Dear Mom,

I’ve been writing a lot lately about my need and desire to forgive and move on from the mistakes I made as a teenager and young adult. All the moments when I screwed up and all the apologies I still need to make. This week I’ve been thinking about a different timeframe that I still feel the need to look at. Not my childhood or my adolescence. This was a chunk of years that came later. 

It began in my early twenties. I had recently gotten accepted into Film School after having been waitlisted. I was in the process of breaking up with my boyfriend of five years. We still lived together, but it was over. You came to visit me. It was Memorial Day weekend. We got along so well. Snuggled on the couch and watched TV. Talked all night. You hung out with me and my friends. We had a barbeque and drank Yuengling at Tom Brown Park in Tallahassee. We talked about real things that I can’t remember now but I know it was an important visit. Different. Special. We were developing our relationship and it very much felt like a shift. Like you weren’t judging me as a child anymore but as an equal. It felt like it was the start of a great relationship. I think you felt the same way.

And then, within weeks, everything changed.

I remember the day it happened. I was at El Jalisco in Tallahassee with a group of friends from work. It was a particularly happy day for me. I had found my people finally. I was broken up with my boyfriend and officially in my own group of friends. And I was happy. Truly happy. I got a phone call. I think from Dad. It must have been. I stepped outside to take it. And I was told that you tripped and fell at work and hit your head. That you were getting checked at the hospital and that they found something on your scan. Something in your brain. 

Everything moved so quickly. You had your first brain surgery. You started your chemo. You started your radiation. You had terrible side effects, and it was like that for the next five years. Nothing could be the same as it would have been without the tumor. The tumor that got between us.

And while your life was moving in the direction of an unquestionable ending, mine was on a path to grow and learn and discover. I was on a trajectory that couldn’t be more different from yours. I was becoming an adult, and you were on your slow and exhausting journey toward death.

For so long I’ve said that because you got sick, and because we knew you were essentially living on borrowed time, we had the opportunity to work on us. To blossom in our friendship and to make every second count. But I’m starting to doubt it. To wonder if maybe I did it all wrong. If maybe I didn’t try hard enough. Maybe I should have done more during those years. 

Did I truly use that time wisely?

I feel it’s easier to blame myself than to blame the tumor. Blaming the tumor is pointless. It was out of my control. You got sick. People get sick. People die every day. I should get over it. When it comes down to our relationship I can easily look within and see that if only I had gotten my shit together sooner, maybe we wouldn’t have run out of time. That my inability to grow up ultimately kept us from having the best version of your last years. 

Sure, we would have run out of time regardless. You were always going to die before I turned thirty. Before you turned seventy. Too soon. Too young. But we had five years. I had the second half of my twenties. You had a tumor. You were medicated. You had an excuse. What was mine? Lately, I am starting to beat myself up more for my inability to deal with my issues before it was too late. I was watching time literally slipping between my fingertips and I was stalling. I wasn’t opening up enough. Or cleaning up enough. I wasn’t taking the necessary steps to fully strengthen our relationship. I couldn’t see the bigger picture. I didn’t understand the weight of it all.

When you were at the very end. Like the last week in hospice. I was working at a that private membership club in Downtown Los Angeles. We had been planning for weeks, possibly even months, for a big event. The event was on the 24^th of October. The entire week I was on the phone with people talking about when I should fly home to Chicago. I was told you were not going to last long. I got advice that varied greatly. I chose to wait to come home. 

Jeremy and I took a redeye flight to Chicago the night of the event. I got things setup first. Made sure I did my job before I left. You were officially gone on the 27^th, but those days in between? You weren’t there. You were dying. And the only thing the rest of us could do was watch.

In retrospect, I made the wrong choice. 

From the days when you were first diagnosed until the day you died, there is a great deal of regret.

I do understand that most of it goes back to bad timing. When you were diagnosed, I was around two months away from entering into Film School. Into Graduate School. Into an intense two-year program where I would be following my dreams while missing life happen around me. I missed my brother’s wedding. I missed so many of your side effects. I missed so many opportunities.

At the very end of your life, I came home to visit periodically. I think I was there once a month for a timeframe. But the last week? I had to work that event. I thought my work was too important to leave. So ignorant of me. So childish.

And then there are the five years in between. We talked three times a day. We became best friends. But I wasn’t there. Not really. Maybe I should have moved home. Spent those years with you. Taking you to appointments. Watching movies with you. Reading books with you. Cooking with you. I should have been there. Taking you on walks. Taking you shopping for clothes that didn’t hurt your skin. I wish I had been there to take you to shave your head. To listen to you. To allow you a sounding board. To be honest about your fears. To cry.

