Thank God this day is almost over

I need to vent. Please forgive me if it's too much but I've got to release all of this.

I really thought I'd be able to handle this day. Granted it hasn't even been 2 weeks since I lost mom but I really did think I could handle this Christmas. Lets just say the hollow feeling is horrible. I think I've cried at least 5lb's worth of water today. Thats yet another thing Cancer has taken from me. There is no control over all these emotional waves at all. You cannot fight it off. It just lingers until you cave completely to it and it comes crashing down.

Last night was a challenge. I did exactly what I said I was going to do. Went to a friends place knowing it was the healthy thing to do. Only one big problem. They invited way more people then I was aware of and was never told. I'm still in a bit of a haze and not ready for large groups of people laughing and chattering away just yet. I feel a bit shell shocked and want things around me to be very peaceful for a bit. I shop early in the morning to avoid stuff like that for now. Anyway, it was obvious they all knew what had happened in my life recently so there I was the odd ball stranger who had just a week and a half prior suffered a loss so great and so violently I can't even bare to honestly deal with it. They looked at me not with sympathy but a strange cold look trying to figure out why I was even there considering what I'd just been through? The look also included a check to see if I was going to be too emotionally intense for all of them. None of them knew me. I understood that look. What a potential lousy christmas eve for them to have that level of emotion enter their environment. I wanted to run.

What I represented was too much to handle. They weren't there to console anyone so there was no way I was going to give any impression I was feeling horrid inside. I tried my hardest to gain my composure after the shock of seeing all their faces. There were moments of descent conversation but still it all seemed strained. I was relegated to wallflower status as the deep gawking continued to follow me for a while so my friend sat next to me. Thank God. I understood her sincerity in what she attempted to provide to me. My friend did what she thought would be correct. She tried to make things appear as if life goes on. She knows me as a very social dynamic personality and was offering that type of setting for me to enjoy. The only problem is I'm just not ready this early on to embrace that. I also am very aware of the reality that life moves fwd but with so many strangers used without their knowledge to prove that point to me it was actually making me feel awful. Not to mention they all happen to know the single most horrific very personal thing that has happened in my life. I will say oddly only one offered any type of verbal condolence. The rest never even mentioned it. They just avoided talking to me and stared. Looking back I found that choice of alienation odd. I felt like for the first hour periodically I was going to crumble and lose it knowing I was being watchd carefully and had the feeling they could sense it and were just waiting for it. Awkward would be an understatement.

I haven't even buried my mother yet. I need for it to appear just for a bit longer as if life truly does care and not for it to show me it simply just moved on and my mother was nothing more then just a name and number both to be slowly methodically forgotten and written off. Just give me that much. I'll deal with the rest later. I have to be able to dictate some of this to feel like I'm gaining my balance in all of this. I've been running a hundred miles a minute for so long and now I need to slow things down just a bit and go at this next journey a bit slower.

I didn't walk away any stronger after going there, but true to my character I made it look that way when I left. I stayed 4 hours and outlasted the majority to prove a point that I could take it no matter how lousy it felt. No matter what all of them thought as they gawked I decided if I outlasted them then they couldn't say I was miserable since I stayed longer then all of them.

I was completely dumbfounded at how my friend went about all of that. I just kept thinking that at least she could have let me know she was going to do that and chances are I wouldn't have went. What made it even more uncomfortable is the fact that having had no rest in about 9 months I still feel like a vile zombie in appearance and know I look completely worn out. I hate seeing me in the mirror. You'd think I was an alcoholic the way I look with the luggage under my eyes and I don't even drink. I've lost a lot of weight as well so I have this gaunt pasty look as well. I would have preferred not being gawked at looking like this. Not the way I was being looked at. It made me very nervous and actually lousy about myself.

I fantasized at one point I was going to lose it and yell.. YES! my mom just died and YES I'm seconds from wanting to burst in tears because you are making me feel so uncomfortable. I'm here because my friend is trying to show some sympathy but to get me here she lied and said this was a small gathering. To be quite frank I can't stand all your happiness when you aren't throwing me cold stares trying to figure me out. I don't know any of you and have no desire to know any of you because those cold looks tell me more about you and how socially inept you are. At least say something to me. Don't you want to talk to the freak? Ask me a question and if not for the love of GOD stop gawking at me. Keep it up and I'll eat a booger right in your face. I even fantasized about standing up and flapping my arms and starting to cluck like a chicken just for entertainment so they could all say the mourning one truly lost it. We knew it would happen. I can still see them. Especially this one lady who had these dark eyes. There was so much coldness I will never understand it. Take a picture it last longer is all that kept running through my mind. I wanted to tell her she had lipstick on her teeth but decided to let her sit there with it all evening.

