Today it’s been 11 years since my mother lost her battle with cancer. She fought this horrible illness for 5 long years, which gave us more time together — more time to just be kids.
It’s only in the past year or so that I’ve started realizing how young me and my sister were when she died — I was 12 and my sister was 9. Spending time with my cousin’s kids, who are the same age now as we were when we lost my mom, really makes it that much harder.
I cannot help but think how different our lives would have been had Mamma not gotten sick.
I remember the day she died like it was yesterday.
My sister and I had been staying at our grandparents cabin all summer, like we had done our whole lives. Pappi had spent 2 months in the hospital with Mamma, only leaving her side when family members would come kick him out for the day so he could go home and shower and maybe see his friends.
I can only imagine what he was going through day in and day out watching the woman he loves suffer and eventually die.
That morning in the beginning of August, back in 2004, I called him to ask for his marinated aubergine recipe and he just said he was on his way and he would tell me when he got there. Right then I knew what had happened. I got angry with myself for even thinking that she was gone. How could she? She was supposed to live until she was old and die peacefully in her sleep when she was 80.
Up until that day I had never experienced death. I had never been able to fathom something so final – but when it happened I did straight away. Nobody had to tell me that this was it, nobody had to explain to me that Mamma was never coming back, I understood it fully then and there.
Pappi sat my sister and I down on the hammock in the garden under the big tree and told us what had happened. He sat between us with his arms wrapped around his two daughters, his family. I did not want to attend the funeral but my grandmother said I would regret not going in the future — I am not sure if I agree with her but I ended up going.
That summer back in 2004 was a wonderful and warm summer, everything about that summer was just perfect except that it was the summer Mamma had to die.
We would have four wonderful years with lots of joy and laughter – especially laughter, after Mamma died. But then three years into those four years Pappi came home and said he had pancreatic cancer. Everything went dark.
How was this happening again? How could it? We were finally starting to live with the loss of Mamma, and now this?
A year later Pappi died after two long days in the hospital.
I miss them so much it hurts. I miss them every second of every day, I have missed them since they died and will always miss them.
Why is life so unfair? We already lost one parent was that not enough?
I would like to say I am stronger because of it today, but in many ways I am weaker.
We are all going to die and everyone will experience losing a loved one or several before their time comes, however it is just that much harder when one is too damn young.