I know you didn’t want me to come home. At least that is what you’d say to me. But deep down I’m sure you wished I had shown up. You wanted me to follow my dreams. To be in Los Angeles and build my life. But honestly, at the end of those years, I barely had anything to show for it. I wasted two years working for that talent manager. I wasted a year working at that private club. Sure, I made some contacts. But I barely know any of those people anymore. Was it really worth it?

And I’m perfectly aware that it’s a whole lot of woulda coulda shoulda. And a bit of the grass is always greener. I mean, if I had moved back to Chicago and focused on helping you, I would have probably found a job at some restaurant where I’d eventually be miserable. I’d resent you for ‘forcing’ me to come home and put a pause on my dreams.

But I do think about how rewarding it would have been. To have held your hand. To have been by your side. In person. Not just on the phone.

And maybe I should have dropped out of Grad School and come home to you. But the doctors said you had one year, and you ultimately had five. I couldn’t have put my life on hold for that long. You didn’t want me to. I didn’t want to.

I’m sure, deep down, I know the truth. That I couldn’t put a pause on my life to help you through your death. Not when my life was just beginning in so many ways. But there is something that still bothers me about that timeframe. Beyond my desire to keep living my life as planned when yours had taken such a dramatic turn. It’s more about how I used that time. While building my own life. I could have done more to grow. I could have strengthened myself more. For me and also for you.

I know I’m asking the same questions over and over. What if we could have processed our issues before you died? What if we had talked more about our differences and been honest with each other? What if all of this could have allowed you to know me better? As I find myself talking in circles, it has started to occur to me that maybe there is an answer to all my questions that will stop me from living in this cycle of never-ending what ifs. 

Maybe your death is the very moment in my life that has allowed me to process my issues.

Could it be that your death is the moment that changed me? That without you dying when you did, I’d still be struggling to find myself.

That maybe if you were still here, I wouldn’t be this way at all. Since I’d have lacked the incentive to grow. 

And if you had never gotten sick, maybe our relationship would have gotten worse in some ways. Without the reason to be gentle and patient with each other. 

If you were alive, and I came to you with the questions I have written in these letters, would I simply have pushed you away? Ultimately weakening our relationship. 

All of these are hypotheticals, of course. Scenarios that live in my head and now on the page. I have no way of knowing what our relationship would be like today. But I am starting to understand the full impact your death had on me. 

We as humans adapt to our surroundings and to our circumstances. I had to improve myself after you died. I had to acknowledge my own issues and become more secure in myself in order to not completely fall apart. I had to relearn how to breathe. How to function in so many ways. I had to overcome my selfishness and understand that I wasn’t the only person who lost you. And that I wasn’t the only person to lose someone special. I had to be open to all the grief of the world. To see it as universal so that it didn’t consume me. 

I’m not saying that I’m grateful that you died. I so wish you were still here with me to guide me and to enjoy life by my side. But recognizing the positive role your death had on my character is actually helpful. To see the end of your life as a pivotal moment in the beginning of mine can guide me to so many answers. 

And I also want to acknowledge how appreciative I am that your death was in so many ways, manageable. Maybe that’s not the right word. But I want to accept how much worse it could have been. You could have died while I was still in high school. Imagine how bad that would be? I’d likely have gone deeper into my dark hole. Drinking myself into my own premature death. Or I’d be riddled with guilt over never having gotten along. And what if you had died instantly? Without five whole years to prepare?

I do feel fortunate. That I didn’t have it worse. But if I’m being totally honest, sometimes, I just want to be angry about it all. I want to wish it was better. Wish it had never happened. And I want to allow myself those moments. To regret the ways that those years were spent. To regret losing you at a time in my life when I wasn’t truly ready to lose my mom. And at a time in my life that was too soon. I wish so often that you could be here today. To know me and to know my children. I get these waves of what ifs the most when I am reminded of how much you’re missing by not being here now. And I guess it is more convenient to wish those five years were better because again those were the moments that I could control. 

But Mom? I’m thinking that it might be time for me to let go of those years. To accept every moment as it happened. Because I can’t change it. I can’t grow from living in my past. And as much as it sucks that you aren’t here now, I am. And I want to be present for myself and for my kids. It doesn’t do anything for my relationship with my own kids to constantly pick at ours. Listen, I’m not done working on myself. I’ll probably never fully be done processing and growing. Not while I’m still alive. But I do think there is power in letting go of the past in some ways. I might still be upset at times that you’re not here. And I might still be upset that we didn’t have the best five years we could possibly have for so many different reasons. However, I do think I’m ready to not be so upset with myself. None of this is my fault. It’s just life. Life happens. Death happens. We move on.

I know what you’re thinking. I should move on already. I’m working on it. I swear.

I love you, Mom.

Love, 

Rachel