I did well though faking it. I guess I can give myself that much credit. That is a game I learned months ago while facing moms slow death. I faked being strong. You couldn't read me as far as how much anguish I was dealing with. My pain would have crushed her and in no way would I have done that to her. However, I'm tired of that game. Last night when I saw those other moms hugging their daughters and sons, when I heard all the laughing I wanted to just run. I was jealous, envious, and hurt my friend had submitted me to this. I know she meant well but did she not realize I'd long to be doing that on that evening with my mom? Once again I felt like God was messing with me and he used a friend to put me through that hell. It wasn't her fault. I've been abandoned by most friends because of all of this so who really knows how to deal with all of this on behalf of a grieving friend?

I hated hearing about what they all had planned for the following day as a family. I hated hearing their lifes little complaints which were so stupid compared to all I had just seen in my own home. I wanted to unleash my detailed horror stories on them to make them realize how ridiculous their complaining about standing in line for an extra 20 minutes at the grocery store truly was and how blessed their day was if thats all they had to deal with.

I wanted to tell them how horrific it is to daily watch your sweet mothers dignity being ripped from her while she deals with pain, diarrea, constipation, puking, confusion and looming death from a disease that is eating her insides out. I wanted to tell them about the time she asked in the most heartbroken way... "why does God hate me?" and how I wanted to just hold her and take all of it away from her. Instead to get her through those feelings when you are actually wondering yourself where the hell is God? You can only respond in a gentle soothing way that in no way does God hate her.

I wanted to tell them about one of the dozens of Dr's visits we had taken where she looked at her sweet Doctor and said she believed without exception in Divine healing and that she accepted she had cancer and was dying but that from her heart she just wasn't ready to die. Her whole life her little body faught to survive. She knew nothing else. It was so sad a moment her Doctor had to step out to find composure.

I wanted to explain to them whats really going on inside of you on days like that while providing comfort inwardly you are screaming out to God begging and pleading him to please fix her and don't allow this suffering. You scream internally WHY??? over and over considering since childhood to the present she'd already suffered so much physically enduring a deforming disease. You can't believe she is forced to ask him why he hates her at this point in life considering she'd served him unconditionally without question when most wouldn't because of those past challenges.

Those things alone should have granted her the right to be fixed and made whole but while calming her and your inner begging waits for his answer you realize there will be no healing and you are left perplexed wondering how did we come to deserve all this suffering?

Every day while she watch's you carefully to see if you are ok you continue to change her diapers acting as if it's just part of the day as simple as the sun rising and falling looking in her eyes to make sure she doesn't feel embarrassed knowing in your guts it is degrading and you smile and softly. Wink and make some conversation to take her mind off what is happening. You then turn her very carefully knowing any movement is very painful. You want to vomit over the agony you are feeling inside as you see the emaciated body this disease has produced but you smile from the heart and kiss your sweet mother on the forehead and assure her every thing is ok. You apply more pain meds for releif and continued rest. You wonder in her case is it really working or after all those years of pain from other problems and not ever complaining about it has she learned not to even tell you if there is additional pain? This is what I wanted to tell them while hearing those ridiculous complaints of theirs.

Oh to be one of them complaining about standing in a line at the store too long knowing it was mere cookies and cream compared to what I've seen. I felt forced to watch my sweet mother being tortured day after day. I said more then once it was like chaining someone to the back of a car and dragging her relentlessly all over the place and you are bound in a corner forced to watch in horror trying everything in your power and thought process to get free from this horror and run to her rescue to end her suffering. So, Yes! I'll take the 20 minutes in the grocery store checkout line as my biggest complaint for the day. I think I'll manage that horror just fine.

I just felt as if it was an uncalled for moment that felt cruel to thrust on me without complete notice, but as I said I performed well. Cancer definitely give me that one tool. There is honestly nothing left in life that will shock me to the point I will not be able to maintain my public composure. I can fake strength of character without even blinking at this point. I can accept any horror. I pretty much believe it's going to happen regardless. I've said the only thing left to try and mess with me is to tell me I'm homeless. I'd simply say.. OK and I'd just grab my backpack, my jacket, a bottle of water a toothbrush a few articles of cloths and start walking with my heald held high and figure it's yet another sentence of horror to finish me off ordained by my dear loving God who literally turned his back on me almost a year ago.


