"I don't know what to do"

[lilac]

I lost my Mom last Friday, June 15, 2012 after an 8-month battle with colon cancer. And those 8 months flew right by me. I am 23 but I feel like I'm 5.

She was my rock. My hero. I know she had her flaws, we all do, but she was such a kind heart and a good spirit. Do you ever meet someone and just get this sense that "This person is good"? You meet someone and know that they have a pure heart. That was my mom.

I lived an hour away from her and I would spend every other weekend with her, helping her out as I could and just being with her. She used to say, "Emmie, I'm so glad when you're here. You're not uncomfortable with silence, there's no pressure to be constantly moving or talking or doing with you...we can interact or not interact and get on just fine either way. I like that."

I have two younger sisters who did an excellent job taking care of Mom, so this process of her dying was more...anticipated by them I guess. They are still devastated, but I think they are more rational about it than I am.

It happened so fast. On the 29th of May, when she got the news that chemotherapy was no longer working, I drove up and sat on her couch with my sisters and bawled as she petted my hair (it used to help me sleep when I was little). I hugged her around the middle and buried my face in her back like a toddler.

The next night, she started having trouble breathing. I called an ambulance.

Two and a half weeks later, in a hospice home near my house (we'd moved her so that her parents and siblings could visit more often), I was laying on the couch bed in her room (my sisters and I had slept there every night for a week and a half) while my two sisters sat with Mom. Her breathing had changed in the night. I heard her cough and I bolted out of bed, went over, grabbed her hand. She took two more breaths and was gone. She hadn't been conscious in over a week.

This has destroyed me. I sat rubbing her hand and what little hair she had left on her head for two hours before the cremation service people came to pick her up. I couldn't (and still can't) refer to "the body." It's my mom.

I have been trying to keep myself busy, and have been pretty successful--my best friend lives a mile and a half away, and I actually live with one of my mom's brothers (and sister-in-law) at the moment so I do have people around me.

It is worse at night. At night, I talk to her. I look at her picture on my cellphone and tell her I love her and that I miss her so much. It usually leads to hysterical tears. At night is when I can't pretend that she's just on vacation. That I'll see her again someday. I don't have faith in a god (believe me, I've tried--I am a very reluctant agnostic atheist) so there is no sense of a "better place" on my part, though I want so badly to believe there is. I called my sister last night, completely incoherent, and asked if she believed in Heaven. Because if she does, that's enough for me. I want someone to be able to believe that Mom is in a better place. Someone stronger than I am.

I've come to hate the word "anymore". She's not in pain anymore. She's not sick anymore. Yes, but she's also not HERE anymore. It's repulsive to me to talk about her in the past tense.

I miss her so, so, so much. Her laugh, her smile, her integrity, her knack for knowing how to handle any situation. I feel directionless, like I've been dropped in the middle of the woods with no compass. The person I would normally turn to when faced with such grief is now the one whose absence I am mourning.

I don't know how to close this, but I'm glad to be able to get this out somewhere, even if no one reads it.

[debbie8800]

I am so sorry for you rloss. i lost my mom 6 months ago and she was my best friend.

We are here to chat. Time will help you some and you have to work thru the rest.

Debbie

[blujonny]

At the moment you are going through an emotional overwhelm, each emotion feeling like it is fighting all others to get to the surface to cry out. What is the strongest emotion for you right now might I ask?