by Kim Patty

Created on: November 19, 2009

April of 1997.

"It is cancer", the doctor said to the family, "It is all over the abdominal cavity", " Make this the best Thanksgiving and Christmas you ever had".

Oh my God.

I sat numb while my brothers cried. This can't be real. She is 52 years old, my mother. This woman, who's touch and words can heal, who's words teach you, make you change direction and who's story has barely begun. How can this be happening? We have so much more to share. She has so much more to teach us. You think of how you could have avoided this, how you might have detected this or fixed this. I was in total denial. I had enough going on in my life with children, a job and marriage. How could I cope with this? How could she cope with this? How were my brothers going to cope with this?

For 18 months we struggled to cope with this seemingly inevitable end. I tried to pretend that everything would turn around and get better while my mother prepared to leave this place and say goodbye to the people she loved. She was awesome. She acted with sweet grace and dignity.

When the day finally came that she entered the hospital for the last time, the family was exhausted. There had been highs and lows, hope and disappointment and now we were faced with the finality of her life. As my brothers and I gathered one last time by her side she seemed peaceful. "We are all here Mom", I said as we clutched her hands. And with a sweet, innocent smile and eyes closed from medication, she said, "Big babies love little babies.......love Jesus". She never spoke again.

I stayed with her while her body suffered the morphine seizures. When her fever rose to 106 degrees I placed ice around her body. I suffered her passing to my core. And then......when I went home to rest, she left this place. At that moment the world stopped and nothing mattered. Life suddenly became real to me.

I remember sitting in the parking lot of the grocery store shortly after my Mom passed away and dialing her phone number to talk to her as I did everyday. I had done this so many times before without thought that one day this may not be. When I realized what I had done and that I would really never hear her voice again I cried from the depths of my heart. Then as I held the phone, I carried on one last conservation with her. I I talked with her as usual, gave her an update on my daughters and said goodbye to my mother, my friend, on the cell phone forever. When I closed my phone I realized that life would not be the same where my mother was concerned. That fast, that sudden, life was changed.

Everyday on this earth now seems surreal. It is precious, my life. And my mother has only passed on to another place. I still feel her presence, hear her voice and see her beauty in this world.

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