Rollercoaster

I haven't added to my blog in a few months.  The last time I posted it was Valentine's Day, just a week or so before the storm.  By the storm I do not mean a storm outside, but a storm that hit my life.  As I sit here, I almost can't believe the things that have happened since then.  No wonder I have lost my sense of time.

About a week or so after my last post, my Mom came for a visit.  She had appointments at Mayo (or Mayos as all the Yoopers--Yoopers being those from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where my home town is at) to have a precancerous condition in her breast looked at one more time and she was planning on having a double mastectomy to prevent the cancer that had hit her sister years before. 

She had been having headaches...terrible headaches like the migraines she always used to have in years past but hadn't had in some years.  Her doctor at Mayo suggested she have a head CT scan just as a precautionary step before they would do surgery.  I remember the text because of the panic that it created.  The head CT had been done, they called her right back and said that they found some "abnormalities".  She's running across Mayo to go back to the doctor, I'm at my desk at work and I'm looking at my phone like it's going to give me some enlightenment as to what this all means.  It was over the lunch hour, people were not around, I was trying to calm the intense panic I felt in my chest.  I'm doing the Oh My God chant, like that also will somehow stop the anxiety.  

She calls, they're not calling them abnormalities any more, they're calling them tumors and they definitely see three of them.  My head is spinning, I can only remember too well the cancer diagnosis when Tim and I were sitting in front of the doctors hearing that terrible word.  It was coming up on just two years since Tim died.  We went back together the next day, they were doing the familiar hunt for the primary cancer and they found it.  Lung cancer.  That's where it started and spread to the brain.  Good Lord, she had lung and brain cancer!!!  The prognosis was not good, but could range anywhere from 3 months to a year and if you made it to a year, you would probably have more time. 

Somewhere deep within my mind I did not want to hear what my intuition said but I knew it would not be long.  It sure as hell wasn't what I wanted, but ironically, it was the gift of intuition that Mom gave me and taught me to recognize as just one of those things that the women in this family have...trust it.  

I can't put the details of that part of story down quite yet, but Mom did not have a long time as I thought.  She stayed here at my house, which was it's own painful but also wonderful journey.  She passed away on May 7th, just two days before the 2 year anniversary of Tim's death.  Those two souls were connected in a way that I will probably never understand, but on Mother's Day 2 years ago, I lost Tim and on Mother's Day this year, we had my Mom's funeral.  I hope they're having a good time, but really you two...did you have to mess up Mother's Day for me like that???

I have gone through many emotions already with this deep, deep blow.  But I'm pretty pissed overall.  I know all that bullshit about not getting more than you can handle and oh, I'm so strong.  Where do I get off this strong train...I want off!  I don't want to be the one that tests how much grief I can handle without losing it entirely.  Whoever is listening--God, the Universe, Higher Power, whatever it calls itself...stop it.  I know I have built a new family of people around me that are good and loving and wonderful and I do have happiness in my life, but I am getting off the roller coaster now.  I'm done.  I'm going to look to those who know me, love me and make me happy.  But I'm still pissed.