Mother's Day Cards

I belong to an email support group for women who have lost their mothers within the last couple of years. It is a wonderful, supportive group and I am grateful to be a member of it. Today, one of the women mentioned she'd seen Mother's Day cards in the stores already & she couldn't believe how early they were coming out with them. She also mentioned this will be her first Mother's Day without her mother & she asked to hear from others about how they have coped or are going to try and cope with the situation. The following is what I wrote, it just flowed out of me as you see below:

"In a way, this upcoming Mother's Day will be the first without my Mom, because she was dying on Mother's Day last year & was almost totally out of it. She was in the intensive care ward of the hospital, her body racked with infection, lung cancer, and ravaged by the chemotherapy she'd been having. I remember sitting in the room with her, watching her sleep, not fully understanding at that point in time that she was dying. I sat there for hours with her, relieving my sister, and waiting for my brother to arrive. I sat there alone with her & the nurses, trying to read a book, trying to absorb what was happening...

So although she was there physically, and although she would wake up from time to time & try to talk to me, mentally she wasn't there anymore on Mother's Day of last year. Three days later, on Wednesday May 11th 2005, she died. She died during a moment when the hospital staff asked me, my siblings, and our spouses who were there to step out of the room for a moment while they rolled her over. At least one of us had been with her in the room all morning long, most of the time all of us were, and yet she passed on when none of us were in the room. I think she wanted to spare us from watching that final moment, I don't think she wanted any of us to see the moment she drew her last breath, and so she crossed over with only the hospital staff in the room with her.

I keep trying to keep it out of my mind, the fact that almost a year has passed since she died. May 3rd was her birthday, right before Mother's Day, and she died on May 11th. The month of May, which used to be my favorite month of the year because it was the month so many things seemed to burst back into life here in Minnesota, will never be the same again. Never. I will never be able to smell the lilacs again, her favorite flower, thinking of Spring with the same joyous freedom as I used to. May will be bittersweet this year, as it always will be from now on, until I myself leave this world & this life."

I miss you Mom, as always.