A Christmas Wish

The Holidays are always so cheerful and happy. The smell of a turkey cooking (this year frying), a pumpkin spiced candle and cookies baking in the oven. There are so many things that we can smell that take us back to a certain memory. Thanksgiving meals always brought me back to the vision of my mother in a night gown, running around the kitchen and trying to get the turkey in and prep the other numerous foods for our dinner. The last year that she was with us for thanksgiving, she was in her pink nightgown and hadn't even showered that day. She busted her ass to have everything cooked properly, from scratch. I took a picture of the table filled with our food and in that picture she has her finger in her mouth like she just tasted one of the delicious dishes. We were all so happy that year. Everyone was eager to eat, I was happy that I got to watch the parade with my family and the dog show right after. I helped my mother in the kitchen like every year, and we were all excited to be off for a few days. None of us even brought up the subject of cancer at the dinner table. Because cancer didn't rule our lives and it certainly did not rule hers.

Here I sit, 9 days until Christmas, just thinking of my mother. Of course I partake in this every day of my life, but today I think about the last Holidays we spent together. Every Christmas, my mother would sit and wrap presents for hours and I'd sit with her mostly watching Christmas movies. I hated wrapping presents, and kind of still do. Every year she'd wrap up all the gifts that I bought for my friends and family. She tried so hard to make all of us happy on Christmas. One thing she always did for me was she gave me my birthday present on Christmas Eve. Even as a child, she never wanted me to feel slighted because of the day my birthday fell on. As a child she threw my parties at the beginning of the month. She also made sure people always bought me two separate gifts, one wrapped in birthday paper. My mother also would bake tons and tons of homemade sugar cookies. She would make the batter and stick it in the fridge for a few days. I would always sneak spoonfuls of the gooey goodness and eat it. She would get so mad when she saw half of the dough missing and knew exactly who it was. My mother spent 24 hours in active labor with me. Her Christmas in 1986 was a painful one that ended in happiness.

The last Christmas we spent together was a great Christmas. The cancer center she was treating at "adopted" my family for Christmas and bought our family many nice things. My mother was against this from the beginning because we weren't needy and we didn't need gifts. My parent's always made sure we had everything we needed, even if they went without. The people at the center were so generous and made that Christmas very memorable for the kids. Looking back you think, man would I have done anything different knowing that it was her last Christmas? I would have done this or bought this or said this. But you can't live your life thinking about the what ifs.

My birthday has never been the same since my mother took her last breath. No ounce of love, happiness or gifts can ever give me the feelings of having my mother back. Every Christmas my wish is that I could feel my mother right besides me as I partake in the festivities. There are so many things she is missing out on and when I start thinking about it too much the grief completely consumes me. Grief is such a heavy and painful thing. If you let it, it will destroy and cripple your life. I choose instead, to not have the grief control my life. I push it out as much as I can, to prevent it from eating a hole in my soul. But sometimes I have to let it in, I have to remember the pain of losing my mother. That's what makes us human, feeling the all too consuming grief of death. None of us will ever escape it. Especially when that damn Christmas shoes song comes on the radio....

My Christmas wish is to feel my mother around me on my birthday. To know she's standing besides me as I watch the kids open their presents. To somehow know she's silently wishing me a Happy Birthday. To know that she is proud of me right now at this moment. To just feel her love around me. That's all I want for Christmas.

It's only words.

I haven't written in this thing since October of 2014. Here is is, June 22, 2015. April 14th was the two year anniversary of losing my best friend, my mother. Two years, but it still feels like yesterday. I still can remember her smell, her voice, her laugh and everything about her. I haven't forgotten anything. That was always a huge fear of mine, forgetting everything about my mother. On the other hand, I remember with such vividness the last few days of her life. Now those, I wouldn't mind forgetting. I never thought I'd be where I am two years after losing her. I know I've written this before, but after you lose someone you love so much, you just don't think that life can ever go on. You feel guilty moving on without her. You feel wrong in doing certain things, because your mother isn't there to give her advice or tell you when you're being an idiot. The hardest thing to deal with is not having her to give me advice. I told her EVERYTHING, even stuff that you shouldn't tell your mother. She would always be there to listen to me and hold my hand when things got tough. My father is great, but it's not the same as my mother.

Recently, I've had to go through some tough things. Towards the end of March I went in for my yearly check up with the GYN and my pap smear came back with a positive result on bad cells in my cervix. I had to go through what they call a colposcopy, where the doctor puts medicine in your cervix that lights up these bad cells and then takes biopsies from the inside of the cervix. There is no sedative and it hurts like a mother fucker. Then you proceed to bleed and have cramps for a few days. The biopsies came back for the positive pre-cancerous cells and I had to go in for a LEEP procedure where they burn out a layer of your cervix taking all of the bad cells out with them. This wasn't too bad and I was only in bed for a few days. At the end of August I'll go back to have another PAP smear to make sure the cells haven't returned. I'm praying that they haven't. The more times you have this procedure performed, the higher the risk of infertility becomes. I don't want my chance to have a child taken away from me, but I also don't want to get cervical cancer. It's a cluster fuck. This is the stuff I need my mom for. When I received this news I was so upset that I didn't have my mom to help me deal with this. I cried myself to sleep before the procedure. It really really sucks.

Besides that, my life has been pretty awesome. I'm coming up on my one year anniversary with Jimmy. I can't believe it's been a year already. He's such a great boyfriend. And he can put up with my bullshit and family drama. I guess that means he's a keeper. School has been great and I'll be graduating in the spring with my associates degree in Psychology. After that I might take the PHR but I'm planning on transferring to Stevenson University for my bachelor degree. I'm very happy with my life. For a bit, I really really wanted to have some babies, but now I've realized that finishing school and becoming stable are more important to me right now. Plus I really enjoy sleeping. However, I can't wait to get married and have a few kids. I can't believe I'm 28 and I'm finally getting to the point in my life when I'm very happy. Besides, not having my mother life is working out.