Thursday makes 5 years that my mother has been dead. And over the years I've come to hate that word, dead. Because above all else it's permanent, it's final, it does not change. The world does not stop spinning, the population does not all pause and acknowledge your lose, you are expected to move on. And it's really hard to do so. I could say that I'm over it, but I'd be lying.
Because I'm not, by any stretch of the word. I am not over my mother's death. I am not over the loss of a loved one. I am not over the void that was created upon her death. I hate cancer. With such passion I'm terrified of it. I'm terrified that it may too eat me alive, just like it killed her.
I want my mother back. For even a moment. I want her. Even though she was messed up, even though my life with her was not the best, she was my mother, she is my mother. That never will change. She is my mother. And I loved her. I still do love her.
Her memory is ingrained in me. I carry her on each day that I am alive, with every beat of my heart, she lives on. I am her daughter. I can not live her life. But I can live mine still and I can make her proud of who her youngest daughter is becoming.
I am Pamela's baby. But I'm a woman. I am her daughter. But I am my own person. And as long as I'm alive, she will live, for a person only dies when they are no longer remembered. I won't run away from her memory, because I know it will only haunt me to my core.
I can make it. And day by day, I do.