Of all the reckless, dumb, irresponsible decisions I’ve made in my life, there is literally only ONE thing I truly regret…

Thinking my mom was never going to die.

My mom was always the life of the party, tons of energy, never got sick. Hell, my grandmother lived to be 99 ½!

Even after her stage 4 diagnosis, I was confident that she was going to beat it! If anyone could fight cancer and win, it was Joan! I never allowed myself to think about her dying. I refused! I don’t know if it was to protect myself from the pain or just blind optimism – but I just prayed and stayed hopeful.

It was exactly 14 months from her diagnosis to her death. Her Oncologist told us “We will all die, but the likelihood of this cancer killing your mom is very unlikely”. For 12 months, she did really well, you wouldn’t even know she had cancer! Month 13, she was living life almost completely normal (granted, she was tired and didn’t have an appetite due to her meds, but she was still herself!). By the 14th month, the cancer slowly started to take over. I would ask my parents to get another opinion on her treatment, I would share my concerns about her decline, but they were both adamant that things were OK and “par for the course”. In the last week of her life, she couldn’t breathe, and her body started to shut down. But even through all of that, I wouldnt accept the fact that she was going to die until the moment the Hospitalist told me that we needed to put her on Hospice. She died 2 hours later.

There are SO many things I wish I knew that I never got around to asking. I took her life for granted. I assumed God would heal her because he knew how much I needed her. She was my best friend and we talked all the time – about everything – but it wasn’t enough to know it all.

I regret that I don’t know so many things about the most important person in my life and if I’d just entertained the idea that she might not survive, I would have way more answers today.

Death is not an easy thing to think about, let alone acknowledge as a potential realty – but you have to. You just have to.

Ask the questions, get the history, write everything down. If it all works out, great. If it doesn’t, you have answers to questions that would otherwise go unknown.

XO

Tay