31 Days of Self Love - Day 6

What do you need to forgive yourself for? Well, way to hit me with a hard question. I thought I was going to have to dig deep to really finds something, but it didn't take me long at all - a few seconds - to realize the big thing that I've never forgiven myself for.

When I was fifteen, my mom was diagnosed with cancer. Somehow, fifteen to sixteen year old me didn't quite get the severity of that. Don't get me wrong - I understood that she was sick. She became thin and frail, and lost her hair because of her treatments. I remember having to help her get up, to help her get to the bathroom, and to help her get washed up. I somehow still didn't realize (despite having experienced death of loved ones already in my life) that this could be something really bad. Despite having a cousin who lost her mother when we were in middle school, I still just never even considered this as an option. My mom was going to beat this thing, because she was my mom. My mom was going to beat this thing, because my dad was strong and never let on that she might not.

She didn't beat it. My mom passed away a month and a half before I turned seventeen, and my world shattered. It somehow came as a shock to me, even though I'd been told about a week before that she had a few weeks, if that, to live. I was somehow blown away the morning we found out she'd passed away in the hospice facility, because my mom was going to beat this thing.

In those last few weeks of her life, I didn't go to see her nearly as much as I should have. Don't get me wrong - I went. But I rationalized that I had to go to school. It's not like I was out partying or anything - I was just going to school. Had I realized in my stupid little sixteen year old mind, how precious those last few weeks and days would be, I never would have gone to school. I would have convinced the hospice staff to let me camp out on the couch in her room, and just spend time being with her. If I'd realized that thirty-four-year-old me would still have moments, all these years later, that I just need my mom, I'd never have left her side. I'm sure she understood, and I'm sure she probably would have played it off and told me to go to school anyway... but all of these years later, I've never forgiven myself for not being more present at the end of my mother's life. I think it's time to let myself be okay.