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.

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..