I had a wonderful life growing up. My mom and I were
close, I could talk to her about anything. As a single mom, she was taking care
of my sisters and I, taking care of her parents, and dealing with her own
personal struggles in life. She was always there for anyone who needed her. I
was in high school when she got sick. After that, I held back a lot because I
didn’t want to put more on her than she was already dealing with. I started helping
out more with taking care of my family to ease the burden on her in hopes that
she would be able to rest and get better. Things didn’t work out that way
though.
Throughout the course of her illness, I found out
things about my family that I never expected, and others that I was sort of
waiting to get confirmation of. Most of those things I accepted easily because
there was nothing that I could do about them or they didn’t affect me
personally. For the most part, those things were far enough in the past that
there was nothing to be done or there was nothing that needed to be done. Every
family has a history, and I learned some parts of mine. Don’t get me wrong,
they weren’t deep, dark secrets that were never meant to be known. It was just
personal things about family members that surprised me. The things I did find
out about one certain family member did sort of surprise me, even though I had
an inclination about some of these things. What amazed me the most was that
this person denied the facts, even with the proof in front of them in black and
white.
During my final year of high school, I had this
premonition that my mom was going to leave me. I knew that she was doing her
best to not let us see how sick she really was. She was doing her best to give
us the best possible life she could, even with the circumstances being what
they were. A lot of things happened, eventually leading to me leaving home
around the time of my high school graduation.
When I left home, I moved in with my then-current boyfriend
and his family. I felt like I was losing my mind and just had to get away from all
of the pain I was feeling inside. Seeing my mom so sick was just killing me. I
knew in my heart that I was going to lose her and I couldn’t bear the pain of knowing
I would be living the rest of my life without her, that I would never be able
to confide in her my fears, share my joys and triumphs, and that she would not
be there to see my children grow up (I didn’t have children at that point, but
prayed I would someday). I had no clue what I would do without her. I knew she
didn’t want to leave us, but God apparently needed her for something bigger.
As time went by, she got worse. She suffered much
longer than I had expected. There are days that I blamed myself because I left
home. When I left home, I left my family behind as well. They wanted nothing to
do with me once I left. Some even told me that it was my fault she was getting
worse. There was only one person in my family who understood why I left when I
did and the way I did. She understood all that I had been through, listened to
me talk, and told me it was okay to cry. She was the one who, even before I
became a teenager, seemed to understand me. She helped me realize that it wasn’t
my fault that Mom got worse and that the inevitable was happening. This wonderful
woman was my great-aunt.
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