Daughters that have lost their mothers.

kellyh33 said:

Hello
Hi Brittany,
I think you must have started posting here before i became a board member. It sounds like you are doing pretty well after losing your mom to ovca. My mom is also terminal and sometimes it seems like i can feel my heart literally breaking into pieces. How do you get through it?
I am doing a walk for my mom too. Too bad we didn't live in the same area, we could have done it together. Let me know how it goes.
Sending hugs your way,
Kelly

BrittanyC said:

Wow Thank you for all of
Wow Thank you for all of the replies!


Kathleen - it was great meeting you! I hope that next time when you come, we can sit down and chat And have some coffee

I sent you the information on the walk on your facebook. It is Sunday, July 24th.

LaundryQueen - My bunny is a brat. She loves to push and boss me around. She is the only one that is allowed to.

I'm under my dad's insurance now and I do have to pay for the test (this whole health system is.. rather confusing). My mom was given the opportunity to get genetic testing but she was too ill to get it done The cancer hospital she went to was abnout a 45 minute drive. I will be getting insurance through my job in a few months, so I will be taken off my dads. I plan to get genetic testing done. I want to know. I told my mom that I would get a hysterectomy after my (future) child bearing years.

Kelly - I had a benign cyst in 2009 and I had to get an ultrasound done. A cyst was found, and I was on anti-inflammatory medication for a week. I don't get cramps very much due to birth control so I thought it was not a good thing when I was having pelvic pain.

Barbara - My grandma is doing well. She has my mother's ashes in her house until I am ready to go back to Hawii. My mom has always loved grandma's house.. it was always a sense of peace being there. My mother's urn has purple and pink roses on it - my mom loved pink, and I love purple.

I remember the time when it got closer to my mom's passing and my grandma and I went to a funeral home to do arrangements. My grandma had to talk to my mom... my mom was in denial about leaving.. but my grandma somehow got my mother's last wishes. I was put in a room with all different sorts of urns.. I was shaking. I did not cry and I don't understand that til this day.

In November of last year, Grandma thought of the idea of having a headstone placed underneath where my grandpa (mom's dad) is buried. I'm not sure if you can see this picture, but here is the link: http://i604.photobucket.com/albums/tt122/burichi2009/momsheadstone.jpg
(I guess photobucket won't let me post the complete link. To see the picture, get rid of all of the **** and add a period after 'momsheadstone.' and add jpg and I hope you will see it!)
Lisa - we will be in touch I REALLY like the fish picture btw

Kellyh33 - I was a wreck the entire months that my mom was terminal. She made me go and live life. I felt bad about doing it, but that is what she ordered me to do (I listened to my mom so she knew what was best). My grandma was there with me all of the way. She lost my grandpa and learned that staying in the hospital the entire day is not healthy. She guided me to make sure my hair also did not fall out.

There were days when I did not want to get out of bed, did not want to eat, or even want to go to work.

When is your walk?

Carlene - .. I believe.. no matter what, no matter age, no matter of what happened, it is always hard losing a parent

I will always remember the words from my mom "I'm sorry I made you grow up so fast." and I remember saying back "Mom, I needed to grow up.."

Hissy_Fitz said:

My mom did not have OC, but
My mom did not have OC, but she was ill for a long time with Parkinson's Disease and Degenerative Disk Disease, which is very painful (compression fractures). She had worked very hard most of her life. She was a single mom and worked two jobs while I was growing up - a teacher and whatever she could pick up during Summer and Christmas break, plus weekends. She took in ironing to pay for my dancing lessons. I hardly ever saw her, for about 10 years. I had an older brother and he was my caregiver. Once her children were on their own, and a doting great aunt left her some money, she retired and began to enjoy her life. She took road trips with her garden club cronies, in search of rare orchids. She was a terrific grandmother - much more involved and relaxed than she was when I was a child.

My mother and I often had a difficult relationship. She had very high standards, and I never felt like I was adequate in her eyes. She was going thru menopause when I hit puberty - not a pretty sight. Our house was an estrogen war zone.

In her later years, when she needed a lot of care and just general help with things, I lived 200 miles away and my brother, who lived 10 miles from her, was useless. So I moved. Packed up my family, disrupted my kids' whole way of life (we lived in a rural area and they had horses and go-carts and all that that implies), and insisted my husband find a new job. All so I could look after my mother. I don't regret it to this day.

When my mother died, it was very sudden. I took her to the ER because her breathing was labored. They diagnosed pneumonia and admitted her, saying she would be fine. That evening, I got a call that she had been moved to ICU, following a fall and a suspected blood clot. She had evidently been throwing small clots for days. One had hit her lungs, thus the pneumonia. Again, though, they said she would be fine. They encouraged me to go home, around 3AM, and I did. I spoke to her again the following morning and told her I was on my way. When I got there, the doctor met me in the hall. When he put his arms around me, I knew.

I was 42 years old and felt like a motherless child. I WAS a motherless child. It took me 5 months to clean out her house. I could not stay there for more than an hour at a time. I would end up sitting in the floor, crying. I was absolutely useless and eventually just had someone come in and take everything away, after designating certain things I wanted to keep. My husband packed those up and some of them, I didn't unpack for years. I could not spend my mother's money for a long time. I did not consider it my money and I thought she would be angry at me.

Gradually, it got better. We buried her and I ordered a perfect headstone and made sure it was installed ASAP. Those kind of things were very important to her. I sold her house without ever going back inside. The older I get, the more I can see her in the mirror. But now, it doesn't hurt. In fact, it's rather comforting. It's the natural order of things.

My mother died in November, 1989, at age 78. She would have been 100 years old last month.

Carlene

kellyh33 said:

Carlene, your post makes me cry. I always think of you as being a super strong person. It is not going to be easy i know this but reading that you and Brittany have survived it gives me a little bit of comfort.
Does it still make you angry or are you past it? I get angry when i think of losing my mom before she reaches 70. It doesn't seem fair, her mom lived to be 88.