So where we had sort of left off was Mom had gone from not wanting any drastic measures, to deciding on having the debulking surgery.

The day of surgery was full of fear, hopefulness and family.. but what I haven’t quiet gotten to yet was that mom was very private. With that, we didn’t publicly broadcast what was going on, mom didn’t want the attention, the sympathy. Those that needed to know did, and I did my best to keep everyone informed. But there is always something that falls through the cracks.

We had all gathered at the hospital. My father, myself, my aunt and uncles..im sure there were more but I cant seem to put that all together in this moment. We had family and family friends drop off food for us as they knew it was going to be a very long day of waiting. Mom was wheeled off and we gathered just outside the waiting room. My anxiety was through the roof already and I jumped on Facebook to see a post that was announcing my mother was having brain surgery that day and asking for prayers. Now this person was no where near the hospital and didn’t know exactly what was going on themselves, as well as putting information out that wasn’t common knowledge flooded my phone and my fathers phone with a million questions in a moment that we just wanted to be quiet and present for. I got the post removed but the damage had been done and I spent the majority of the day fielding calls and texts, I felt like a broken record, trying to give out the correct information without giving out too much that would send everyone into a panic. I took that on, my dad didn’t need to do anything other than be there for the moment mom needed him.

I took to Facebook again and created a family only group to keep things more centralized for getting information out, it worked quite well and lessened the amount of repeat conversations.

Moms surgery was about 5 hours long. We waited and visited with family. I’ll never forget it, we took up the whole common area outside the waiting room that day. Family and friends had bought us snacks and coffee so we didn’t even have to think about anything other than mom. we all sat there together until the doctor came and told us surgery had gone well. They were able to remove the majority of the tumor in her Cerebellum but were not able to touch any others due to them being attached to the brain stem. Next stop was ICU to recover.

Surprising to all of us, mom came out of that surgery great, she was smiling and alert and quite loopy. That night we left mom, gave hugs and kisses and headed to the house. The plan was to have a fire and decompress from the day. I wrote in our family page the following..

“We don’t know what tomorrow may bring, but we know that today is a good day and we will take it”

What seemed like forever then, looks like a blink of an eye now.. August 27th 2018 to September 2nd 2018… She was able to bust out of there and get home to us and her beloved pets…

Now September 2nd 2018 to March 17th 2019… so much in my world..in my families world would change in 6 short short months…

I don’t think I’m ready tonight to start on that chapter. There’s a lot of happiness, sadness, grief.. and celebration to unpack and its emotionally draining to be honest.

Well start that on the next one…

Wow, where has the time gone.. life has sort of just taken over it seems. I’m having a hard time with my last post being in February.. and we’re nearing the end of the year now…

Man I jumped back and found where we left off and boy did it come with a gut punch and tears. I’m going to try and navigate us back to the story of my mother, the strong wonderful woman she was. But bare with me.. 9 months is a long time to shut down. We took a bit of a side bar there while dealing with dad leaving the house, and believe me we will get back to that. For now I’ll say, were ok. I’m ok. He’s ok.

I do think my families story is important, I just hope I can do justice to the magic of the word family and what it meant to us..

Ok so now that I’ve got a little bit of footing back, the next chapter is well… brain surgery, for the second time. Add in a little drama, a little celebration and a lot of gratitude…

I’ll be back, and it wont be 9 months..

I have been going over everything in my mind a thousand times and I’m still struggling to find the right words, the right feelings to make it all make sense. But I’m afraid that no matter what I do none of this will ever make sense or be made clear in my mind. 

We gathered around a fire and said our quiet goodbyes, well.. We tried to.. In the midst of all the heartbreak that evening we had to sit there and listen to the wicked woman causing this pain scream at us across the yard in the dark of night. 

We were quiet, respectful and just trying to enjoy one last evening like we had for so many years, feet up on crumbly bricks, the crackling of the wood burning. What was supposed to be a night of closure, took a dark turn, for me. 

