3,153,600 Minutes

Here we are.  I can’t believe it’s been six years. I think about mom every single day; multiple times a day. The number of times that I still want to pick up the phone and call her is outrageously large. I miss her.

 I’ve been extraordinarily bitchy the last week, and it wasn’t until yesterday, that it dawned on me why. The week before mom died, we spent in the hospital sitting with her. Some praying for her. Most of us just talking to her or being with her. And all of us feeling the enormity of what life was going to be like without her. How could we cope? How could we go on? I think, subconsciously, my mind was remembering this week 6 years ago and that was putting me in a horrible mood. 

I can still remember exactly what was going on when I got the call. I had ordered pizza for dinner. I was still working and finishing up some report I was working on. My phone rang. I glanced at it and say it was Jeannette Wraspir. I ignored it. Then my phone rang again and it was Jeannette again. I knew something was up then. 

She very gently told me what happened. The words that stick out even today - "no brain activity". I wasn't sure what it meant but I knew I had to get on the next plane to Tucson. 

 5 days later, at 5:30 in the morning, the hotel phone rang. The doctor called to tell me that she had passed in her sleep in the night. We all had decided to go home the night before and we'd get a good night sleep and come see her in the morning. Us three girls stood at the foot of her bed telling her we were going home and we'd see her in the morning. I said to her that if she was ready to go, we were ready for her to be at peace. 

I hung up the phone from the doctor and sat on the bed wondering how I was going to get through the day without her. Then how is it going to get through the week. Then month. Then year. How was I going to get through all of the “first". The first Mother’s Day, the first birthday, the first Thanksgiving, the first Christmas all of it. I just didn’t know how I was going to survive. And yet here I am six years later having survived the time without mom. And maybe a stronger person because of it.  

Time has made it easier. Most of the time. But there are still days that grief reaches deep into my soul and pulls out whatever is left there.

Six years ago today the loss of mom crushed me. I never imagined I would ever be strong and steady again. Losing her crush me in a way I never imagined it would and yet it made me stronger in a way I never imagined it could.

Grief has no timeline. There isn’t a single day that suddenly the sun will come up and I’ll feel 100% healed. It doesn’t work that way. Instead, it’s like a roller coaster where you may not be able to see the twist and turns around the corner but you can be damn sure they’re there waiting to toss you around. f

I'll get past today. I'll survive the grief of today. Tomorrow I might even smile a little thinking of something Mom would have loved or some inside joke we had. I'll survive. She would want me to, in fact, expect it from me. 

I miss her.