 27. I had just gotten divorced. I had just watched my mom battle with and eventually lose the battle to cancer. I wasn’t there when my mom passed away, because I lived about 7 hours away. In the days before her passing, my mom was put on hospice, so we knew it would be coming fast. I had planned on coming up that weekend to be with my family, but something in my gut told me to head out early. I was on the road, about 3 hours into my trip, when I got the call from my sister with the news.

The hardest thing about my mother’s death actually wasn’t the part where she left this earth. It was the months and years preceding it that she spent.. leaving. My mom had a rare blood cancer that caused a lot of organ issues, including kidney failure, resulting in the need for a kidney transplant, and bone pain. Patients typically lived 3-5 years. My mom lived survived 8. I can’t say lived, because after a few years, when the pain began to become more than she could deal with, she spent most of her time in bed and on various pain medications. It became hard to deal with the situation and seeing her attitude and personality change.

There are a lot of things that happened in those years that have shaped the person I am today, some good and some bad. I hate that sometimes it is hard to remember the good, because so much of my adult life was spent with the bad. Nevertheless, when things get tough, I can’t help but be reminded of my mom’s spirit and how strong she was for me before she got sick.

My mom had a spirit that couldn’t be tamed. She was the strongest woman I knew for most of my adolescent years, even though she had her faults. She was always ready to face a challenge and find ways to overcome them. As an adult now, I often think back to times in my life when my mom shouldn’t have been able to pull off the things she did. She left home young, got married and had kids young, but still managed to achieve her career goals. When money was tight, she still found ways to give everyone in my family extravagant gifts at Christmas. When her credit should have been shot, she still found a way to keep a roof over our heads. I know it had to be tough and she had to be stressed out, but we never saw that, and she always came out okay.

It’s been almost 4 years since her passing, but I still find that in certain situations, there is nothing more that I want than to be able to call up my mom and just talk. I hate that in the last few years of her life, I couldn’t always do that, because of the toll her condition and the medication had taken on her, and I wish nothing more than to be able to have those pre-cancer years back.

Right now, I’m going through a huge life change, it is definitely one of those times that I just want to talk to my mom. To ask her, what would you do, what should I do?  To vent about the things that I’m sure my friends are sick of hearing about, but the kind of things that moms never get tired of listening to. To share in my success in my career. To show her I’m working hard to become a woman she would be proud to call her daughter, every single day.

tempest.

PS. If you can call your mom, hug her, tell her that you love her, go ahead and take a moment to do so.