Listening to this crazy woman scream at us from her front porch that she was going to call the cops, how dare we be on private property.. Among many many other strange comments, my favorite being, are you setting my fire on fire… like seriously woman are you that sad and that alone, that angry that we couldn’t have one night in peace. 

All i wanted was to sit across from my family and friends, take in their smiles, their memories of this place, take one last deep breath under the same stars i’ve looked up at for my 31 years. But I robbed myself of that. I couldn’t handle the anger coming from the other side. I began getting angry, upset and completely torn. I pushed myself way too far, and drank myself into a puking mess. Noted, 5 ciders, half a bottle of fireball, and a tequila shot are not a good combination for someone who really doesn’t drink much. 

I completely robbed myself of the calm goodbye i wanted that night, part of me is pissed, and the other part understands that under the immense amount of pressure i had been feeling for the months, hell, years leading up to this, i let go for one night, and deserved it. 

Fast forward, I feel better and laugh off my failure to navigate a path to the yard to puke my guts out after throwing myself on the ground due to an untimely meeting between my feet and a stump… I’m there helping dad on the last day/ night. It was miserable, so much stuff had to be left behind. We would have been lost without some of our family and friends in those last 24 hours. I think I finally made it home around 130 or 2 in the morning, but couldn’t sleep. I was so worried about my dad getting out of there. 

Before I left I took a moment to walk through the house one last time. I stared into my childhood bedroom, and all I could see were the posters and pictures that should have been on the walls. I walked down the hallway and turned the lights off one last time. And bawled my eyes out. I walked down those stairs for the last time and stood in the front doorway. My hand on the frame, and thanked this structure, this building for being my home. I said a thank you to my grandparents for making that place a gathering spot for all those we loved near and far for so many years. A thank you to my parents for giving me a wonderful childhood under that roof, where I could wake up, look out the window and see my horses grazing in the pasture below. And then I walked away and didn’t look back.

I feel like someone has died. Like I am in mourning for a soul. Which is pretty fitting, it was the soul of our family. The always constant, always a light on, always home. With all of the grief i have taken on in the past few years im finding it extremely hard to face it head on, I’d much rather just bury it and pretend it’s no issue. But that is tearing me apart from the inside. They say that time heals, but these wounds feel so deep that i’m not sure they will ever heal, i’m not sure i will ever heal…

I didn’t know what I was expecting, but what happened surely wasn’t it. Im still processing, this honestly has been the first time i’ve thought about it deeper than it just happened. This is the first time I’ve cried since I said goodbye. 

I’ll fight to get there. I will, for everyone who ever got to call that place home, and share a drink around the fire.  

A love letter to the place that will always be home…

A goodbye is coming, and I’ve reached a point in this process where I find myself standing in the shower crying just to get it out without anyone knowing just how terrified and sad I am.

I’m not sure if its normal or not but memories play through my mind like they are on a projector screen, like someone is sitting me down to show me the best parts, the worst parts, the important parts. I can see myself walking through this house, touching each and every wall forcing a memory at each turn, and the song in the background is “the house that built me” by Miranda Lambert. I thought I could use this song to try and help me keep these memories alive and to help me grieve the loss.

I’m maybe 6 years old, it’s a warm summer day and the whole family is at grandma and grandpas, we’ve played we’ve eaten, and Grandma took me in for a nap in her room. I can remember being so angry because one, I had to take a nap, two; the adults were all outside both windows to the bedroom, either the one on the deck or on the patio leading to the garage, so I can hear everything going on. Three; it’s so stinking hot in that room, and grandma had these peach-colored sheets that were thick and even warmer in an already hot room, but I swear to this day I can still feel wiping my tears away on that velvet band across the top.

I never would have imagined an A framed house that was never mine, in a small town on a beautiful piece of property would hold my heart so strongly. To me right now I feel like someone is dying. yes, that may be a dramatic approach, but it’s the only way I can explain the deep sadness I feel with this. I know that people move all the time, families relocate and rebuild their homesteads, but we were never supposed to lose this one, and this place, was and will always be magical to me, even with the bad memories and the hurt that has come over the years, now she belongs to someone who can never appreciate how the property built an amazing family regardless of faults.

