Today. Yesterday. Tomorrow.

Today. Never ends. You don't just go to bed and wake up and it's today. It's been today since the beginning of time. Days change. Months end. Years go by. But you never see tomorrow. You never saw yesteday. Because today. The day you're in. Is always. Today.

Today.. Is the 5th month anniversary of my mothers death. I'm only eighteen. And today.. Was one of the hardest days of my life. You think you can just forget it. Put it out of your mind. If you stay positive and do good things you won't even remember what today is. I tried. It didn't work. My best friend. Didn't even know what today was. He didn't even talk to me. Which makes everything. Ten times worse. I stayed home. And sat quiet. Thinking. Wondering. Wishing. What things could be like at this very moment.

I sit here wondering how I would treat her now. Seeing her lifeless, with the only thing keeping her heart beating, her lungs filled with air, her blood flowing.. Were those machines.. Her skin was already breaking down on her forehead from where my dad kissed her countless times each day.. Her chest cut upon, still banaged and red from the three surgeries she's gone through on her heart in less than a week. Her arms and legs covered in banadages and tissue, bruised and mangled from the doctors trying to reconnect her nerves that just stopped working.. Her spiritless body lying there in two conjoined ICU rooms because one wasn't enough to hold all of the machines.. And there our little family stood as those machines were turned off after we were told there was no hope for her brain to recover. She would have been a vegetable. But she never tried to breathe on her own when the doctor shut down the machines. Her too small of heart filled with valves from robots and pigs even.. Slowly stopped beating.. Her eyelids didn't flutter.. She couldn't hug me from that moment on anymore. Or talk to me. Or tell me she loves me.. That moment while I held her hand and felt it run cold.. I was alone.

I left that hospital by force. I wanted to stay there with her. She wasn't just a lifeless body to me like she was to the doctors. She wasn't just a peice of meat that needed to be wrapped up and shipped to the mourge. She was my mother.. The woman that gave birth to me. Who talked to me. Who held me. Who taught me. Who was there every single minute of her day for me. Who unconditionally loved me..

I think she knew. I think she knew when she hugged me and kissed me and told me she loved me as they wheeled her out to the plane to her death.. That is was her time. That she wasn't going to see us on this earth again. That from that point on. We had to raise each other. That when we said see you when you get home. That we actually meant when we're all back together again in heaven. A family forever.

So here I sit in my bed. Alone. And all I have left are memories. Good and bad. The love that she showed. The difficult times. The years that were stolen from her. From me. I sit here at eighteen years old. Going through things that most people never do. Most people never saw their mother in bed from the time they were eight. Most people didn't have to help their moms get out of bed or hope and pray they could make it to church. Most people didn't have to grow up so fast..

I guess in some cases I know more than most adults. I have feelings and hopes and experiences that some people will never, ever, feel. I feel as though I'm doing no justice to the part of her that lives in me. I know I'm not. Sometimes I'm so mad. Why me? Why now? What did I do so horribly wrong that I don't deserve a mother? A best friend who knows what I need and does it? Why did I lose one of the only people that truly loved me?..

Today. That day. Never ends.

For you mother

Dear Mom,

I had an interesting day. That would not have gone as it did, if you were still here.

I want to tell you all about it. But you already know. But I feel like I need to write it down anyway.

My director seems to know me better than I know myself. He ranted about all of these things I feel for my dying husband. Former husband. Then he said. "Even after you left. Who did you call? Who did you turn to? Who was always there? Who always loved you?"

Mom.. I'm sorry.. I'm sorry that I never respected you. I'm sorry I never gave you the affection a teenage daughter should give her mother. I'm sorry that I couldn't break the chain and have an actual relationship between us. I'm sorry that I was so stubborn and selfish to realize everything that you did for me. Every single day. I'm sorry that I could never be an actual daughter to you. I'm sorry I never shared anything about my life with you. I come home to an empty house everyday after school, wishing that I could have changed everything. That I could have told you every little thing..

I wish I was better Mom.. I wish I wasn't so mad. I wish I wasn't so frustrated about everything. I wish I didn't hold grudges. I wish I wasn't mad at God. I wish.. You were back here. Sitting in the living room with Dad and I.

It's so hard without you.. It's so hard..