If you're going through hell, keep going - Winston Churchill

~ Standing in the middle of the grocery store
~ Waiting at a red light
~ Doing laundry

It hits me at the most random of times.  I can be fine for days. And then suddenly my chest is tight and my eyes are overflowing.  She's gone. My mama is gone.  And I know as a good Christian I should be happy. She's in heaven, she has her reward.  But I'm not happy. I want her here. Heaven is a fabulous place from all I read.  But it isn't here. I can't go hug her. I can't call her and ask for advice. I can't call her and tell her how my day went or about the things that are worrying me or bothering me.  I can't have dinner with her.  All I can do is remember her. And I miss her.   God I miss her so bad.  And I don't want her back the way she was right before she died. The pale, weak, tired woman who was doing her best just to keep going. I want the vibrant woman who was here just last year.  Just one year ago she was full of life. She wasn't tired or wore down. She wasn't sick.  She was fine.



It seems as if I spent the last nine months always going. Never really taking the time to just be in the moment.  I figured if I stayed busy and pretended this wasn't happening that it would just go away. And it didn't. But my mama did.  I wish so bad I had every single one of those moments back. If I could just go back to one of the many times she said "Sit down and stay a while Julie".  One of the many times I said I couldn't. I had so much to do. So much stuff that needed done. And it all could have waited. Someone else could have taken Amanda to class.  The chores would have waited. I could have asked for more help from my family. I should have insisted on it.  I could have had a cup of coffee with mama. I could have cooked dinner with her more. More than once I told mama I was sorry. I was trying. I just had so much to do. "It's ok, I understand" She always understood. And what I wouldn't give for those moments back.

You know you always hear that you should treasure your loved ones because one day they'll be gone and you will wish you'd had that time back.  It's so true. It's so unbelievably true. I always thought that was a beautiful sentiment. And I was so sure I was living that way. Till I lost my mom and realized how much time I wasted that I could have spent with her.

Go find your mama, daddy, child, husband, wife, or friend and hug them. Tell them all how much they mean to you. And spend every moment you can with them. Because the moments spent with them are the things you'll remember. And the moments spent in pursuit of the perfect life will be the ones you regret.

On loss and love....

On June 2, 2013 my mother went home to be with the Lord.  She fought cancer valiantly and left a hole in my heart and life that will never be filled.

Mama never had an easy life. But she also never complained. When we were little I remember her always being active. She never sat around. She was always cooking, cleaning, gardening, or playing with us.  She loved flowers and she had numerous flower beds that she would tinker around in while we would run around playing.  Once I decided to help her weed one of her flower beds. I was so sure I was helping her out. I went out and spent about 30 minutes pulling every single weed out of her flower garden. Then I went inside and grabbed her hand, dragging her outside to show her my handy work.   When we got out the front door she exclaimed "JULIE! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!"
"I pulled the weeds"
"You pulled the flowers!"  And she laughed.
That was always one of our fondest memories. We'd laugh about how I pulled all of the flowers out of her garden and left the weeds. I would tell her that the weeds looked prettier to me. And she'd remind me that she did thank me for trying to help.  And that's the way it was with mama.  Whenever life threw a curve ball at her she laughed and went on. I think it was her faith in Jesus that gave her such strength and inner peace.

Once she was diagnosed with cancer I'm sure she had bad days. I remember calling her one day and asking how she was doing. "I'm fine" She had been crying, but that was always her answer. She was always fine. Even when she wasn't.  And I would playfully tell her "Liar"  And we'd both laugh.  After she was diagnosed my siblings and I went to her house to have a meeting. Sort of an "Oh Lord, what do we do now?" thing.  And I asked her if there was anything that she wanted to do. Any "bucket list" type opportunities or activities that she wanted to get out of the way. "No, " she said, "I've done it all"   I couldn't fathom this at first. How could that be so?  She never lived in the fancy houses that I know she dreamed of. She never had a fancy car. We had talked about traveling the world together. We never got to do that.  But thinking back on it now, all mama ever wanted was time with her kids. And that was enough for her. That was enough to make her content.  As my kids begin to move out I can understand this sentiment.

One month and a week after mama passed away my beautiful baby girl moved out. She had graduated high school and wanted to move in with her boyfriend. She's 17 and I probably could have guilted her into staying home. I could have begged and pleaded, brought up the fact that I just lost mama. And she would have stayed.  But she would have been angry with me. And I don't think it would have made a difference in the long run. Sooner or later she was going to move out and begin her life on her own.  And probably sooner rather than later.  And it would have been just as hard then as it is now.