I’m walking up what used to be wooden steps up on to that same deck, grandma and grandpa are sitting in their wooden Adirondack chairs, each with a cold drink, most likely a bloody marry. Wally and Wanna are sitting there too, Wanna has her back to the sliding glass door and I climb into her lap with a book. I don’t remember what book, but I can feel the sun, I can see Wanna so clearly, I can hear her voice as if she’s talking to me right now. their smiles, their hugs, it’s like I’m getting them again today.

a few more steps down the deck and I walk in the back door of the house, because you know no one ever used the front door there. and I’m in my grandma’s kitchen. I see her, always with something in or on the oven for the guests she never knew were coming but somehow always expected. I blink and I’m sitting at the table with my mom making Christmas chocolates. we have a hot plate with multicolored chocolates and toothpicks, paintbrushes and the molds all spread out. just her and I.

I move further into the Livingroom and I’m transported back to an afternoon with my grandparents.  but it’s not just them, it’s the whole family, cousins and the friends we choose to call family. I’m young, kneeling at the wooden coffee table with the rock collection below a layer of resin. there’s a toys r us catalog or some other toy catalog that the cousins have now turned down into puppy dog ears and marker circles of each thing they want.  I stand up and turn around and its Superbowl Sunday with Ed sitting on the bench by the tv. I can see him, his smile, his ears so clearly.  I turn back around, and I see myself, a junior in high school, learning how to hook my mother up to a feeding pump because had a brain tumor removed and had complications. I’m seeing her sleeping in her hospital bed in the living room with her chiweenie at her feet. 

next I head up the stairs, at the landing is moms’ desk, where she spent hours creating paintings and a million other small projects. little did I know then that those would become some of my most prized possessions, because they each give me a piece of her heart. I turn and look at the larger part of the landing and I’m 3 months pregnant sleeping on a matt on the floor because all of us kids were home under one roof one last time to wake up together as a family for Christmas.

standing in the doorway of the first bedroom upstairs I see it two ways. I see the god-awful shag rug and the fishing net and glass floats among the open beams, I blink, and it turns into me as a teen painting the walls neon green and hot pink trim, to make it my own after my brother left. I look out the half of a sliding glass door that doesn’t open, out into the field and I see the horses grazing in the lower pasture. running, bucking across and up to the barn at feeding time.

across the hallway, there’s the tiny, slanted wall bathroom the three of us kids shared. just a sink and toilet, no shower up there. forever the light switch was on the outside of the bathroom, which at the time was strange, but what is worse is as an adult the switch was moved into the bathroom, same place, just inside. and to this day I still end up smacking the bookshelf reaching for the switch on the outside of the wall before I remember it was moved.

The back bedroom, the one my sister and I shared together for a long time., was once one large master bedroom. but when we moved in and grandma and grandpa moved into the manufactured home, we split the room so that my sister and I each had the sense of our own space. my dad builds a wall, hung lights and made it just for us. we hung one of those glows in the dark star bead curtains over the doorway, I can still hear them hitting each other as we walked through.

I don’t think I can get each place in this without it becoming a novel, if your still reading, I hope you feel like you are there, I hope that you can feel the ugly wood panel walls, I hope that you can hear the creak in the floor every time someone upstairs moves. I hope you can feel our soul there.

off the deck across the patio is the garage… the mancave… the gathering place. from wild family holiday parties for New Years, to food processing days with the canner. an occasional animal strung up from a successful hunting trip to Superbowl Sundays with pouch couches and snacks. there’s been many many gatherings under that roof. there are family handprints in the concrete in the back room. there are staples left all over every surface from putting Christmas wrapping paper everywhere we could for the ugly sweater party.  out the door and around the corner is the fire pit… a place that will miss so much.

