Tough times [View all]

It's really hitting me how hard the next month-plus is going to be.

I lost my dad 11 years ago today - and my mom passed last year on Christmas.

I just barely left my 20s and I don't have my parents. I am struggling. I miss them both and I just can't comprehended the idea of living most my life without 'em. Especially when I think of marriage and having a family. Not having either, especially mom, there to see it makes me not even want to marry.

Is that normal?

I just can't get over my mom's death. My dad's was not a huge shock (tho, the fact he went when he did was) because he was a Vietnam Veteran who was struggling through Agent Orange-related medical issues in the final years of his life. But my mom was so healthy and then she got sick a year ago - right around this time. Her health never really improved and finally, on Dec. 18th, I called an ambulance for her. By the 20th, she was pretty much nonresponsive. She just laid in the hospital bed and slept the whole time, though would fidget with all the things connected to her. Eventually, they determined fluid was building in her stomach and that something was putting her into liver failure, so, they did a CT Scan and the results came back showing very aggressive cancer. It had spread into her liver and colon. The doctor was pretty blunt: there wasn't anything they could really do because she was too sick for treatment. I made the decision to put her in hospice and on Christmas Day, decided to let her go. Even now I wrestle with the decision.

Her biopsy results came back after her passing and suggested pancreatic cancer that went undetected and spread rapidly. The kicker? She had been to the doctor roughly a month before for her Medicare evaluation and got basically a clean bill of health.

And now I'm stuck going over the final weeks of her life, and then her death, all the time. I am alone. I miss her so much.

I don't know what to do or how to make the pain go away. I just can't comprehend that she's gone. It makes no sense to me. Even now, it does not feel real.

Yet deep down I know it is. I know she's never coming back no matter how many nights I lay my head on my pillow wishing that when I wake up she'll be here.