Lonely

I've been feeling really lonely the last few days. I tried calling both of my siblings last week; I talked to my sister for awhile and that was nice. Then I tried my brother & he told me he'd call me back but he hasn't yet. Mom's grave still doesn't have a headstone yet & I was trying to find out what the plan was for getting one. My sister told me she sent my mother's rent rebate check to my brother so that we could buy a headstone but that she isn't up to helping select one out. My brother told me he hadn't gotten the money yet & that he'd call me back.

This is how it was when Mom was still alive...Neither one of my siblings wanted to talk about my mother's cancer or to try to deal with it with her. Both of them would just ignore it--my sister by coming out & saying that she couldn't talk about it or deal with it & my brother by not responding to me about it. It frustrates me that they both are so willing to continue the same patterns of denial even after Mom's death. Maybe I need to talk to them about it? Can't they ever think of things that way? Yet I can't fault them for dealing with things in their own way.

It was this time last year that I spent my last really long stretch of quality time with my Mother before we found out her cancer had come back. The first weekend in October of last year was just beautiful, like this past weekend, and I had gone up North to where my Mother lived to talk to her about the state of my marriage & to just get comfort from her. I remember we took a drive down some back roads to look at the fall colors & it was literally a golden day--so warm, the trees all shades of gold, & the sun filling the sky. Now I sit here a year later alone & without her. There doesn't seem to be much beauty in this fall season so far for me.

The holidays are coming up so fast, as is my birthday. I am not looking forward to celebrating anything this year because I don't feel like I have anything to celebrate. Last year, at this time, my entire family was so happy because there was no sign of her cancer anywhere in her body! We all had hope then, although we all knew that the odds were against her because of the type of lung cancer she had. The majority of people who are diagnosed with Small Cell Lung Cancer died within a year of the date they found out they had it.

I miss my Mom so much.