I’ve got memories of bonfires burning plastic leaf bags shaped like a scarecrow, memories of dancing on picnic tables singing country music as loud as we could, I can only imagine the echo through the valley. nights I felt overwhelmed and sad staring into the flames. a family standing around the fire grieving the loss of my mother. WAY too much alcohol has been consumed around those bricks, or maybe not enough… not yet. Acoustic guitar sets from the best musicians I’ve ever heard in my entire life. sitting on the picnic table making smores with my best friend as an adult because we had a bad day. cousin water balloon fights and tent camping in the back yard with dinner around the pit. I could literally go on and on about the life that happened around some crumbly old bricks but there aren’t enough words, or seconds in a day to get across the life that I was given because of this place.

as the goodbye looms, it will all end right there in that spot around those same old crumbly bricks so many of our friends and family have gathered around over the years. one last time, one last fire, then it’s time to move on. through all of this I have figured out that a wooden structure, some grass, dirt and gravel mean nothing. it’s what you choose to do with it that make it a home, a place to grow up and build a family.  nail by nail and board by board, an incredible family was built and I’m lucky enough to call them all mine. so, in the words of the song this is named after… “if I could walk around, I swear I’ll leave, I won’t take nothing but a memory, from the house that built me…”

I never know how to title these things… I stepped away for a bit after posting the first part of my story, I needed to be quiet and process what was going on in the moment. Now I’m here today to talk a little bit about that situation..

This evening I was filled with an almost unbareable amount of saddness.. and it started with taking one of my mothers drawings off of the wall at my parents house.. Dad is leaving our family home, its gone, lost, and it has all happened quickly. we are in the process of packing dad to move to central washington, and honestly im quite excited for him. But i am also battling this insane deep sadness.. i told my husband tonight that i just don’t know how to handly the thought of, one of these days i will walk through those doors for the last time. It terrifies me.

This house was my grandparents, Bud and Alice. Two absolutely amazing people that loved their family to no end, and there wasnt anyone in their circle that wasnt considered family. This wasn’t just any old house, this place was truly a home, where everyone was welcome and loved. you can feel it in the walls of the house, in the knick-knacks still hanging around from years long past, you can feel it in the dirt you walk on.. a family was built there.

Due to some unfortunate circumstances, our family will soon no longer own, or even be allowed on this property, and its breaking my heart. Growing up, it was grandma and grandpas house. the place of freedom, chaos and good times. a place where us kids ran wild, the adults worked hard and the family loved even harder. as an adolecent, it was our home, mom and dad purchased the house from grandma and grandpa so that us kids had a safe place to grow up. we had horses, a goat, a pot bellied pig a cat and dogs on this place. we made it our own. grandma and grandpa moved into a manufactured home on the back portion of the property, and unfortunately we lost grandma not too long after that move. but growing up with my grandpa across the yard was something i will always be greatful for. having a bad day? go see grandpa, fighting with your siblings? go see grandpa, cant beat your siblings to the remote? go watch it at grandpas.

i loved growing up the way we did. family was always around. whether it be cousins, aunts and uncles or “aunts” and “uncles” there was always someone around and always something going on. bonfires, barbecues, fishing, you name it, we were doing it.

I feel these memories in every bit of the property. im not sure if im weird or if everyone sees memories play through their mind like a movie like i do. I touch a wall and im instantly transported back to playing lincoln logs with my cousins, or i turn a corner in the driveway and im back in the moment chasing my uncle during a waterbaloon fight, where he falls the the gravel and gets pretty scraped up.. its like its hapening all over again.

i have never really known if i should take solace in these memories playing out the way they do, or if they just bring me sadness and depression, expecially after loosing mom. i look out the window standing at the kitchen sink, down into the field where our three horses used to roam and i see so many fun times, but then i snap back to reality and its just empty, lonely and sad. how do i find the balance..

i have always been more connected to my family history and traditions then others have. and i am the one in the family that wears her heart on her sleeve every moment. so this is all extremely painful. im afraid that once i cant touch that place anymore, that the memories will stop.. and no matter the amount of sadness i feel with some, i dont want to forget, i dont want to loose them.

this is the place that built me, the place pieced together by hand by the people i love the most, how do i say goodbye to it.. how do i walk out those doors for the last time… im about to be 31, but when i go home, i feel like im 16 coming home to my safe place. what i wouldnt give to be in those moments again.. but we know thats not reality. realiry

This diagnosis was, a wrecking ball.. plain and simple. How could such a strong person be punished with such an outcome..

