I can't sleep tonight. Whenever I shut my eyes, they burn, and all I can think about is the chemo that'd once seared your veins. Things aren't going very well lately, I'm sure you're already aware. I mean, how could they be when you are no longer here? I don't blame you for leaving, you were just too sick and too tired for Earth to help you anymore. But despite being those things, you were never weak. Your voice, ailed by death rattles, grew strong only when you prayed or told me that you loved me. Your soul was too powerful for your body. I think you were too good for this world; your spirit was too kind and your smile was too bright. And the cancer knew this, which is why it took you away. It took everything away: your hair, your license, your balance, your tastebuds, your hunger, your tooth, your independence, your voice, your memory, your breath. You were too good. You were the sunlight peeking out from behind the thick gray clouds of rain. You were the bright green blades of grass poking out from beneath the melting sleet and snow. You were the scent of my favorite candle, you were the matching pair of my favorite Christmas socks, you were every sunrise and every sunset I ever found beautiful enough to photograph. You were everything good life had to offer, and now I don't know what to do. Coffee doesn't taste the same anymore; the anger and bitterness I feel soils it, and your laugh isn't here to sweeten it back up. The first time I saw your new wheelchair, my heart hurt so bad I cried the whole way home. Everyone said not to worry too much about it, that you only needed it because you were easily winded by walking long distances, but deep down I knew. I knew it wasn't going to get any better. I knew things were bound to get worse, but I never knew it'd happen the way it did. I didn't know you'd start falling so much, I didn't know you'd stop eating, I didn't know you'd be hospitalized once, and then a second time as soon as you got home. I didn't know that the second time you were hospitalized would also be your last. I didn't know you were going to stop the chemo that'd been hurting you for so long, but I'm glad you did. I'm glad you chose quality over quantity. I'm glad I could cuddle against you on the couch without you running to the bathroom to vomit up those toxic little pills that, in the end, could do nothing for you. Towards the end of it all, it kind of felt like you weren't even there. I'd look over at you and see an empty shell staring lostly into space with dry, parted lips. But maybe you weren't lost. Maybe you were watching the angels dance and sing around our living room, ecstatic about their new angel finally coming home. I wish you were home. I know that you're in a better place, but that doesn't stop me from wishing that better place was here. The sicker you grew, the more soundful your sleep became. I don't know if you recall this, but one time while you were sleeping, before leaving the house I bent down to hug and kiss you and whisper that I loved you, and despite your slumber you mumbled back that you loved me, too. Sometimes I preferred it when you slept because you looked so calm and at peace, the opposite of that confused, sometimes lost, sometimes found, always tired look in your eyes. And I never knew how to feel about that because I wanted you to stay here with me so badly, but you always seemed so much more at peace when you were away. Sometimes I wondered if you were still there, or if maybe your soul was slipping away day by day, returning to where it belonged piece by piece. There were days when you would sleep like nobody could wake you up. And now I know that nobody can. Sometimes I wish I could've had just five more minutes with you, to squeeze your hand while you squeezed back, listening to you as you told me that you loved me. But then I realized if I'd had those five minutes, I'd also want five more as soon as the first five were up, then another five, then another and another. I can't remember much of you before the cancer, I'm sorry to say, but some things will never leave my mind. Our good times, our best memories. Our late night coffee dates, how you'd stay up with me hours into the night while I studied for finals (I got all A's and one B, by the way). Your thick waves of crazy, bountiful tendrils of hair is an image I want to recreate unto myself. Those thick-wedged boots you'd always wear to work, the ones I'd topple around in while you got dressed before catching your train. The day you slipped on the ice and fractured your wrist yet had still felt the need to drive the boys and I to school despite the unbearable pain. Pain and you were no stranger throughout your life, and you, I, and many others know that for a fact. But now, as you enter those pearly white gates, you have become untouchable to all different types of pain. Your suffering has finally ceased; you are free to walk, run, dance and fly through fields of gold, and the best part about all this is knowing that after being at war with your own body for so long, your soul has finally found peace. But despite all that, I can't help succumbing to the selfishness rooted deeply within my heart. I cry often about the fact that I am alone without you here for me to tell my dumb jokes to or to grab a cup of coffee with. There are people in this world who mourn for their deceased parents thirty years later, and although I don't want that to be me I know that it will, and I am dreading the depression that will consume the hole in my heart that your smile had once filled. Sometimes I think it was true all those times you'd said that you loved me more, which is why you couldn't possibly leave me here all alone and decided to take a chunk of my heart and a wisp of my soul away with you. I hope you could still enter Heaven with those pieces of me; I hope God didn't make you leave me outside the gates like a pair of stinky cleats. And although you are gone, although you are no longer here to hold me and tell me that I will be okay, I want you to know that even though I may not actually ever be okay again, I will try. I will try to be strong for my brothers and my father, I will try to achieve higher grades in school, I will try to work harder in soccer, and I will try to get better because I know it's what you would've want for me. I will try to stay alive and live life to the fullest for you because everything good I've ever done had always been for you. You'd made the world so much more beautiful than it was, Mama, and now that you're gone I can finally see how ugly it actually is. I wish my brothers didn't have to lose their mom before leaving elementary school, and I wish Dad didn't have to lose his wife and cry so often, and most of all, the selfishly teenaged side of me desperately wishes you were here again, at least to see me graduate high school. But I've gotten used to my wishes never coming true, and I've gotten used to my prayers being left unanswered. But now I'm not sure if I can say any of that to be true anymore, because at night I used to pray to God to make you better, and I think He finally did. And for my birthday (and I'm only telling you this because it already came true), I wished for you to be okay. And I think you finally are.
I miss you terribly.
