10 years today mom died. I remember getting the call that we should go back to the hospital after just landing home in Cornwall. I remember being upset the whole drive there just assuming that mom would bounce back as she had so many times before. When we landed at the hospital it was obvious we were too late. She had passed. They gave Cheryl and I the courtesy of a final moment with her, but she had been gone for a bit.
The nurses rushed us into a sort of training room area with computers. This was our place of comfort alone. It felt so surreal and out of place. I remember jokingly saying "I called you all here for a reason" as if I was chairing a meeting. It broke the ice and we continued with our shock and the beginning of this 10 year process of moving onward without my mom.
When Dad was ready to move on and sell 774 Osborne Street I was still not a place to really process things and I think I really missed out not going through all the stuff from the basement. I was given every opportunity to sort through some of my past, but instead it was picked over by strangers and much was stored until it could be either distributed or discarded.
Now that I am ready to process things, mom is gone, and so is much of the history that made me who I am up to the age of 18. I now take comfort in all of the little nuggets of writings, pictures and memories that I have, because that is all I have.
I have written more extensively about mom in other writings in an effort to help figure out who she was and by proxy maybe understand myself a bit better. I see a lot of similarities between mom and I with how we viewed the world, but I am learning to be gentler than she was. I also have the support of Cheryl which is invaluable.
I miss mom in so many ways, but most of all I wish we were able to break through some of the barriers that she still had up right until the end.
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