5 Years

It was 5 years ago on January 13th, 2005 that my mom lost her battle with pancreatic cancer. 5 years. 5 YEARS. I just keep saying it, over and over again in my head. So much can happen in 5 years, it is literally a lifetime for my son who is turning 5 in April. Looking back a the last 5 years, I realize so much has changed, life goes on, but at the same time I look around our house and so much of it is exactly like it was 5 years ago.

On the mantel above the fireplace sits a framed picture of my sister, mom and I, and leaning on that frame is the memorial card from my mom’s service. I placed it there when we came home from her service and it has been there ever since. I am not sure how many times I have picked it up and read it in the last 5 years. It feels like I just put it on the mantel yesterday.

I think of my mom often, I miss her every day. I wonder what it would be like if she was here, if she witnessed the funny little things Asher and Eden do. If she and Tatum could play together now. My mom relished being a grandmother (or Oma) to Tatum, but with Asher she just got to touch my belly and tell him she wanted to live long enough to meet him. Before Asher was even conceived, the doctors told her she had 2 months to live, mom lived almost a year from the day they told her. Until the end, she was defying odds - always a bit stubborn and just not wanting to believe she wouldn’t be with us. I look back and I know I was not believing. I remember back to 2002 when my mom was first diagnosed with cancer. I did all the research online and read that pancreatic cancer had a very small survival rate, but this was my mom and if anyone could beat it, she could. Miracles happen.

Sometimes knowing that you are going to lose someone close before you actually do is the miracle, the gift. It hurts and you don’t want to believe it, but there is the warning, expectation and with knowing comes the opportunity to not let the one you love leave this world without showing and telling them what they mean to you. We expected my mom not to live a year after her first diagnosis, but we were blessed with more than 2 years. Every day, week, month was a miracle. In our society, we feel there is never enough time to do the things we need/want to do, EXCEPT when you are told you only have a short window or deadline, then miraculously we find the time. That is what we did as a family, made time to be together because we didn’t know how much time we would have with her. And everyday I am grateful to have had that time, to have been given the gift of knowing (but still always hoping the doctors were wrong).

Tatum asleep on Oma, her favorite spot.

My mom came and stayed at our house every week for 2 nights a week. Even though my mom was sick with cancer, in many ways her illness was not apparent. She had become very thin and frail, but was still beautiful, strong willed and very active. When she came to stay with us, she was always the first one up in the morning. She’d go down to the kitchen an make coffee, before the rest of the house woke up. Just like when I was in high school, she would make me a cup of coffee and bring it upstairs for me. There was something so special about that to me, and just hearing her footsteps coming down the hall, brought me back in time. No matter how old I was, I was always her little girl and she was always taking care of me.

Over the last 5 years, sometimes when it is one of those weekend mornings where it is my turn to sleep in and Steve is with the kids, in a half asleep, I hear someone coming upstairs and the wood floor creaks just outside of the bedroom as someone is about to enter. As I open my eyes, just for a moment I expect to see my mom coming through the doorway with coffees in each hand, one for her and one for me. In that second, she is alive and her passing is a dream. My heart warms for that moment and I feel her. I wonder when I will stop expecting to see her, maybe it will take another 5 years.

A lazy morning, after our coffee together.

The thing about 5 years it is a long time, but at the same time it is a blink. Life goes on, but there are parts of my life, like the appearance of our house, that is almost frozen in time. Not the most organized, I believe I have been particularly neglectful in the last 5 years with moving forward. I haven’t updated any pictures in the frames around the house with new ones, there isn’t one picture in the house of Eden, and the ones of Asher he is a bald baby. The baby pictures around the house are still Tatum. I have boxes in the basement that I got from my mom’s house, I just can’t bring myself to look through. The boxes are sitting there, taking up space for 5 years, a half of a decade. I am still finding things around the house that are my mom’s. It actually took me 4 years to throw away a cocoa butter body lotion she used to use - it was so old, but if I opened it and smelled the lotion, it made me think of her. I have bottles of my mom’s perfumes in my room, that I am sure are too old and I don’t plan on using, but I can’t seem to part with them. I know logically that her things don’t preserve her memory. How do I move forward, let go? I know this isn’t an uncommon occurrence to find your house filled with things you don’t use, that may have belonged to someone you loved. To find your surroundings stuck in time.

In 5 years, my memory, love and admiration for my mother has not faded. I know it is time to sort through all her things, to purge our house of the clutter.  Keeping things the same hasn’t changed the fact that I miss her and will miss her every day for the rest of my life. I can’t keep the house halted. It’s been 5 years. The task is overwhelming and it won’t be easy, but it’s time.

A first step…scanning all the old pictures. Here re two of my favorites of her - very young in her modeling days in Indonesia.