We Don't Really Know

So I hopped over to my friend Sharlee's blog to read some words of wisdom by her mother Elise this morning. (She posts a little something every Friday.) The link is here: http://believinginsomething.wordpress.com/ if you'd like to check her blog out for yourself, and her mother's recent post is titled "The Good Stuff", although if you're stopping by, you should probably just stay a while and check out what else both Sharlee and her mom have to say.

Nonetheless, I read Elise's post, "The Good Stuff", this morning, and I can honestly say that I'm going to make more of an effort to break out the "good stuff". :) Why wait? I'm not much of a hoarder in the way that Sharlee is (hoarder sounds funny, but you know what I mean:), but there are certain things that I'm afraid to use in case I want to use them at a later date (or outfits for Grace for that matter:)

These are actually the lines that struck me the most:

"I have been aware of that most of the time my kids were growing up but this was for me a big wake up call. I got to thinking”well my next BIG Anniversary would be 50 really- and then I went to how my Mother in law didn’t make it to her 50th and that my mom lasted just a few months past hers. Not that I am planning to be gone… Just we don’t really know."

And then after reading them, I cried. I'm not sure why. It just kind of made me hurt. I don't like to think of anyone's mortality at all, let alone Elise's or her mother, or her mother in law. But after reading those lines I did.

And, then I thought of my mother. "Not that I am planning to be gone...Just we don't really know." It's the truth, we don't, and it's terrifying and crazy all at the same time. The weeks leading up to my mother's diagnoses and inevitable passing were normal. I had just accepted my first teaching position. My niece and nephew were nearing summer break. My sister adjusting to a new job. Our mother calling us constantly throughout the day:) Trips to Lowe's and Wal-mart; a movie night watching "In Her Shoes"; a lunch at Applebees on my last full day of work at St. Lukes (when she dropped me back off at St. Lukes because I still had a few hours left of my shift, I cried. I didn't want to get out of her car. I didn't want it to be our last full day of working together, or our last lunch shared together on a work day.); breakfast in the St. Lukes cafeteria and my mother saying, "Well, this will be the last breakfast I buy you," because the next week I'd be spending my mornings teaching summer school.

We had no clue. It still amazes me how life shifted. All it took was a trip to a doctor's office, a cat scan, a phone call, and life changed. It's cliche, but it changed in the blink of an eye, it changed with the ring of a phone, with a doctor's sigh. It has been over two years since my mother passed away, and I am still wrapping my head around it. How she was able to do it in a span of five and a half weeks is beyond me, but I suppose that she had no choice. I still think about how terrified she must have been. I wonder if she felt cheated. I know that she felt scared, sad, worried about the daughters and grandchildren she was leaving behind. She must have felt surprised, shocked, because "we don't really know."

Isn't it crazy that thing we have the most control of is our life? But we have no control over when we leave it? "Just we don't really know."