This Love.

A year ago I was in a car on my way to Utah. So my siblings and I could catch the six o' clock plain to Rochester, Minnesota. To see our ill mother, that had currently been in a hospital for almost a month straight, if I remember correctly. She was flown via emergency jet to Mayo Clinic, for a third open heart surgery. In between this surgery and her last, she had endocarditis, an infection in her heart. She had the heart of a hundred pound woman. She wasn't going to last through a third surgery. We all knew that. But we hoped and we prayed unlike any other time in our lives. This was our mother. Our best friend. We knew that it was her time when she hugged us before they took her to the plane. We all knew we'd never see her spirit and her body united when we said we'd see her when she got home. When she didn't say anything after we told her we'd all be here when she got better. Because we all knew, the next time we would get to see our mother, alive and well, the next time she would get to hold us again, and tell us how much she loves us, is when we all go back home, from where we all came from. We all knew that our mother wasn't crying because she was scared, but because she loved us so much and she knew it was time to go meet her Heavenly Father. She cried because she knew that all of us, eventually, would be just fine. She knew that she wasn't going to see us on this earth again through her earthly eyes, but because she knew she was going to be watching over us from that point on. Watching over us and loving us from above.

A year ago, I knew my mother was gone. I held her hand and felt her blood run cold. I watched as her broken little heart stopped beating. The breath in her lungs run out, and her eyes never open again. I was seventeen years old. No seventeen year old should be standing in an ICU room, holding their mothers hand, praying for a miracle, as the doctors turn the machines off that kept her body alive. No person should spend their eighteenth birthday without the woman that gave birth to them. No senior in high school should face the life changing decisions they will make alone.

I struggle everyday. I thought it was getting better. I thought I was doing alright. And then, out of no where, it all started to crash down on me again. I started to feel like that little girl that stood there grasping onto her mothers dead hand. I started to feel like that hopeless child laying in that hotel bed, not sleeping, not eating, just crying. I started to feel like I couldn't move on. I started to feel as though my whole life was falling apart again.

I'm breaking. Piece by piece. Just, breaking down. I can't seem to move on anymore. I can't seem to let go of my mother. I wish everyday that I could just have her hold me again. I'd give anything. Because nothing can replace the love of your mother. Nothing can replace the sound of her voice telling you how much she loves you. Nothing can replace the reassuring words that she would tell you when you were hesitant about something. Nothing. Replaces the love that you have for the woman that made you who you are today.