Dear Mom

7.19.52 - 12.11.02 I miss you so much. I wish you were here to see Caden. Somehow you knew you'd have another grandkid when you got that tattoo with the 7 roses. I wish I could talk to you one last time, to tell you that I loved you & to say goodbye.

I remember the day you died just like it was yesterday. It was a Wednesday morning. I was fixing to leave to take the kids to school. It was a little before 7am when the phone rang. James answered it. It was a short call, he quickly hung up. He pulled me to him & told me that my mother was dead. I couldn't believe it, I felt like a ton of bricks came crashing down on me. How could this be? I mean she hadn't been sick lately, she had been sickly in the past but not enough to kill her. I thought it was a cruel joke. Suddenly I was overcome with an urgency to see for myself. I wanted to see your dead body, see for myself how a 50 year old woman could be dead. We rushed out the door & I drove like a crazy woman to get to get to her house. I don't remember alot about the drive. When we got there, she was already gone. My step dad Mike said she just passed away in her sleep. We rushed to the hospital, I still had to see your dead body. To see you one last time. The morgue was a tiny room. You were laying on a cold, hard, steel table. I couldn't believe it. There you lay, dead. I cried. Like never before. I cried so much that I was close to an asthma attack. My life changed at that time. Seeing you there made me realize that all the money, jewels, cars, etc doesn't mean shit when you're dead. You can't take nothing with you. I was never really materialistic before, that taught me to be happy for what we had. In the days following, I felt like a zombie. I felt so dead. I was just going through the emotions of life. I kept expecting to wake up & it had been a dream. After about 6 months, I finally came out of my "fog". I felt cheated that I lost my mother, it just wasn't fair. But life goes on.