Say what you need to say

I'm sitting here next to a sleeping mom. I have one hand on her leg while the other types. Every now and then, I'll look over to find her staring at me. We'll look at each other for awhile, memorizing each other's faces, until one of us breaks with a yawn. The last time, it was me who (yes, purposefully) initiated the contagious cascading effect of a yawn. She succumbed with her own yawn within milliseconds. I love those moments...her yawns, her smiles, her peaceful gazes, her voice, her whispered I love you's...

These are the moments you cling to hoping to remember forever. It's impossible to believe that one day memory will be one way in which mom lives on, living on inside us rather than among us. The once shadowed inevitability, a silhouetted concept standing in the distance, seems to be gaining definition and form as days pass. We don't know when the end of the journey will come for Mom. They say "soon" or "weeks" but no one REALLY knows. It's how you spend the time that is most important, after all. When you sincerely appreciate that the journey will in fact end, those words that are difficult to say, you say anyway. Those things you're not sure you should do (or if she'd want you to do), you do anyway. These are the days of life and living. The ability to share with someone just how meaningful they are, to show them just how much they are loved is a gift many do not have. This is the time to take advantage, to live to the fullest, however long time permits. To make the most of what we have while we have it... 

I'm eternally grateful I headed west, once again, to be with her. I would have missed the hard yet beautiful and life-changing conversations about her dying process--what she means to us, what we mean to her. I would have missed this moment on this day, sitting next to mom as she peacefully sleeps.

How lucky am I

~E