The Top Three

I was recently asked what were the three most significant points in my life.

I hesitated to answer, because as I was thinking about it, all three were negative to point, but I took a closer look at the three by writing them down. They were the three I never shared. It's always scary to share the negative it gives someone a chance to see all the imperfect we have and our potential to be imperfect. But as I looked into them deeper, I realized yes they were negative, but their significance have molded and shaped me into the person I am today, and what's so terrible with having a not so pretty, imperfect past that has shaped you into someone who you are proud to be today ( not to sound overly confident, we all need work, but I've worked through each of these and sometimes we all deserve to be our own biggest fan). I'm not going to go into it all, because I want to tell that person my answers before this anonymous blog world, but I will share the most significant, because it's the one put best into words. To this day it is the one thing that can instantly bring me back to that time in my life.

#1. The morning my mom passed away. Everyone said you were lucky you had the time you did with her so you were prepared for it. And I am, I hold those moment close to my heart, but nothing could prepare me for that moment. I was on the night shift for my mom who wanted to be at home instead of hospice. It had gotten bad, no no covering it, it was downright ugly. My mom couldn't talk, did not even know who I was and wasn't my mom anymore. Seeing her like that killed me a little inside everyday, but I did what I had to, kept on living as I should and be strong for my family. Someone would be with her at all times, we'd read to her and I would often just curl up next to her so I wouldn't forget what it felt like to be with her.

As I started saying I had been on the night shift and had finally gone to bed and was woken up by my mom's best friend Gayle telling me I had to go say goodbye, my mom was in a better place. I went numb, it was an out of body, punch in the stomach feeling that could've put a grown man on his knees. I don't remember crying I just remember walking into her and my stepdads room and laying next to her, she was more than my mom at that point she was my angel mother, and from that point my life was a choice. It wasn't this moment that got me though. Friends came over, family came over and then they came to take my mom from my house. For the first time that day I lost it, they couldn't take my mom. That was the house that she and my stepdad had spent their life together building, it was our life, and selfishly, she couldn't leave me. It was the single most significant point in my life. It was the worst day of my life. 

That day something inside of me changed. I could go one of two ways I could feel sorry for myself, or I could what my mom loved most really live. Put my passion, my heart, my all into what I did , to live a life that she could be proud of, and that I could be proud of.  That day will never leave my mind as much as I try, and in a way that's a good thing. It tells me why I am the way today from why I guard myself to why I put 115% into what I do. 

It's scary to share moments like this when I know there are people out who their worst problem at that 18 was a bad hair day. It's heavy, it's deep, it's ugly  but at the end of the day it's part of me, and that's something I should never be scared of showing because at the end of the day I survived it, and I can still enjoy my life, still look for the good in the bad, I can still smile , and it's why to me it's the simple things that mean the most. It's why I'm me.

Remission

Temporary relief ... from disease or pain

After fighting for two years, a ten pound tumor and cervical cancer later we got the news that my Mom had entered remission. Even after this declaration from a team of certified specialists, we still worried and the previous shock from the two years prior stuck with us all. We could try and forget about it, but we all knew that each one of us had some sort of fear and damage from everything we had undergone. 

She spoke at a survivors dinner, her hair had started to grow back into a Twiggy curly pixie cut, and slowly life was returning to normal (whatever that means). But life doesn't owe us anything nor (as previously mentioned) is it fair.

I was two hours away experiencing my freshmen year in college. My mom had met another one of her goals: to be there to move me in, and send her daughter onto her next phase in life. I returned home before winter break and my Stepdad and Mom said we needed to talk. Immediately I knew. We had had this talk before, with the same tone, same setting it was the worse case of Deja Vous a person could experience. The cancer had come back, and had settled in her brain. I felt sick. That deep down sick to my stomach, but we beat once, so why couldn't we do it again? Something in me knew that this time was different. 

I feel like from every traumatic experience in our lives we make it through and experience remission, a temporary relief from pain. We may feel like we have made it through, but all it takes is a song or image or something that brings us back to that exact moment, and it all becomes real again. Even after the remissions in our lives, many times the experience's will continue to somehow effect us or in my case, shape our paths in life. From this, we have the choice of learning and growing from these negative experiences or to let them bring us down. 

I chose to grow.

Photo Credit: http://www.deviantart.com/art/Love-Life-333602435