Skip to main content

2 months later

It has been about 2 months since I last saw my mother. All things considered, I am doing fine, however there are times that the sadness of my loss floods my heart through teardrops streaming from my eyes. The pain is still very real, the loss still surreal. I sometimes forget that she is actually gone, that she isn't back home with my dad and brother, that her spirit is actually somewhere watching over us.

The memories, photos and notes can't replace her, they can't even come close to even capturing her essence. But still, I seek them for comfort for they are as close as I can get to her right now. She has visited me in a few of my dreams, in each one radiantly beautiful, the charming brightly spirited Carmen she always was. In my dreams she is healed as if her cancer had never existed. I like to think that it is actually her in my dreams, her soul coming to visit me letting me know that she is alright, that she is finally healed and blissfully happy, like she said she would be from her dream of reaching heaven.

I am still putting the pieces of this puzzle together. As Carmen taught me to believe, everything happens for a reason. I honestly believe this, but am having difficulty understanding why bad things happen to good people. I know that Carmen took her cancer as a life-changing, eye-opening experience. Because of her cancer she was able to discover herself, her spirituality and redefine her life through what was truly important. She was thankful for everything that came out of her having cancer. Despite everything she learned, it was decided that it was her time to go. Many of us will argue that she was taken well before her time--she still had so many things she wanted to do, so many people she could have helped. So then why? Why did she have to go when she did? What was the reason for her death? So that I could learn my own strength and grow stronger from it? Or perhaps so that I could understand the importance of spirituality? Nothing can justify losing her, no reason could be good enough to explain her death. But, if I have learned anything throughout my 25 years of existence, is that Carmen is always right. So then, I must wait patiently for the reason. I will try to open my eyes, heart, and soul to embrace the universe and perhaps one day I will understand.
I want to understand.
I want to believe that this all happened for a reason.
I want to believe that in time this sadness will disappear under a blanket of my memories and my mother's love for me.

Until then, I will continue this healing process, with the help of time and being extremely busy with bschool.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Carmen Mateo

My mother was first diagnosed with retroperitoneal liposarcoma in October of 2005. I had come home to see her in the hospital—during the removal of a cyst on her breast the doctors accidentally punctured her lung. It was during her stay at the hospital that they completed an MRI of her core (to verify the lung’s status) and found a large mysterious mass—a tumor. Though frightened by this news she was thankful for the discovery. Weeks went by as my parents spoke with other doctors and centers trying to figure out what this tumor was and what to do. Eventually she was diagnosed—liposarcoma, a rare type of cancerous tumor that manifests itself as a mass of fat. The irony of it—my mother the skinniest petite woman in the world, had a fat tumor. Right before Thanksgiving she went   to Sloan Kettering to have surgery to remove the almost 8lb tumor. Being the strong woman that she is, she recovered quickly from the surgery and began her healing journey. It was years bef...
Post a Comment
Read more

Decisions, decisions

I want to cry, scream and pretend like nothing happened all at once.  More  despair as yet another treatment option fails me. Another disappointment. Another set back.  Unfortunately it's not just about my ulcerative colitis and trying to get myself healthy, it's also about how my UC has gotten in the way of my hopes of eventually having a family of my own.  At least when there were more treatment options I could be hopeful of maybe one day feeling better and being able to start a family. But now I'm woefully aware of my limited options and the realization that I likely might not ever  really  get to be  normal  again. That maybe no medication I try will help. That maybe the one thing I have left is the utterly life changing surgery to have my colon removed.  Willful hope, denial, stubbornness...I'm not sure what to call it, but I had always believed deep down inside that somehow I would find something that would work, som...
Post a Comment
Read more

"Nothing with me is simple...

but I am STILL HERE!" - Carmen Today was another crazy day for Carmen, you know to keep things interesting. The radiologists looked at the ultrasound, and based on that thought that perhaps it wasn't blood clots but the compression of the inferior vena cava instead. So they did a venogram to look at the veins to verify the presence of the blood clots. As it turned out, there were no blood clots, and the fluid retention was based on the compression of the lower vena cava. The doctors put in 2 or 3 stents to reinforce the vein that was nearly completely compressed by the tumors, which took quite some time because of a minor hiccup. The second stent only half deployed, but was attached to the stent above it, and so they had to hold the top stent from above as they pulled the lower stent to fully open it. (To all my future doctor friends--I can't believe you are going to be doing crazy on the spot stuff like this. You guys are awesome!) Because Carmen was actually half con...
Post a Comment
Read more