Yesterday (Wednesday, July 10) we loaded all of Amanda's boxes into my van and I drove her to her boyfriend's house. He lives about a 45 minute drive away and we planned to drop her off when I took my nephew to his therapy, which is about 10 minutes away from her boyfriends house.  I had a week to prepare myself for this, but a year wouldn't have been enough. When she took the last of her boxes into his house I broke down.  I tried really hard not to leave her crying but it was just impossible.

I spent the next couple of hours at therapy, driving, feeding animals, and just generally trying not to think about what had just happened. But when I finally got home and went in my house it was impossible not to think about. Therapy is every Wednesday and most days Amanda went with me.  After the hour ride there, home, and an hour sitting in the waiting room she was always full of energy. The first thing she would do when she came in was start up some music and start dancing in my living room. She'd pester me about working out with her. "You gonna work out with me today mama?" I had a litany of excuses. I was too tired, had too cook dinner, needed to clean house.  I wish I had danced with her more and made excuses less.

So when I came into my now empty house (my boys were both gone to friends for the night) it hit me full force. My baby was gone. She wasn't going to dance around my living room anymore.  She wasn't going to needle me into working out with her or unload the dishwasher while I started dinner. And so I cried.  Thankfully my son saw a post of mine on facebook and called. "You want some company mom?"
 "YES PLEASE!"
He and his girlfriend came and spent the afternoon with me. They left about 10 minutes before my husband came home and he held me while I cried myself to sleep.

This morning I went into her room to check out what she'd left behind.  I saw the fuzzy robe that I had given her, the clutch that we had found that went perfectly with the dress that we bought for the winter formal. The one she never got to attend.  And I kept thinking things like "She'll never get to wear  her fuzzy robe again" and "We just bought her that bed a few months ago so she would sleep better." Suddenly I realized that I was acting as if she were dead. Like she was gone and I would never see her again. And I realized that I never really grieved for mama.  I have been sad and I have cried. But I haven't allowed myself to think of her as gone.  Because if I actually acknowledge that my mother is dead then I have to face the fact that I will never again hug her. I won't playfully chide her about not eating enough.  She won't laugh at my silliness and tell me I worry too much or I work too hard.

And Amanda moving suddenly made all of this clear to me. I was grieving her as if she had died because I couldn't bring myself to admit that mama had. I couldn't handle the thought that my mama was gone and she wasn't coming back. Mandy moving is hard, I miss her fiercely. But I can go visit her whenever I want. I can call her every day. She's still here. She's just not living with me anymore.  My mama is gone. I'll never again be able to call her and gripe about my husband, my children, or that woman in the grocery store who was rude to me.  I can't go sit in her living room and talk to her about everything and nothing at the same time. I won't hear her laugh over some silly joke I made that no one else found funny.  We won't be able to watch movies together and cry. And we'll never travel the world. And it hurts.  It hurts to the very core of my being. And I don't say anything because I don't want all of the looks of sympathy. I don't want people calling me all the time to check on me. I just want to grieve. I want to miss my mama and cry and I want it to be ok for me to do that. Because when people call to check on me, then I feel like I'm pitying myself.  I feel like I need to get over myself and my need to grieve. Lots of people have lost their parents. I'm not the first, I won't be the last. Why should I carry on so?  But when people leave me to it I can cry. I'm not depressed. I'm not wallowing in it. I am missing my mama.

On hiatus

Just in case it wasn't already apparent I'm going to be taking a little break from blogging. Actually not a true break. More a break in the sense that I won't be trying to post every week. I will post when I have the time and inclination to do so.   Comprende?

The diet isn't going great because of the emotional eating. and the simple fact is that I don't how much time my mom has left.  Maybe she has years, I certainly hope so. And maybe it's months.  Whatever it is I want to be able to spend as much time with her as possible. So the time I was normally working on this blog I will be spending with her and my family. And when inspiration strikes or I just need to get something off my chest then I'll be here pounding it out on my keyboard. But rather than pressure myself to get a new entry out every week, I'm just gonna let whatever will be will be.  I hope those of you who do read this will understand.

And if you don't then by all means, carry on to some place new ;)

Let me be candid

This last week has been a roller coaster of emotion. We received some not so great news about my mom. She's been really light headed lately, confused, and forgetful. To the point that she can't remember things she's known for years and she uses the wrong word a lot. We mentioned it to her doctor and he wanted to do an MRI to make sure that there were no tumors in her brain. He asked if she'd ever had one, I told him yes, at the beginning.

