A Gut Feeling

This is my story…this is her story…in a way it’s everyone’s story. It’s a story of enduring love, a story of loss, pain, grief, and ultimately hope. I am only going to talk about a small chunk of time in each post as there is so much to process and I want to give you a full picture of what I experienced good and bad. I will try and do a post every week and as this is my first blog and a very personal story please be gentle. A funny side note, my Mom always said she should write a book about her life so I guess in a way I am fulfilling that wish for her.

I think the best place to start is tell you a little bit about me and my mom. My mom was a strong, independent, socially conscious woman and not afraid to speak her mind, however she also cared deeply about those around her. With that brief description in mind, I am sure it will come as no surprise that I was raised to be the same. My mom has always been a helper and saver which made sense given her career as a Child Protection Social Worker for over 40 years. In fact she was still employed at the time of her passing, she was scheduled to retire on the Monday and passed on the Sunday morning. My mom was a strong Christian and had a strong faith in Christ so if reference to that bothers you best to stop reading. Even though we had our difficult times during my childhood and adulthood my mom and I were very close and have many of the same traits. The reason for this is my mom was a single parent most of her life and even when my stepfather came on scene it was still her and I against the world, but my world was about to change…a storm was coming.

In 2004, after my first marriage blow up for the final time I relocated to Kelowna and my mom and I decided to live together and co-parent my son who was diagnosed with Asperger’s a few years later. I worked part time and worked on my university degree and my mom worked and took on the main parenting role. This arrangment went on smoothly until after my divorce was finalized in 2014 and I decided to start dating and met my current husband. There were many arguments as she disagreed with this and a period of estrangment between my Mom and myself and a very hard relationship between my son and I. After our marriage my husband and relocated to Saskatchewan where we have lived for the past 8 years and my Mom and I slowly worked on our issues and videochatted daily and had virtual coffee every morning. It was in one of these chats that she told me that her doctor was sending her for a colonoscopy.

In my mom’s yard in the Okanagan, there are beautiful plum trees…3 of them, and my Mom being the generous soul that she was shared. Two of my close friends went a couple days after my mom’s colonscopy to get plums from her yard. These girls have known my mom for 10 plus years and when they saw her they called me. What they didn’t know was I had talked to my mom and she hadn’t been able to eat, she was pain and my son wasn’t around to help her. He was 19 now and driving, I thought he was just being insensitive but I would learn later there was alot more to this story. It took a few hours and very sharp tongued conversations but I finally convinced her to go to the emergency room. At that moment something changed in me, I had a feeling…a gut feeling

At that moment, I got scared and thoughts started racing in my head…my gut told me something was horribly wrong and I thought of all the moments my mom and I have had together all the smiles, happy times, all the fights, tears, and power struggles…this couldn’t be the end could it? Something told me this was my time to be strong for her that the circle of life was moving and things were about to change. So I packed a bag got into my car and headed to Kelowna for a journey that would rock me to the core.