Regret.

I always miss my Mom.

The heartache I feel is for the happy times I had with her, her wisdom and wealth of knowledge about almost everything, her confidence, courage, warmth, the softness of her skin and missing who I was when she was alive-seeing myself as she saw me. Lately I have not just been missing the happy times but the hard times too and sadly, her last few years were hard years. The truth is, my Mom struggled with pain the majority of her adult life. My Mom was athletic as a teenager and very comfortable in her own skin. At some point during her teenage years she was in a bad car accident at which time her body began to fail her. Her neck and back were in bad shape. When I was ten, she had surgery to remove a brain aneurysm which led to years of chronic and debilitating migraine headaches. Later she had surgery to fuse vertebrae in her neck together and the list of ailments and surgeries goes on and on. Growing up I don't remember her suffering or expressing discomfort but as an adult I was very aware of it. Then there was the depression, which I am certain was magnified by the pain. She medicated the pain and the depression, the combination of which left her unable to function creatively. As a perfectionist she felt frustrated and dejected in any artistic task or basic task really. When I would come home from college, I never knew how I would find her; groggy and dazed or lucid and peppy. Our relationship was strained around the time Tim and I got married. She had had a mental break of some kind and was spending time in a facility, detoxing from medication and trying to find some peace. I was hesitant to ask for her help or involve her in the planning because of her fragile mental/emotional state. But you know, that was so painful for her. She desperately wanted to spread her creative wings and fly but I kept clipping them back. We both said things and well like I said, our relationship was strained. A few years later we were having a fight while she was medicated and she told me all she wanted was to be a Grandma. I threw in her face that I wasn't going to have kids until she got healthy. The look on her groggy face scarred me. After I said it I felt terrible but hoped our argument would be forgotten by her medicated state. But she didn't forget and what I said haunted our friendship. During those hard times I wondered what the end of my Mom's misery would look like. And now I know. It looks empty and desperate, like I am drowning without her. I know that even on her worst day, I would want her here with me because the hope of a good day would be right around the corner. Not like now, where neither her good day or bad day is on the horizon.

My Mom was a cheerleader in high school. And Prom Queen too. When I was little, I would beg her to cheer for us with her old pom poms. I loved it.