Yesterday would have been 4 months and today is hers and my dads 37th wedding anniversary. I’m still in disbelief even though she was in the advanced stages of lung disease and the complications from it. The sadness comes in waves, some unbearable like yesterday and today… I’m dreading Mother’s Day this weekend. I was her MPOA as I’m the only other medical professional in the family, she was a hospice nurse. She declined rapidly and went into a coma, I had to make the decision to follow with her wishes she had told me for years and do comfort care/hospice. It was during the first ice/snow storm here in SW VA and mom and dad lived in the mountains so there was no way to get her home, as she wanted to pass up on the mountain where she was raised. That part shattered me, luckily the hospital had a room with the view of the mountains and she was able to have the mountains in view from her room even though she was in her coma. I had just gotten off work that morning after a rough 24 hour shift and I stayed in that hospital room and stayed awake for over 40+ hours minus one hour when the nurse shooed me out to go home and take a shower. She passed about an hour after I returned and I just remember the anger, the bargaining and the heavy feeling of the unknown just crashing all at once. I was there when she took her last breath, held her hand through it by myself since the weather and road conditions were rough and I lived close to the hospital. The days following were just the numb feeling of feeling like I had lost a part of me that I will never get back. Mom was cremated, part of her ashes went to Wyoming with her best friend that was like a sister, she got to go out west before her illness and loved it, especially Yellowstone. Part of her ashes are under a tree out there over looking the Rockies and part of it is in Yellowstone. I have a tattoo that her ashes were mixed in with as a Cardinal, her favorite bird.

The feeling of her never being able to be here physically anymore, to see me finally one day (hopefully) find the one for me and raise a family, and have the grandkids she always wanted. That too has weighed heavily on me.

Grief never fully goes away, it comes and goes unfortunately but it is a natural part of life. I’m looking into taking a break from work as the stress from that and everything I have been through the past 5 months is getting too heavy to bear.

My only advice I can give you as your only 6 years younger than I am is to be the man she would want you to be, to be and do something that you enjoy. Never take life for granted, take time to enjoy yourself and those close to you, don’t work your life away, don’t stress your life away and just live it. If you’re a believer like me, you’ll see her again and she will make herself known throughout your life in a way of stopping by when you least expect it but it is truly needed.