Today, it's been ten years since my mother, Jane Elizabeth Dinsmore, died; of I believe what was her 9th relapse, metastasis, or new occurrence, of cancer. That time around, it being oat cell lung cancer, that finally killed her, after a very long, and very painful decline.
My mother was a brilliant woman... A serial self educator and serial entrepreneur, who also had very severe physical and mental health issues, that made her life... something other than what she wanted, much of the time. She was an abuse survivor, an addict, and she had both neurological issues, and other mental health issues, that caused her pain and trouble through her entire life.... and that's not even including the cancer she fought her entire adult life.
My mother died having outlived her younger son, my little brother Rob by a year and a month, and never having met her granddaughter Shelby (now 19)... sadly Rob never got to meet her either... Or know her name or her birthday.
My mother didn't survive to meet her grandson, my son Christopher, who was born in March of 2013, two years and one month after she passed.
She was just 55, and had been fighting cancer for more than half her life... Her first cancer.... breast cancer... having been diagnosed when she was, I believe, 26 but may have been when she was 27... My memories of those years can be... a bit fuzzy, thanks to my own cancer brain (I'm on round five of my own battle with cancer).
But she wasn't sad, or depressed, or beaten down by it except very rarely; living the best life she could, until quite near the end, when her body just couldn't take any more.
She was not a very good mother... she tried to be, but she was not emotionally equipped to be one, nor was she physically or mentally healthy enough to be one... but she did her absolute damndest to try to be... she just couldn't be... because wanting to be, and trying to be, aren't always enough.... sometimes you fail. And sometimes you visit your own trauma and it's after effects, on the people you love, no matter how hard you try not to.
She was a difficult woman... a difficult person... in many ways... It wasn't an easy life... ever... not for one day. Maybe for as much as a few minutes or a few hours but never more than that. She was always frustrating, and often infuriating... a person of extremes, and inconsistencies.
I never loved her any less... not for one second. I never resented her for not being able to be the mother she wanted to be... or I needed or wanted her to be... I never hated her for it. How could I? I saw how hard she tried, and how much it KILLED her that she failed. And how the cancer, and her steadily deteriorating physical and mental health over my entire lifetime, just made it worse and worse.
I loved my mother very much. She loved me, and my brother, and our family...FIERCELY... maybe too much.
I still love her very much.
It's been ten years today.
I'm crying right now thinking about her.
I still think about her every single damn day.
You don't ever get over losing your mother, or your father... It doesn't even hurt less over time... you just deal with it better, and it doesn't hurt as much, as often.
But sometimes, it absolutely hurts just as much as the minute it happened.
It's been ten years.
I still think about her every day.
I think I always will.
I hope so.
