Mother

 It was 22 years ago this morning that I told Mother goodbye for the last time. I said goodbye as my sister Paula was saying hello, we had been taking turns sitting in the hospital with her as her life ebbed away. I had just started making breakfast for my family, my two brothers were there also, we were laughing and joking around as is our habit in times of pain and or stress, when I answered the phone it was Paula telling me that Mother had just died and I needed to come back to the hospital to sign papers, when I saw her she looked the same as she had just an hour before except all the tubes were gone, no IV drips, no pain meds, she was cold to the touch but honestly she was always cold to the touch, she always complained about being cold. I wanted to cover her, she was cold, I wasn't ready for her to be gone, who ever is? There were so many things left unsaid and now they would never be said but she wouldn't have remembered or understood them anyway, I had known for some time that something was wrong, she lost things, forgot children's' names, couldn't spell, I thought at first that it was related to my brother's suicide in August of 1991, but as time went by, I encouraged her to see a doctor about these things but she refused, when she finally did it was because she had pneumonia, but the pneumonia wouldn't go away, that doctor wanted her to go for more tests but again, she refused, when she finally did it was found that she had lung cancer, after she had part of a lung removed I remember clearly me asking the surgeon if the cancer had spread and he said that it wasn't in her lymph nodes, if it had spread it would have been by blood but for some reason this was never followed up on, it wouldn't have made a difference anyway, it turned out that she had multiple brain tumors and the cancer had finally spread throughout her body. She was only 53, I know some people don't think that is young, but she never saw her grandchildren graduate from high school, never saw them married or have children, she would have been horrified by 9/11 and very proud of my two sons for joining the Armed Forces as a result of that, she never met her youngest grandchild who now has a child of her own, I think she would have loved Rebekah especially, I can see them being buddies and I know she would love her little great-granddaughters and her one great-grandson. Life would be so different if she was still here good in some ways and not so good in others, we have grown personally and spiritually as a result of her illness and death, my brothers, sister and I are closer than we would have been with her here, she had a way of keeping us apart emotionally. But, she was my Mother, my only real parent and I miss her and love her still.