I'm getting very sick of saying nothing to those who do and say stupid things in my pressence knowing in my guts no one around me gets what I'm feeling. This wasn't just a simple loss. It was months of walking in the center of hell and watching the most beloved person of your life suffer daily. I never dared to evaluate each day of hell I was going through while I worked my hardest to make sure she was as comfortable as possible. I just focused on her. But when the end came and the second she took her last breath it was like a slow panning out of the final scene of a movie. I shook violently with shock and suddenly all those feelings about what had taken place for 9 months daily started coming back all at once.

All those hidden feelings one by one day after day after day after day. It was like a damn had burst. First the confusion about a sudden switch in her health that just wasn't adding up. A misdiagnosis that made no sense. A lingering illness that wasn't adding up to what they said it was. Weeks of sleeping at the foot of her bed not really sleeping but jumping up and down cleaning her vomit puzzled at what was going on. Hour after hour of the bedpan every other day looking at waist thats color clearly suggested something much more serious was going on. Watching her get weaker and weaker realizing there was no longer enough strenght for her to do much of anything. Carrying her back to the E.R. a third time demanding complete testing no matter what they thought it was I wanted proof. Hearing the words NO CANCER after every test and finally feeling relief only to continue with more illness and frailty. Aching for her The first time I had to clean her and change her and the thoughts of how degrading it must be. My heart still sinks realizing how awful that must have felt. I hid all those feelings and just moved fwd so scared and confused as to what was going on. Final hearing the word cancer and completely stunned considering I'd been so thorough with that earlier. Swiftly sending her across the state for A useless surgical procedure she was talked into that reduced her brain to half the woman she was and created more complications that could have been avoided. I get why I pushed those feelings asside. Had I dwelled in them I would have crumbled and she needed me. Now letting them out it's unbaerable. If I were watching a movie of all that happening to someone else my own jaw would be on the ground. It's too gruesome to make a human go through all of that.

How could God strip her so raw after all these years of suffering from other life time physical challenges and now add more Pain, swelling, emaciation, fear, abandonement and the reality of death in the most vile way? Talk about the wheel of emotions. Heartache, and sadness daily. Overwhelming personal issues that should have never been in the equation but were added little bonuses to make it even harder to focus. This was the added grey area that just made it even more gruesome.

In a span of two weeks I lost every thing financially I'd carefully put away. Knowing I had no choice but to give up work to care for her I also had to accept that the economy is so bad when it was all done and said and I stepped back out to regain employment it may take months to get just about anything to make ends meet. I found supplemental income as moms home care provider but had to to wait months for the county to process papers which meant retro pay whenever they got their act together. So bills piled up quickly as the little bit of money we had went for all the gas used for the multiple trips to hospitals and tests that weren't fully covered not to mention co payments on meds and the special menu she needed for proper nutrition and all the supplies for her personal care. For the first time in 20 years out of nowhere and right at the beginnig of our journey to hell I got very sick. I literally crawled into to the ER unable to breath and had laryngitis for over 2 months and had to come up with a way to communicate with all her Dr's. In the process I had acquired yet another bill for that illness of my own. I had no time for rest for myself. I didn't care I just pressed fwd through the storm. For the first time in my life I had to degrade myself and beg for help financially. Realizing when it was done and over if I wasn't careful I really would be out on the streets. Additional setbacks occured personally. Watching her cry in fear and confusion just killed me. I couldn't ever share with her that because much of the backpay I'd be getting for taking care of her would have to cover over due bills and all the barrowing I feared after losing her I'd lose my home. I'm leaving a lot out of this nightmare including desperate measures to get to her when she was sent all over or the fact that out of nowhere my automobile started breaking down because it's too much to digest. I sit back dumb founded at all that has happened. I wasn't allowed to just focus on her yet it's what I tried my hardest to do. There wasn't a moment that I didn't want to just desperately take her in my arms and make her all better or crawl in that bed with her and pull the blankets over both our heads. Instead I was reduced to a feeling of complete dispair and ruin beyond repair for the first time in my life watching everything crumble around me and trying desperately not to lose my most valued posession on this earth. My sweet mother.

