In the Light of a Mother's Love.

Tragedy and True Love

My Husband and I met when we were 13 years old. I was a chubby girl, a little tall for my age, who had…. Bloomed early. Corbin was a ridiculously tall heavy set boy with long dark brown hair that hid his beautiful blue eyes. I hadn't liked him then because he wasn't the standard of typical good looks. I was also dating one of his best friends. We had gotten along fine as friends until said boyfriend had gotten another friend to say that Corbin had called me a fat cow. After that for many years we drifted apart and back together, never really losing one another because of either Myspace or Facebook.

  Fast forward 4 years to senior prom. The year before I had made some stupid mistakes because I had lost that kiddy chub and formed into a beautiful young woman. It went to my head and I had ended up pregnant at 16. I now had a handsome little boy and it was for this reason I had been rejected repeatedly for a date to the dance. I honestly felt like my heart was crumbling because even people I thought had been friends wouldn't go with me. I had resolved just not to go. If I had I would have been the only one of my friend to show solo and at the time I was dealing with postpartum depression. My dad didn't believe in depression so I had no support system and these events only helped it swallow me more. Until a mutual friend suggested to Corbin to ask me. He was going to a different school and didn't see all that was going on and honestly he didn't care. I was still that pretty girl he had first met years ago and he would jump at a chance to go on a date with me so he awkwardly messaged me on Myspace asking if I wanted to hang out. Thinking back I still think it was sweetly cute.

  Needless to say he asked me to prom after making sure that I would be ok with it. We started spending more and more time together on the pretense of planning for prom but it was tainted by friends trying to force us together. The friend that had hooked us up was another of Corbin's crushes and she had taken that time to get with his best friend. She knew he liked her and used me as deflection. I really didn't like that. So much so that even after a wonderful dinner and a magical night at prom, with a gentle sweet kiss goodnight at the door, I told him I didn't want to be with him. It didn't help that my high school sweetheart who was supposed to take me was stringing me along because and I quote, "I still want to be friends with you but I was afraid you wouldn't if I didn't let you think there was still a possibility of us." I had found this out months later, after I had also found out that Corbin's ex was pregnant by him. I had tried to hang out with Corbin again but we had turned back to the ebb and flow that was us being background friends on social media. Through the passing years Corbin and I met up occasionally, mostly so our boys could play together, but we never really stuck to it. Life kept catching up to us and we kept letting the each other slide to away. Perpetually being in the back offering digital words of support or care if the other needed it, but not truly being there.

   Until the death of my mother. About a month after getting her work mandatory flu shot (I know can't be legally mandatory but she didn't feel like fighting with her work and just went along with it.) she would become violently ill. To the point that she would have small seizures. She had the same problem every year for the last few years but it took us until after her death to find the correlation. The last time I had been laying down to sleep and had barely heard her weak desperate call for help. I rushed to her room, right next to mine, and flung the door open to watch to her gasping for breath and begging for her COPD inhaler. I hadn't understood to my great shame because all she was doing was pointing and gasping in my eyes and she hadn't ever really needed the thing before. I honestly didn't have but a couple of seconds to register this before she seized up. I tried forcing her to her side like my first aid/CPR training had taught me but she had been sitting oddly in bed and the moment I tried she suddenly sprung up and projectile vomited. In a mom instinct move that I could never repeat again I kicked the nearby trashcan into the line of flying waste and it landed in neatly. To this day I still beat myself up for being able to do that but not fucking think of her inhaler. Not that it helped in the end anyway.