January 22

Christmas 2015 

One year ago today Mom went to the hospital with what she thought might be a heart attack. It was not. Her lung had collapsed and the X-ray revealed a spot. That damned spot...I think we knew. We knew once they did the biopsy that it was cancer. What we didn't know was that it was the worst kind of spot. Small cell lung cancer, the kind that comes with an hour glass. And the sand was already falling, we just didn't know how fast.

Although in my denial I was adamant that she was not going to die, every important event from that day forward was enveloped in whispers of "the last." This will be the last birthday my mom will call me and say, "You're not born yet. Aleene is still staring at me. I just think I'm hungry, so I sent your daddy to work." This is the last Sadie birthday, Charlotte birthday, beach trip. This is the last Mother's Day I will have a mommy.

So for a year, I have felt like I have been drowning with no hope of ever reaching the surface. I prayed fervently for a cure, a miracle which didn't come. I prayed to wake up and have it all be a horrible nightmare, but it was a live horror show. I hoped beyond hope that when 2017 hit, time would rewind and it would be 2016 again, but 2017 came anyway.

What I finally discovered was that I was never going to reach the surface again. I accepted that I was going to have to learn to live without air. So, in the past few weeks, I opened my eyes, breathed in the salt water, and started to swim. I finally feel alive again, albeit changed, someone different than I was before. And I'm ok. Maybe I was always meant to be a fish...or on particularly good days, a mermaid.