Kelly B.

I have made alot of different realizations in these two months following my Mother's death in January. How we all start out as children with a base of family members that become our background environment and the family that we grew up with. We take our family and extended families for granted for many years. It just does not register when you are young that as you grow up you will lose these family members one at a time until there are only a few standing.

I will be turning 40 this year and I am down to only a few family members left from my childhood. The people left on this earth who really know me anymore has really reduced. I lost my Grandpa when I was 18, my Grandma over ten years ago. In the last 5 years I have lost my Blood Father, my Aunt, my best friend and now my Mother.

Thankfully I have my husband, my Dad, my two sisters, one Uncle, two Aunts and assorted cousins left. But there are so many people I love missing in my life. You would think I would be used to death by now, but the loss of my beloved Mother who was also my best friend is my greatest loss to date. I spent 39 years as a mother-daughter set and now I am the remaining half. She was my world...

She battled lung cancer for about a year and a half. We had known that she was not going to survive the cancer after it progressed to a certain stage. But knowing the loss is coming in no way makes the death easier when it actually happens.

It is the same with the end stages of Huntington's disease; it hits a point when your know that death would be a blessing. The worst part about cancer and HD is the fact that the end stages of both can drag out for years. And while we want our loved ones to live and have that last bit of time with us, we also don't want them to suffer a moment longer than they have to. It's a catch-22.

In the end we all have to deal with death at some time in our lives. And some people deal with a lot more death than others do. In the big lottery of life you just never know what cards you are going to draw for a life path. "The expected is what keeps us going. The unexpected is what changes our lives." You can not lose big unless you have loved big. And while losing so many of my family members has been difficult at best, I feel so blessed to have had that time to spend with them.

All of my Mother's family influences shaped me in different ways and I am a better person for having known each and every one of them. I wish I had written down all the different family stories I was told when I was a kid. So much of that family history has now been lost on both sides of my family tree.

But I have also realized that for all the family I have lost through the years that I have also gained "family" along the way. These people are friends who play a certain role in our lives. They become part of your extended family unit. I have gained two extra mom's, a few extra sisters, a brother and 11 extra nieces and nephews. I also inherited my husband's family almost 20 years ago. This combined family has added so much more to my life over the years. These are also people who know me well and who know all my faults but love me anyways.

There seems to be a misconception out there that unless you are blood related that you are not really family. I had my first exposure to this way of thinking when my mom remarried and I got a new Dad. Whenever people said he wasn't my real Dad that always mad me angry and I would answer that he was too my real Dad because he raised me, he just isn't blood related to me. They just didn't understand it. But fate gave me three parents in total, and while both my blood parents are gone, I blessed to still have my Dad.

Death and life, love and loss, losing family and gaining family. Our true family is the people in our lives who love us unconditionally, regardless of bloodlines.

I heard it said that through loss comes gain, but we often do not realized it at the time. I have gained a lot of things from the people I have loved and lost, and I understand that saying a little more now.

I am able to keep living life now because I know my Mom is no longer suffering. Death was a release from what was going to be an ugly end with the cancer. There is a certain peace I feel in knowing there is no pain in Heaven. And I also think of her surrounded by all the people she loved and lost in her lifetime, especially her parents. These thoughts do not take away the pain of her death but they do lessen it. The fact she died peacefully in her sleep helps me too.

I was given a very powerful written paragraph from a friend that gave me alot of comfort. It was written by someone named Morrie Schwartz :

"As long as we can love each other, and remember the feeling of love we had, we can die without ever going away. All the love you created is still there. All the memories are still there. You live on in the hearts of everyone you have touched and nurtured while you were here. Death ends a life, not a relationship."

This helped me to realize that while my Mom was dead that my relationship with her would continue my entire life. It was of some comfort to me to think of it that way. I don't know exactly where people go after they die but I believe that she will always be watching me. And with that belief that means I must continue to live my life in a way that always makes her proud.

Guess I better start dusting my house, just in case...