I’ve written and rewritten this post many times over the past 2 years. I’d forget about it and then see it amongst my notes again. Changed some parts and pressed save. I never intended on actually posting it, I just wanted to write down how I felt.
Let me start off by saying that I’m not posting this for any sort of sympathy. I’m writing this to normalize having these feelings. Because no matter how strong (or not strong) you are, at the end of the day we are all still human.
So, today, exactly 5 years ago my mom passed away after a long battle with cancer. I was 25 years old when she passed away and she was first diagnosed when I was about 18 years old. As you can imagine, after her diagnosis our lives changed completely.
I’m not going into detail about those 7 years, because this post is not about that. It’s about the aftermath. I had to deal with losing a parent at an early adult age. I was not prepared whatsoever, because how do you even prepare for something like that? Looking back now, I don’t know what I was expecting. Towards the end the doctors were very honest about her life expectancy, but still. It’s like I couldn’t wrap my brain around it. So when that day came, it hit me like a truck. A truck that I had seen coming from miles away, but somehow couldn’t avoid. So, now what? What to do with this situation no one prepared you for? Well, you go through it.
Eventually, after many, many months, I could finally enjoy the things that once made me happy and have somewhat of a positive outlook on life again. Of course, I had my moments, but overall I felt like I was doing okay.
So once I got back into the (new) normal way of living, I realized something. I was jealous. I was jealous every time one of my friends had a fight with their mom and told me about it. I was jealous every time my colleague told me about the dinner dates she and her mom have. I was jealous when I saw pictures of my cousins and their mom. I wanna yell at my mom. I wanna go on dinner dates with my mom. I wanna take new pictures with my mom. But all of that isn’t possible anymore. And at first, it was really hard to pretend not to be jealous of their stories. But after a while, I had to tell myself that it’s okay to miss my mom and not be jealous of other people. Because I’m thankful for all the moments that I did get to share with her.
And now, I like hearing those stories.
