One Year Later

A year ago in November, I took my mother to the ER and we found out the cancer had spread to her brain.  She was at University Medical Center of Princeton at Plainsboro until the day before Thanksgiving, and was discharged to follow up with oncology and radiation oncology.  She finished her brain radiation on November 30, and the radiation bought her (and me) some time, but some time will always be never enough time.

I think I've forgotten most of what went on during the period from her hospitalization through the holidays.  Somehow we had Thanksgiving, Hanukkah and Christmas, and on New Year's Even, I enrolled her in hospice.  It was just putting one foot in front of the other and trying to get through the day, watching Mom slowly slip away.

Almost one year later, I'm missing her just as much as when she died.  I was going through my memorabilia trunk (it makes it sound much more organized than it is) and found old photos.  Mom on her high school graduation day, Mom and her mother on the beach - in a bikini no less, Mom holding two-month old me in front of  our house at 2515 Van Buren Street.   Pictures that would be so much more interesting if she were here with me.

The New York Times the Washington Post, CBS Sunday Morning and CNN have been cataloging famous people who died in 2013, and while I will miss Nelson Mandela, C. Evertt Koop, James Gandolfini, Cory Monteith, Lou Reed, Peter O'Toole, etc., my mother tops the list for Lives Lost this year. I miss her most.