One Year

I'm not sure how this is going to go...

Tomorrow marks the one year anniversary of my mom passing away.

It was both a good and a bad thing.  She had been sick for a very long time.  It wasn't a big surprise when the moment finally came.  We had been preparing for it for years.  We even had several dress rehearsals.

I remember the day the nurse pulled me into my mom's hospital room.  I was just a little girl.  They wanted to explain to me that my mom was now a diabetic, and would have to give herself shots.  She didn't want me freaking out when I saw it for the first time, so they explained the whole thing to me, in detail, so that I would understand why she would have to do this.

I remember the day, as an adult, when I first saw her half-gone foot.  For about a month, I had been taking her to her doctors appointments because she couldn't drive while her foot was "hurting" her.  The appointment was to clean out the wound on her foot.  I had no idea what this wound looked like, but in my simple mind, she had a cut on her foot.  I took her to the appointment and waited out in the waiting room for her to finish up.  She called me back to ask me something and I got the first view of her poor decimated foot.  It was at that moment that I knew she would loose her first limb.

I remember the day when my dad called me to tell me that her other leg was in danger of being amputated.  All I could think of was how was she going to make it on no legs?  She had poor balance on two legs!! 

I remember the morning I got a call from my dad, a few years back,  telling me that I had better get a plane ticket and come out, mom didn't have long to live.  My dear friends Todd and Paula gave me a ticket to go and see her.  And you know what she did after the doctor told us it was the end and we should say goodbye?  She lived.  Yep, she turned around, got better left that hospital and even went off the dialysis machine! It shouldn't have surprised us, this was the second time she had done this.

I remember the night I was sleeping on my mother-in-law's couch because she had just had surgery and I was helping her out, and the phone rang.  My Mom was going to the hospital, and would most likely have to have weekly dyalisis treatments from then on.  Her kidneys had given up.

And she lived like that for a couple of years.  She was tired a lot.  Her quality of life was poor.  She was very unhappy and felt really sick and tired much of the time.  Whenever I would go and visit her, I always said goodbye, like it was the last time, because I knew that it potentially was the last time I would ever see her. 

I remember the day my dad told me that the doctors suggested she be put in hospice.  I was out running.  I was a mile and a half from home, and I got off the phone and cried and ran the rest of the way home. 

It was a hard road for her the last ten years of her life, so her passing was a good thing.  We were happy she was out of pain, and wouldn't ever have to go and have another shot, blood draw, shunt insertion, dialysis treatment, hospital visit, or limb removal.

But this last year the sting of being motherless has been hard.  It is a really lonely feeling.  I am not going to pretend that my mom and I had a perfect relationship, because we didn't, it was far from perfect.  But what I do know is that she loved me more than her own life.  I know that she did the best she could.  And isn't that all that is required of us as moms? 

That we do the best we can.  

I miss her today, and although I am glad she isn't hurting, I would do anything to hear her laugh and have her talk to the grand babies she cherished.    

Kristen