So they did a repeat scan and found tumors in her skull; not her brain, but the skull. This means that her cancer is a definite stage 4 now.  They scheduled her for a bone scan to see how far spread these tumors in her bones are. We found this out right after we learned that the pneumonia she had been fighting for over a month was still here. We went to the doctor Friday to find out the results of the bone scan and how this affects her diagnosis.  The scan showed that the tumors in her bone are basically in her entire skeleton. In various places from her skull to her legs she has tumors.  Her doctor said that he is ever an optimist   So he has changed her medicine out and she will undergo a few more rounds of chemotherapy using two new drugs.  He's hoping with the new medicines that we can get her disease to a stable point again.  To be honest my hope is waning. When my mother started chemo I hoped she would be cured. Now I'm just enjoying every moment I have with her, and hoping for the best. Whatever that is.




On the home front she has been having a lot of difficulty getting in and out of bed, which is where she spends most of her time at the moment.  Lifting herself up causes a lot of pain probably because of the tumors in her bones. So we've had her set up with a hospital bed and nurse. She also set herself up with a physical therapist. She's thinking maybe they can help work some of the soreness out since she spends so much time in bed. I'm all for that. I'm glad because it will allow her to maintain her independence for a bit longer, which is really important to mama.

At the time of this writing she's actually back in the hospital for the pneumonia that she is still battling.  After we went to the doctor Friday we ran a few errands and then went back to her house. She was fine then, just a little tired and so I went on home to let her get a nap.  Then Saturday about lunch time my brother and his family went by to check on her, again she was fine. At about 6pm Saturday evening my sister called to check on her. Mama was having an extremely hard time breathing and couldn't even speak because of it. So my brother went and picked her up and rushed her to the ER where we all met her.  She is feeling much better today but they have decided to keep her until they get the pneumonia healed. She's been fighting it for about a month with medicine at home so that obviously isn't working.  I know my mom and know she is NOT going to like this being stuck in a hospital. But I think this is the best for her too.

Now I have told you before that I am an emotional eater.  Eating junk food gives me comfort. I don't know why, I haven't figured that out yet. I just know it does. So this past week, the second part of the mini-challenge I am doing, was a complete and total flop. Not only did I not eat my two fruits and vegetables with every meal, I ate cookies and snickers.  Many cookies and snickers.  And the thing that gets me is I knew what I was doing the whole time. It wasn't as if I was blindly eating and suddenly had a realization, "Oh my, I have eaten an entire Snickers.  How clumsy of me"    Naw, I went into it knowingly and willingly.  I was standing at the candy counter one day thinking to myself, "Do I really need a Coke and a Snickers?  You know how many calories that is, and how hard they are to burn"  It only took me about 15 seconds to decide yes, yes I did need a Coke and a Snickers.

And I am really not sure how to combat this. How to beat these tendencies. If I beat myself up about it, then I feel worse. And I say to myself, "Well, you've flopped anyways, no sense in trying now. You're just a failure. Go get a Snickers."  If I tell myself, "Ok you screwed up, let's move past this, just don't do it again." Then I feel.. less guilty?  when I do buy the junk food. Because then I tell myself, "Well you just screwed up is all, you can fix this, DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT!  YOU GOT THIS!  Besides, you need it. It makes you feel better"   And I'm struggling to find something that makes me feel as good as food does.  So that when I am NOT hungry and DON'T really want it, I won't go to it. I'll just find something else to do.  So I guess I'm just letting you know that I have failed this week. I don't know how to stop myself, and I am open to suggestions.

photo credit: C. E. Sandoval via photopin cc

Oh, and I'm rebooting part two of the challenge next week.  So hopefully I can get myself back on track.

One down, 13 to go

So week one of the challenges is behind us and overall it wasn't too bad. We were eating about three to four servings of fruits and vegetables daily. Upping that to six was a bit of a challenge, but I did enjoy it.  I never really felt hungry and I found myself with more energy.  I still caught myself eating entirely too much processed junk.  My son brought home a box of chunky chocolate chip cookies and I ate four of them before the box was gone.  Even though I read the ingredients, I knew what was in them was bad, and I really wasn't hungry for them. I just wanted them. This is the hardest part for me. The desire to eat junk. It isn't that it's that great. It just makes me feel good.  And I'm not even sure why.  I am really trying to work on that.  At least it was only four this time!  I have eat half a box of those by myself in the past, so at least that is some small improvement.