We had many conversations in that hospital over the next week. And at the time they weren’t going the way I thought they should. Mom didn’t want to move forward with surgery. How could she not want to… we were told a matter of months, maybe if she didn’t do anything. If she did do the surgery, it was unknown but promised more time… there’s that word again, time..

The first few days at the hospital only family and close friends were informed of what was going on.. trying to organize numerous people that just want to come give well wishes, love and support is harder than you think.. mom was receptive at the time of visitors but she was also tired. I spent some time sitting on my iPad in the waiting room creating a family facebook page. Somewhere that i could relay information without repeating myself 15 times throughout the day, and to create somewhat of a schedule for visits so that mom didn’t get to tired.

My brother and i have never been extremely close, I’ve always had an immense amount of respect for the man. Strong willed, extremely intelligent and the most successful person to come out of our family.. what he and i lack is the ability to connect. I wear everything on my sleeve, i lead with my emotions and i feel everything personally and deeply. My brother is very methodical, logical.. numbers, stats, facts.. I’m still learning to balance my emotions to be able to communicate with him in a way that he would see me as more than his kid sister.. anyways that day, my brother looked at me, after I had spent so much time organizing family and putting out figures all day and told me that i as good at what i was doing.. that i needed to look into doing it for real..i felt so proud in that moment that i was doing something to help mom, and to make him see me as useful, even if it was just a social media thing..

So i posted and friends came. Family came. My heart was feeling the support… my mind was struggling to grasp at what was really going on, it felt like a movie.. still mom wasn’t ready to have brain surgery again. At that moment ( it may feel like 100 days at this point but it was only a day or two after diagnosis) brain surgery was off the table, and a DNR had been signed, she didn’t want a feeding tube, she didn’t want to burden.

My best friends mom is one of the other strongest women i have ever known, cancer survivor, and amputee.. i stood with her family when they thought they might loose her. I don’t know how i would have gotten through what i went through without this family. Anyways, my best friends mom went through a lot to say the least and for some reason I had a feeling she could get through to my mom. Help her see she could still fight. They had texted me and asked if they could come visit mom, and with her ok, they came late one night and sat in the room with her, hugs and hand holds. My mom knew how important they were to me, how much more important they would become… i left mom to speak with that family alone… now i cant say for 100% that she convinced my mother to continue fighting because I wasn’t there, I wasn’t in the conversation, but through my eyes, my mom emerged from that moment ready to give it a try… I don’t know that i have ever told my best friend or her family of that day and what i think they did for us.. I don’t know that i could get through it.

The next day we invited friends and family to meet in the waiting room on moms hospital floor. We wanted her to be able to visit and see them one more time, since we didn’t know what the outcome of surgery would be or how she would be feeling… i sat in one of those hideous teal chairs with wooden armrests across from my mom in her hospital gown, hospital socks and a grey zip up. Her legs tucked up under her on the bench leaning against the wall next to my dad… I snapped a picture.. one of the last pictures before the unknown… I added that to a collection of sunrise pictures i had taken each morning at the hospital. Something to remember each day is new. Also something I learned from my best friend and her family in their darkest time.. Just make it to each sunrise… We smiled, we laughed, and had a wonderful visit, everyone gave mom the love and support and strength she needed to get through the next day.

So buckle up here were go, were going to do surgery! Were going to give her the best chance we can! Some of The next moments that happened that stick in my mind are ones that had me fuming, beyond pissed wanting to punch a wall.. but at the same time they there are ones that feel my soul with love and support.

