I lost my mom to cancer just 5 1/2 weeks after diagnosis.
by Beth A. Innerst
My mom was so full of life, she and my dad loved to travel after they retired. They visited many places and enjoyed the company of each other. Let me say that their relationship started when my mom was 13 and my dad was 15 years old. They met on a hay ride one night. My mom didn't even like my dad at first, but after a while she softened up to him and they began dating. My mom ended up getting pregnant when she was just 15 years old (back in 1958) and they got married. They had 3 children before her 18th birthday! Let me just say that because of their young age, they had some very rocky moments together, but as love would have it, they survived the hard times and went on to be such a happy couple. Over the past 15 years, my dad would bring my mom a rose in everyday from their rose bush and she would have roses in a bowl from May through the first frost. The year 2011 was no different, only this time she decided she would put the petals from the roses in clear glass balls that you could hang or sit. There were 6 or 7 of these glass balls that she had placed in a wooden bowl. When mom passed in the wee early hours of December 14, the family all gathered around and as I sat in her chair in the den I looked and found the very last my dad had brought in for her just days before. (you see December this year was very warm, usually we have frost in late November, but as God would have it, it was unusually warm). I picked up the rose and showed my dad. He was very emotional at seeing this last rose. Like it was to be very special to him for eternity, for after all, she touched this and smelled this with her hands days before she passed. At the funeral, the pastor started out with, "I love a love story" and shared some of the story of how my folks met. And then later on she shared that "she hates a love story, for there always has to be a sad ending to them". My dad will always cherish those rose petals and the last rose that my mom touched. My mom and dad were married almost 54 years, and they were inseparable. The pain of her death is still very much fresh to me and all our family. I get up every day and look up in the sky and say to her, "I miss you mom". Some days it's so hard to go through the day. There are many days that I still cry, that I don't know how I made it this far into the mourning process without losing my mind. It is through tears that I write this today to share with whoever will read it. And I think that if I live for another 20 years I must face every day of those 20 years with out my mom. I also have been blessed though, for my folks took my husband and I and my brother and sister-in-law on a cruise in June 2011. We got to spend some great time together and it was wonderful to experience that. The summer of 2011 my mom and I got to spend a lot of time together shopping and laughing, having lunch together and just hanging out. As I look back over these past several months, I am so blessed to have been able to spend so much time with her and enjoy her. I even played a video for her of a country song that came out in October 2011 that I told her was dedicated to her. It was called, "Just Like My Mom". She cried the day that I played it for her. She knew how much I loved her and the rest of the family as well. We all rallied around her when we found out she was sick. Now we rally around my dad, who just went through a prostate biopsy to see if he has prostate cancer. We find out this Friday if it is cancer. I thank you for giving me the opportunity to share my story with you, it has been another step in the healing process.
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