A last video...

  I was really protective over this video shortly after my Mom passed away. I felt it was private, and didn't really want to share it with anyone. This is raw for me. I can't watch it without crying. I don't think I'll ever be able to watch it with dry eyes. This was exactly a week before she passed away. You can tell, at times, that she would get slightly confused. At this point the liver was releasing toxins in her body and she was really getting ready to go. I'll cherish this video forever, because it is the one thing that Brody will have to remember her by. Though I wish I had taken a lot of videos before she really got sick. I hate that when I show him this video, he won't see her as I saw her. He'll only get to see and  hear her when she wasn't really "her". In the few months before she passed away, the medicine made her look like someone else, though her smile was always the same, and the light in her eyes never faded. To me, though, she was beautiful...every second.

  This is the last video I get. Like an idiot, I deleted all of my voicemails before she passed away. I wish I had kept them. I wish I would have saved every last one, just so I could her her ramble on for minutes (like she always did). It drives people crazy that I don't listen to voicemails anymore. I just can't. I don't listen to them, and I never delete any from my friends and family. I have at least thirty right now...and hopefully at one point, I'll weed through them. You just never know when you'll want to hear someones voice again. I am quirky, that is for sure...maybe even a little "messed up". I also hate to say "goodbye". It drives me nuts when people say goodbye. I hate goodbye. "See you later", "Talk to you later", "goodnight", etc...those are all fine...but not goodbye. I HATE goodbye.

  I can only hope that my children don't have to have these quirks. That they don't  have to know what this kind of pain feels like...at least until I am old (like nursing home, depends wearing, dentures donning old). I wish my Mom was given the options that I have been given. I could have her next to me right now, had we all had a better understanding of the genetics side of breast cancer, before she was ever diagnosed. If only we could turn back time. Thankfully, my children might never have to say "if only" when it comes to this nasty disease.