Time never really takes away the pain

They tell you that it does, though. They say Time will heal All.
I'm sorry, but that's a bunch of milarkey. Death makes people uncomfortable and scared but they want to say something to make you feel better. I still think about my mom everyday and at the oddest moments, too. Like when I'm showering or driving. Sometimes when I'm bathing my little boy in the tub I think When she was bathing her children did she suspect she wouldn't make it to see them grow up and have babies or What were her future dreams like? of a leisurely old age playing with her grandkids? What a cruel joke I think it all is. I imagine her innocence while she cares for her family and makes plans for the future. It's like I want to reach back in time and whisper in her ear some sort of warning. Some sort of clue that things will not go as planned.

The only thing I've found about Time is that as the years go by you don't emote as much. You've learned to compartamentalize your feelings because you need to be productive in your own life. When you lose someone you love it changes everything....forever. It is just plain awful.
I remember being a teenager and thinking of death as some remote, faraway thing that really didn't touch me. I figured sure, I'd die one day but I'm not gonna think of that now...and what's the big deal anyway, everyone dies.
Why are teenagers so dumb? :)

When my mother was diagnosed with ALS I cried everyday for a year. The second year was better....I cried every other day, or so. You get the picture. It soon became just an everyday thing I dealt with. After she died I didn't know what to feel. I honestly couldn't have cared less if I, myself, lived or died.
Luckily, I snapped out of it after about a year of hard drinking and self-abuse. By then some of my personal relationships had taken quite a beating. I made a drastic life change and soon met Kevin. There, at that point, everything in my life brightened.

Now as I consider my life and my children, I am scared beyond belief. What is around the corner for me? Am I dodging a bullet every time I hear of someone else dying or getting sick? Is that how it works statistically? It is the most debillitating fear I think a person can experience. It is not the running-in-fear-of-your-life-from-an-ax-murderer fear. No, it's much more subtle. It is the fear of what the future holds for you in the end.
I feel such a dire need to Be Here for my children and my family that I never experienced before becoming a mother. They are my everything and how could I expect them not to have their Momma there for them? I just can't imagine being struck down by a terminal illness or something, and in this day and age, they are everywhere. It is like there is some guy out there handing out cards to us that read stuff like Aggressive form of Cancer, Auto accident, Heart attack, Stroke, Rare Blood disease....etc...
I wanna say "Hey, what about the Old Age one? Ya got one of those left?", as I raise my hand from the back of the crowd.

Since when has my only true goal in life become to make it to the glorious Old Age. I just want to be one of the lucky ones that hobble around on rickety hips and play bingo. I want to go to bed at 7pm with my old, wrinkled husband lying next to me. I want to see my children grow into adulthood and I want to always be their Momma.