No one told me she was going to die.

My Mother was a great mother. I used to tease my brother about him being her favorite. He would get mad and say all of us were our moms favorite. He was right. We felt it. She knew and loved the best and worst parts of us. I don't think you could ask for anything better than that. 

Her and my dad got married when they were really young. She was still in high school, and he was an 8th grade dropout. One of his friends was fixing him up on a blind date with my aunt, but he saw my mom and that was the end of that. He told me in his later years that as soon as he saw her, he knew. 

 My mom had told my grandparents that she was pregnant. She wasn't. That's the only way they would let them marry. She then told my dad what she did. My dad said that my grandpa mentioned about a year later that it was an awful long pregnancy. :) My brother was born a few years later. 

It wasn't an idyllic way to grow up. They always struggled financially. They both worked very hard. They had bought a House out in the country when I was in the first grade. A very small 4 room house with no indoor plumbing. Luckily, my dad was a doityourselfer. He turned the biggest room into a bathroom with another wall and turned the new room into a kitchen. 

Then my mom got sick. She went into the hospital for something non related, but I can't remember. I was around 8, I think. While she was there, they found a spot on her lung. I heard lots of whispering. She ended up having to quit work. Dad bought a color tv and put it in their bedroom. He told us we could watch the black and white tv in the living room. When he wasn't home mom would have us come in and watch the color set with her. She used to read to me all the time. She gave me my love of reading and libraries. It was "our thing."  Also my love of knitting and all yarn related things. When dad was at a church meeting in the evenings, she would let us stay up late and watch tv with her, but we were told it was a secret and not tell dad. We would hear the car pull in and run giggling into our bedroom and all pretend to be asleep when he walked in the door.  

She made numerous trips to a BIG  CITY for treatment. We would take her to the local airport and pick her up days later. I don't remember how long she was gone. It seemed like forever at the time. She would come back with marks all over her body when they were giving her treatments. 

While she was gone Dad started building onto the house. He added a huge living room and dining room/kitchen. Our old kitchen turned into  hallway. He was going to surprise her when she came home. Of course she knew he was doing it, but it was a real surprise the first time he started on it. He would work on it a lot while she was gone. 

One day at school, a girl I know told me that her grandma told her my mom only had a few weeks left to live. I told her that was a lie. I mean, yeah, she was sick, but you go to the hospital to get better, right? That night my pastor took me off the bus. We had a talk in his study, and he told me I was spending the night with them. We had a talk about what was going on. It was then I knew she was going to die. She passed away the next morning. I prayed all night I would get to see her one more time, but it was not to be. Dad came and told me at the pastors house. He was a mess. I had never seen him cry before. 

She never got to see her new addition to the house. She never got to go to the library with me again. There are so many things she never got to do. Give me dating advice, tell me not to marry my ex, meet my son, hug me. So many things. 

She passed when I was 10. I'm 63 now. I still miss my mom. 

I have probably written about this before it this blog. I don't handle death and dying well. One of my friends mother is entering the end stages, and it brought it all back to me. Not that it ever leaves me, but sometimes it just guts me. 

My dad told me a few years before he passed that my mom was his soul mate. He had remarried (he had 3 kids he didn't know what to do with) but mom was his forever love. 

They have been together in Heaven a few years now. They are with my daughter I'm sure. 

Love your family and your friends. You never know. Let them know they are loved. 

God bless.