Well i left that awfully dramatically… that’s me.

So i left of touching base on moms surgery and coming home. Yes she had a paralyzed tongue. I found my self often describing her speech afterwards to someone that is hearing impaired. But she handled it, I wouldn’t say well because there were many struggles in the beginning. She went from being a very articulate person to struggling to form words clearly…how would you take that? But she handled it with grace, rarely did she let anyone see when it got to her. Moms Vision was helped with specific glasses with prisms in them. But beyond that mom fought so hard and came back from it stronger than ever. 10 years, we had 10 years of “normalcy” before it all changed again.

At this point your probably wondering how we circle back around to the whole 27 year old pregnant girl looses her mom.. we’ll get there, our story is a long one.

It’s crazy to me now to think back, i mean really sit down and think back… I don’t remember my own mothers voice, pre surgery.. how can i not remember her voice?

I’d give just about anything to go back 20 years and live in those moments forever.. mom yelling from the grandstands while we showed our horses.. trail rides, fights…any and all of it. It was all taken for granted… we live on borrowed time.

I told you in the last post that this was a cluster of a story and were going to bounce around a lot, bear with me if you choose. It’s what is coming to mind in the moment and what i feel needs to get out to process.

Ok so we talked about the initial tumor, mom was, well, tough. She was able to move on from the feeding tube, and for the most part get back to eating whatever she wanted. She got back to riding and even went back to work. One of the most loved things she did was her art work. Hours spent upstairs at the house painting away. I loved all of it and I loved being able to attend and help her at the bazaars she would do. It was something we could do together and enjoy and have fun. I have many regrets in this life, one of them being, not giving her more time. More of my time. she was able to be there for my engagement, my wedding and the announcement of my pregnancy and the gender reveal.. all that i am so grateful for..

I remember little things, that i think i had almost numbed myself to. A cough, a struggle to get water down, even slower eating than normal. But in the moment they were just shrugged off. She would say she was fin and i believed her, I didn’t want to make a fuss and embarrass her at all. I should not have believed her. She was currently working and hating it (as she always did at that place) but things were off and i should have seen it, again, i should have given her more of my time. Maybe i would have seen more.

August 26th 2018.. my best friend and i went out on a trail ride. It was a beautiful place I hadn’t been in years. It was a typical Pacific Northwest day, raining but absolutely stunning. We had an amazing ride out in the middle of nowhere drenched from head to toe… I wish i could go back to that day and make it last a little longer, hang on to that feeling of absolute peace a little longer.

I’m hitting that moment again where I cant really give an exact memory.. i think i was at work at the pharmacy. And i think i got a call or a text from my dad that he was taking mom to the emergency room. She had tried to write herself a note and he found it. The hand writing looked like that of a toddler. This was not normal. Come to find out she had been having issues for a while, writing and seeing and was hiding it from us. I don’t entirely blame her. I cant even begin to imagine the fear and feelings she had to go through in her mind, alone. She knew. She knew exactly what was going on.

August 27th 2018.. the day we found out mom had multiple brain tumors return… the day our whole worlds came crashing down yet again. A day that i hate, a day that doesn’t mean anything to anyone else, but for me its one i try and find light and peace on now.. because it robbed me of so much.

I believe i left work early and met them at the hospital. Mom was in the emergency room for a while before being admitted. 2 of the tumors were inoperable.. one was fairly large. The doctors told us that she had a few months maybe, if she did nothing. Or we could try surgery again and debulk the largest tumor to allow the brain to swell during chemo/radiation. I remember sitting in he hospital room holding my mothers hand crying that it wasn’t fair and it wasn’t ok. She squeezed my hand and told me it was ok. How in that moment did that woman put her fear aside and tell me that it was all going to be ok.

The next few days were a blur to say the least. I have snapshot memories.. i can see moments that happened but i cant seem to place the whole puzzle together in my mind. I have point A and point B and the middle is a massive tangled mess… ill get it all out.. eventually.

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.