I figured when this week started that it would be really easy to up my intake of veggies and fruits since I do love them. I was wrong.  The hardest part is making good decisions really. I had tons of fruit and vegetables on hand for the week but when the cookies were brought into the house by my kids and I had a choice between a piece of fruit and a cookie, I caved.  On the upshot I did realize that eating five to six servings of fruits and vegetables really does make you feel fuller. Now I just need to figure out some way to resist the temptation of cookies. And chips. Ok junk food in general.  At any rate I have decided to continue this challenge indefinitely. It just makes sense to, ya know?

A few of the meals we had this week included:
~ Baked French Toast Casserole with fruit (strawberries and bananas for us)
~ Herbed Baked Chicken with green beans, carrot fries, and mashed potatoes
~ Toad-In-A-Hole, cantaloupe, and an apple
~ Sweet-N-Spicy Crockpot Chicken, brown rice, broccoli, and an apple.
~ Blueberry pancakes, sausage patties, and cantaloupe.

This weeks challenge is going to be just that for me, a challenge.

Beverages are limited to coffee, tea, water, and milk. One cup of red wine per day and one cup of juice for the week. 

Ok first off a confession: I am freaking addicted to sodas.  I mean BAD.  I have given them up in the past, but I did that by drinking tea instead of soda. Which is awesome, right?  Except that my tea is sweetened with sugar. And this challenge says that I can have water ,milk, one cup of juice, coffee, and tea.  But ONLY sweetened with a little honey or maple syrup.  Warm honey lemon tea is awesome in the winter when my throat is scratchy. But I just can't see honey being nice in a glass of ice tea.   So honestly I'm gonna do this for one week. Maybe less, we'll know next week lol.  But I do want to take this chance to give up sodas again. In a week without them I should be closer to giving up the habit.  So this weeks goals are basically to try and avoid the junk foods. My kids are gonna bring them in. I can't always use them being here as an excuse to eat them.  Junk food is everywhere and at some point I just have to start developing better habits.  And to avoid sodas and try really hard to avoid tea unless it is sweetened with honey. The good thing about this is my body should be really happy with my water consumption this week!

They say confession heals the soul....

When I was little I was a worry wart.  Heck who am I kidding? I am still a worry wart. I worry about EVERYTHING.  My family often says that they don't worry about anything because they know I'll worry enough about it for everyone.  And I do. I don't remember my parents arguing when I was little. But I know they must have because I remember asking my mama over and over if her and my daddy would ever get divorced.  Her answer was always the same, "Never!"

Never isn't a very long time because when I was 14 my parents separated and when I was 17 they divorced.   I mentioned this to my mom years ago and asked her if she remembered me always asking about her and daddy being divorced. She said that she did and she should never have told me that they wouldn't get divorced.  She said you can never tell what will happen in the future and that was the lesson she learned from that.




Somewhere around the same time I was trying to get my mom to stop smoking.  Arguably I was trying in the wrong way. Instead of encouragement I was basically bribing her, shaming her, and basically bullying her in hopes that she would quit.  My grandfather smoked all of his life and he developed lung cancer because of it. Towards the end of his life he was unable to care for himself and his family was called in. I remember my mom and her sisters sitting with him, caring for him. They had to do everything for him.  And then several years after that my mothers father-in-law (her second husband's step-father) developed lung cancer. He went through basically the same thing. Only this time it was only my mother caring for him.  So during this time that I was trying to get her to quit smoking I said to her, "What if you get lung cancer, mama? Who's gonna take care of you? Me!  That's who!  Do you want me to have to do that for you like you did for papa and Earl?" And her reply was, "No, I won't get to that point. I would rather die than be a burden to y'all"

Now if you've been reading through my blog then you know my mom has lung cancer. If you don't then there you are. Her lung cancer is the kind that non-smokers get, so the doctor says that whether or not she smoked is irrelevant. But she hasn't been doing well lately. She's had pneumonia a couple of times and basically she has felt horrible.  My brother calls and checks on her daily, my sister texts her all throughout the week, and I call a couple times a week.  And she hadn't told any of us that she was doing so poorly. We found out when she had to call one of her sisters for help.  I was frustrated with her and called her to find out why she wasn't calling. She said that she didn't want to be a burden on us. She reminded me of what she'd said about that all of those years ago.  I felt floored. I told her we'd rather care for her for years than lose her now. That she wasn't a burden and we loved her.

I think the reason she feels this way is my fault. If I hadn't badgered her so much and carried on about how I would have to take care of her then she wouldn't feel like a burden. I really didn't mean that I wouldn't want to take care of her. I was just trying to shame her into quitting smoking. And I'm ashamed of myself now. And more than that I am ashamed that my mother now considers herself a burden. She's not. She never has been and never will be. And I hope that somehow I can get that through her thick head.

I love you mama.  And I'm sorry.