CJD and Me: When a Daughter Loses a Mother
Get through that first year. Get through the first birthday, the first Christmas, the first winter and the first anniversary of the thing. Once you get through that first year, the rest of the years aren’t so bad. It will all be okay.
At least that’s what I tell myself. Results may vary.
Being an only child is practice in preparing for death and knowing that one day you’ll be left alone. It sounds extreme, but I’ve been preparing for the death of my parents since I was a child. I’ve spent my life mentally bracing myself for the inevitable.
Dark? Certainly. But the fact always remained: I didn’t know when and I didn’t know how, but I knew that one day my parents would be gone and it would all be up to me…whatever it is. Like being the next in line for some royal throne. I used to fret over losing my parents. I used to wonder how one gets through such a thing. How do you survive something so life altering?
My mother’s illness started with a whimper in mid-2012. Mom had always been pretty quick on the draw- she knew the most obscure trivia, a skill that was exhibited time and again during games of Trivial Pursuit and Jeopardy. She always had a pithy remark or perfectly timed comment in casual conversation. She remembered everything. She even had various html codes memorized for different internet…
