Never Prepared to Lose Your Mom

To deviate from last week's dancing post, I wanted to take a moment tonight to bring things back to home base. Where this all started. I lost my mom as an infant. My dear friend lost her mom tonight as a grown up, a mother to her own child. Some might say when you're older, you're better prepared to cope with such a loss. Some might say I was luckier to not have had to deal with her illness and death.

At the end of the day, I've come to realize a few things. You can never be fully prepared to lose your mom. Those of you who are moms know what it means to carry a baby inside, literally give life to a child and raise it day to day. There is something so unique and so all-encompassing about being a mom that I guess I didn't fully understand what I had lost until I found myself fulfilling that very role. Only then, did I begin to comprehend how great was my loss.

Is it better to be there for the diagnosis, watch someone go through treatment and eventually be taken by their illness or is it better to have a fast, unexpected diagnosis with a shortened time to live? I am sure people have their opinions. But, not everything in life is or has to be a competition. Either way you slice it, losing your mom is not an easy thing and certainly not something one can prepare for. Not physically and not mentally.

So forgive me for taking this space tonight to share these thoughts as a side note to my gallivanting with ballroom dance. I feel sad for my dear friend. For her pain. For her loss. For the irreplaceable bond that cannot be taken away. Makes me want to hug her and let her know she will get through this terrible time somehow. But until then, my heart and my soul goes out to her. It's a club I'd rather her not join, certainly later rather than sooner. But now we too share a bond. Another motherless daughter joins the team as we walk down this path in life together. May your mom's memory be for a blessing.