It’s Not Over
Last Summer, as you know, my mom passed away from a cancerous brain tumor. One day she was diagnosed and two months later she was gone, leaving us stunned and disbelieving.
Every day thoughts of her drift through my mind.
Despite having “dealt with” her death, several isolated conversations or moments spent together stick with me and won’t let me go.
One day I had come to see her after her diagnosis and we were sitting out behind her little house on the porch swing, a relic from her previous life on the ranch she shared with my dad. She had brought it with her to her new little house in town as a reminder of the evenings spent on it staring at the open spaces with my dad and wrapped in a comfortable home and relationship before he passed away.
The swing seemed a bit out of place in her backyard but I could see why she held onto it. We could sit in it and create that space and time. The world stopped turning until we returned to it as we stepped off her swing and back into reality.
We were talking and she was telling me how happy she was about her legs. The muscles were coming back after a long illness she had had and she was happy about that. I was too, neither of us thinking that in a couple short months, those legs would no longer be hers and would be relegated to a memory captured in a few photos.
All the work she did to bring her body back from illness was to be wasted but for the moment we were there, on her swing and she was triumphant. She was winning.
These legs she was so proud of contained metal screws and plates from a nasty car accident she had been involved in as a teenager and before there existed a lot of the medical technology we have today. She had a long scar on her shin that outlined the break and it was a part of her. I remember looking at it when I was very young and for some reason thinking that when I grew up I would have one too.
Now I do. It is on my ass. But that is a story for another day.
My point is that these little moments in time that I took for granted are now gone forever. We did not talk about anything much other than life and things that were going on in our universes at the time. We shared weird little thoughts and ideas. Sometimes I would just let her talk and would listen to her.
We would be wrapped in a warm Summer evening swinging lightly on her swing, just chatting. And I think we both thought it would last forever.
It was safe.
It was warm.
It was home.
It was nothing earth shattering.
It was nothing important.
And yet now it is the most important thing in the world.
Funny how things change.
Miss you Mom.
XO Chris
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