The Passing of Time

It seems like forever ago and it seems like it was only yesterday at the same time.  In reality, it's been two years today.  Though looking back, if you consider the way the cancer ravaged her body, leaving her so utterly...unable, unable to sit up, unable to walk, unable to allow someone to carry her to the car and drive her to chemo, if you consider that, it's been longer than two years.  However long it's been since she's been gone, today is the date that will always stick in my mind.  

I've been aware this day was approaching for a while, but at the same time I was so afraid I would miss it.  That I would wake up and it would be the 6th, and I would have passed through today without a thought of her.  Maybe that would have been better.  

The end came quickly and quietly, with a doctor somewhere offering up some number of days, some arbitrary amount of time, information that no one wanted to hear or accept.  In reality, it came much quicker than expected, a beautiful frail lady surrounded by friends and family who never wanted to have to see such things, but watching anyway until her last shallow breath faded away.  I was not in that room;  I was several thousand miles away, across the country, celebrating at an early birthday party for Haley.  Later, my father would apologize for calling with the news during such a happy time.  But isn't that the way it should have been?  In my mind it was just another testament to the fact that life goes on.  That you can lose someone, but you still have so many more someone's in your life to be thankful for.  

Two days later I flew on a plane to her funeral.  I wore a bracelet she gave me the Christmas 11 months earlier, three months before the diagnosis, three months before she was even the least little bit sick.  It was a heavy silver Brighton bracelet, and before each leg of the flight it set off the metal detectors.  Finally, some airport security woman told me I should probably take it off and put it in my carry-on.  And I laid into her with everything I had.   How dare she tell me on the way to a funeral to take of a bracelet given to me by the very person who had died?  I didn't take the bracelet off until after the funeral.  But I haven't worn it since.    

          

So much has happened in these two years since she passed.  We shared the same birthday, and I had another one without her.  Babies that we never planned on were born, babies that we never thought would happen are happening, marriages that leave me so confused I don't know what to say about them were made, divorces of friends, and more sickness and death.  In other words, life has continued, however mundane, however exciting. 

My husband commands a company in which he is responsible for just over 400 people.  In the year and a half since he started this job I have seen a lot.  I have seen liars, cheaters, thieves, people whose characters are so questionable and bad all you can do is shake your head and count the days until you never have to see them or deal with them again.  That was never the case with her.  Though she was far from perfect she was someone everyone would have benefited from knowing.  She was a truly good person.  

So I am sad.  Not sad that I cannot call her, or see her, but sad because I know she is simply not here anymore.  And I can ask Why her? until I'm blue, but the real question is Why not her?  Why not someone I didn't know?  There was someone I didn't know who died that day.  There were hundreds of them all over the world.  Other people knew them, and they suffered too, and they asked Why her?  I will have loss in my life, just as everyone else will have too.  I can count on one had, and not use all my fingers, the people I've known who've died and affected me like this.  I am one of the lucky ones.  Life is full of hurt, but it is also full of hope.  I guess I feel I am beginning to get better.  

Today, on the two year anniversary of her death, my brother and his wife are sitting in a doctor's office with an ultrasound machine, finding out if their baby will be a boy or a girl.  They tried for so long and were so worried that they may not get this baby.  But it's in there, and it's fixing to get a gender and soon a name.  And I'm happy about that, happy for them.  It's all so hopeful.  And who doesn't need a little bit of hope? 

This isn't the best poem in the world.  There are so many other ones out there that are more eloquent, more beautiful.  But this poem is for my mother, who I'm sure is having a bad day.

Don't think of her as gone away-her journey's just begun

Life holds so many facets-this earth is only one

Just think of her as resting from the sorrows and the tears

In a place of warmth and comfort where there are no days and years

Think how she must be wishing that we could know today

How nothing but our sadness can really pass away

And think of her as living in the hearts of those she touched

For nothing loved is ever lost and she was loved so much.