No sleep. There has been way too many worries to relax enough for any good sleep. Many times I'd have nightmares during short naps. It was so overwhelming while I was looking at her that all i can say is now that it's done and over I remain in complete shock. I swear I will never be able to explain to anyone how I got through it all. I don't know if I really did make it. I'd still prefer for this to have been a nightmare and I'm really way past being ready to wake up and have things back to when mom was completely healthy and things were safe and organized and my biggest complaint for the day was waiting 20 extra minutes at the grocery store.

I just don't know how I'm going to keep dealing with these uncontrolled waves of emotion. I'm stunned at the brutality we were handed. When mom started getting ill and after finally getting diagnosed I said every day of continued bad news it was like another brick being smashed in my face. My mom a once very strong willed woman also displayed the same shocked look and response. We were both totally beaten down on every level shocked by every thing. You honestly think you are cursed. There never was any good news. Not enough to make you jump for joy because you knew even if there was slight good news one hour later there may be something real bad. It's been like a gross taunting joke. Now with her gone daily it seems like the brick has been replaced with a veil which will come over me smothering me with such overwhelming sadness because at the root of this loss is trying to come to terms with the reality of what has happened and the fact I will never see her again on this earth or hear her. I was so busy caring for her I refused to address this moment. It's so final, cold, and empty. Gutwrenching and unbearable is all I can call it.

Today was awful. My first Christmas EVER without my mother. I sat on the couch all day smoking cigs and feeling like I couldn't even move. The silence was defeaning. All I kept saying while crying was "oh my God" I hear it coming out of my mouth and it's the only thing I can say to sum up the fact she's really gone. It really took her. Ironically She made the comment to me over a year ago while healthy she was going to live for years. I always worried about her health. This came out of nowhere in the most violent way.

I am so mad at God I want a chance to tell him off good to his face. I can't wait for that moment. He took took from me the single most cherished thing in this world that I had. The manner in which he took her was cruel. In the process he allowed my own life to collapse in ruin and now I'm here on this earth alone. The fears I've dealt with would take most people out for life unable to even think of their own name yet something inside of me still says hold on. Fight.

This week I get to plan her funeral. I can't beieve it. Next week I stand amongst some people who avoided me or have said some of the single stupidest things to me. All of them have one common thing they share. They will never understand the magnitude of this loss for me. They will babble some nonsense and safely go back into their own environment and enjoy the fact that my sorrow is not theirs. I want to muster up the guts to tell anyone who says something stupid to me to shut up I just don't want to hear it any longer. I want complete respect and not large doses of stupidty any longer.

I was everything my mother was not allowed to be physically far before cancer. I was her arms that never worked properly and her legs she could never use because of prior disease she suffered as a child. My story is unique. From a small child I looked out for my mother. I was a miracle baby. Never meant to be but yet I was. My older brother the first miracle baby we sadly lost years ago. I was the only one left. Dad cheated on mom repeatedly so she finally dumped him and after that even though she had all these challenges became an incredible independant woman and mother. She was amazing. I simply never looked at life in a selfish way. Whatever she couldn't do physically I did and thats the way life was. I don't know how to put myself first. I've spent my life time thinking of her needs. Every thing I was is now gone. I was brought to this earth to take care of her. That journey is now over. I've got a clean slate with my name at the top and I don't want it. I want the joy she provided. I want her as my continued anchor. I want the final chapter of her life to have been peaceful. Not violent. She deserved so much more then she ever got in life. I could actually write an incredible book about her life and how she faced adversity but it just hurts too much to mention it all. Like her I'm left wondering how this precious angel who touched us all with her incredible ability to face so many challenges her entire life could be treated so horridly in the end. She served God with all her heart and soul every day and in the end she even had that feeling of security and hope ripped from her wondering if it had all been a lie. Too much was left unfulfilled. The last year was absolutely cruel and gruesome.

I'm glad this day is almost over. Tomorrow morning when I wake up I get to feel the same pounding heartbeat I've been waking up with and that sick stomach and say .. .it has now been one week and 5 days since my mom left this earth and she's never coming back. I'll get up feeling awful go shopping and see the world passing by. I'll drive all alone playing back events I avoided the past couple of months. Feel that veil of horrific sorrow approaching and try desperately to think of anything to avoid it. I'm rambling but I don't care. I need to get this out. I want her back. This is not fare.