Preparing Yourself to Lose Someone
After my mom died, people said things to me along the lines of, “at least you knew it was coming so you had time to prepare.” I look back on this statement, because now, close to a year and a half later, I don’t feel like I was ever really prepared. I agree that it was better to know my mom was sick and to be able to say my goodbyes to her, rather than her dying abruptly and unexpectedly. And technically I did have time to “prepare” myself. I started “preparing” myself the day I was with my mom at the doctor's office my junior year of high school when they told us they found a tumor. However, I keep writing “prepare” in quotation marks because I don’t think there is ever really a way to prepare yourself for the loss of a loved one. I knew it was coming, and I knew soon I would have a life without her, but it is so hard to imagine while she is still there with you. I am no dummy. I understand science, facts, and statistics. I knew my mom’s odds were not good at all. I ...