Mother

Many of my posts here are fluffy and insubstantial, surface stuff or random weird thoughts.

This one not so much.

When I was around 19 / 20 my mom and I had a falling out.  Many do during the growing years - but ours lasted for the rest of our lives.  It wasn't an all-out fight, but simply that I lost the ability to trust her and things just went downhill from there.  Where some women find their greatest confidants in their mothers, mine knew very little about what was going on in my head.  We existed in the same space, that was about it.

17 December 2005.  The day cancer finally took her.  Nearly 12 years ago.  We made one final two week trip to see her earlier that year as her body wore down - and although I knew it would be the last time, things were still not right between us.  By the end of two weeks we were grating on each other's nerves, too far apart over too many years to find our way back.  We made one last phone attempt a week before she was gone, which was just as unsuccessful.  Although I admired what she had accomplished in life and who she was (and I understand more and more of her as I get older), there were many others who I fear loved her more completely than her own daughter did.

Her ashes rest 2km from my home in a wall of rememberence.  I have not been back to that wall since they were interred.  I have never experienced the profound sense of loss everyone has expected me to have.

But last night's dreams were all about mom, for the first time ever.  She was struggling and fighting to live again, doing everything in her power and knowledge to beat the disease - from juicing to chemo.  The dream was interspersed with so many random weird scenarios - as dreams are.  And through it all I had the one possible option that could cure her, but couldn't figure out how to convince her to use it. 

I wonder now, knowing what I do 12 years later - with the body of research and personal experiences behind it - if there was a very simple change that may have made a very big difference, if I could have convinced her to just try it. 

I wonder if I could have saved her life.