Every morning I wake up with a broken heart and every night as I lay my head down on my mom’s pillow I try to keep the broken pieces from traveling far.
You are gone and it’s not even a question of accepting that reality but trying to adjust to a new reality that no longer includes you, my best friend and my mother.
October 7th, should have been a normal Sunday with you getting ready for church, asking me if I’d go and gathering your dollars for the plate collection.
Instead…
on October 7th, I woke at 2:15am and did not hear your breath with the oxygen machine.
I got up…
turned on the light and saw the look of vacancy on your face even though your eyes were closed.
I knew…
you were gone.
I felt your forehead which was warm to touch and my hand traveled to your back which was cold. I reached for my stethoscope and placed it on the honey coloured skin on top of your heart.
No sound, no breath, an empty shell void of the pulse of life it once contained.
At first, I was relieved.
The previous day, as I held your hand, I begged you to go, to let go of the body that so betrayed you. To let go of the organs slowly shutting down. To let go of the month of starvation your body endured. To let go of the dependency on the morphine I resented giving you for I knew each dose sent you further into oblivion and I so badly wanted to see you smile at me with eyes that saw me and not death.
It is almost six months since you’ve gone.
The morphine and the Percocet sit in my medicine cabinet.
Sundays are bad and I always hold the vials in my hand contemplating, while being angry at you for not taking me with you. Each Sunday that passes the urge to take them diminishes.
You so loved life and I’m trying so hard to learn to love and dwell in it as you often wished I would.
Continue on…
I have no choice, trudging through trying to find the new ‘normal’ while desperately holding on to what was, knowing the was, is in the past and no longer has a place in the present.
I so miss you mom, my butterfly and my best friend. You are at peace, flying through another dimension. I pray you will be there, when it’s my time, to welcome me into your world as you welcomed me into this world.