I’m sitting at my dinning room table, staring at the flowers my husband brought home for me last week, trying to decide a starting point for this.

I have no goal for this blog, no sense of direction, other than to get the thoughts swirling in my brain down somewhere. I need to tread lightly, some of the areas I would like to touch on are extremely sensitive to myself and my family. If you are family and you happen across this, don’t judge, don’t take it personally, as the title of this blog states, this is through my eyes.. the thoughts and feelings I had in those moments and in the moments moving forward in life.

So, where does a 30 year old mother begin to tell her story of loosing her own mother while being 7 months pregnant.. and trying to navigate the most important times in her life without the one person that was supposed to be there for it all…..I feel like this is where I need to just dive in, get to the grit, then build a background and future from there..

It’s hard for me to remember the years, so dates probably wont show up too much..

As a Junior in high school, I’ll never forget the day sitting in my American Sign Language class with my red LG Shine phone face up on my desk. It began ringing, and I will just say I wasn’t the best student, not the worst, but definitely a distracted one. So my teacher at the time had reached a very slight level of frustration when I told her i needed to step out and take the call or listen to the message. I left my guide dog that I had started raising for my senior project at my desk with a classmate and headed into the hall. Listening to the message I remember it feeling like all the air had left my body, the message was nothing bad, no details, a simple, “Bobby is on her way to pick you up from school now.” From my father. Bobby is a long time family friend, but also a family friend that’s never had to pick me up or involved in that way, i knew. I knew in that moment something was wrong. I went back into the class, rounded my things and my dog up and headed out front to wait for my ride.

It’s strange the things you remember, and the things you don’t. Because I cannot tell you where we went, or what had happened after that.. I know what happened of course, but the specific memories are a fog. I’m sure we went back to my parents, or maybe the hospital, i cant remember if she was admitted that day, should I remember? Should i try harder to dig into these locked vaults in my mind? Anyways, the news was shared at the time that my mother was diagnosed with an Ependymoma brain tumor. .. … Excuse me what? I’m a maybe 16 year old kid being told my mother, Who mind you, already survived being absolutely mowed over by a drunk driver, now has brain cancer?! EXCUSE ME?!

The things that follow are hard for me to separate I’m my brain, my family has had to endure a lot of trauma, a lot of hospital visits and its hard for me at this point to remember what moment is connected to what feeling. I’m trying though.

Mom went through Brain surgery to remove as much of the tumor as they could, i want to say it was 98 or 99 percent. Then would go on to Pinpoint radiation to kill the remainder. That alone seemed like a form of mid evil torture. She had a plastic mesh face mask formed to her head and face that was then screwed to a table so she couldn’t move…she’s the definition of strength.. and i only realize that more as i try to sort all of this out in my mind. We survived surgery, but not without some complications.. because why not make it harder on her. The tumor was attached to her brain stem in the area that controls speech and vision. I remember seeing her eyes do this uncontrollable bouncing, it was terrifying for me. Then there was the whole tongue paralysis thing. She came home on a feeding tube… where i with my father ( both siblings were out of the house and in the military at this point) had to hook her up daily for her nutrition. Did you know that those beautiful red cans of coke, also clean a feeding tube line out very well, no? I do.

Shit.. this is a long post to start, am I being sensitive enough? Does it matter? This is a fucking cluster of an experience and i guess it only makes sense that the blog posts reflect as such.. i think ill leave it for here for now.. maybe I’ll try another post this afternoon.