List: Inanimate Objects That Now Make Me Sad

As September turned to October, Mom really started to decline. She started sleeping over 20 hours a day, and was no longer sitting up or eating. When my father lifted her, she could not hold her head up. When she talked, she was hard to understand. Most days, I found myself feeling like I had already lost her. While her energetic life-force was dimming, her smile and sweetness remained, even when she was asleep. It is truly something to behold, and happened all last week even in the absence of any pain medication.

I remind myself to look at the glass half-full because that is what she has always done in every circumstance throughout her entire life. Instead of focusing on the great void her death will leave, I look at everything we have and will always have, because she was ours. I remind myself, as she often did throughout her treatment, that even children get cancer. While she is still far too young, she's had a rich, full life. Not a life filled with material things, but instead, the things that really matter.

Even so, sadness has started popping up everywhere. Countering it and re-framing it with thoughts like the ones above can be exhausting and only goes so far when it starts to become like the whack-a-mole game. Sometimes, it's okay to be sad about the loss I am already experiencing and the greater loss I am anticipating.

Below is a list of inanimate objects that have suddenly started to make me really sad. I'm hoping that one day, I will look back on this list and feel a connection with her instead of this suffocating sadness.

• Shampoo and Conditioner. I ran out of mine, and grabbed hers from her bathroom, borrowing them as I would have done when she was healthy. As I was washing my hair last week, I was struck with a profound sadness because she bought the economy size bottles. Little did she know when she bought them that she would not finish them.
• Lays potato chips. Her favorite. Passed these in the airport and they glared at me.
• Tustin Tiller Days. A local carnival we went to last year. They started promoting and when they put up the signs and I drove by them and thought of our memories, the sadness struck me in my stomach.
• Overhearing girls/women be rude to their Moms. No explanation needed.
• Gift shop souvenirs. I went to the Smithsonian last week, and seeing pretty, pink flower earrings I would normally have bought for her broke my heart.
• Photos of her. Especially after her diagnosis, when everything still seemed okay. Looking at them hurts. Where did she go?
• Plants. All of her plants through out our house and backyard, especially the pregnant onion because she was so excited to show me the babies. I imagine planting them with my son or daughter some day, and ache because she won't be there.
• Handicap placard. Opened my glove box the other day looking for a pen and realized there would be no more fun trips.
• Christmas decorations. How will I put her decorations up? How could I not?

Though these things are hard, I know a thousand more will pop up once we loose her. And though I have anticipatory grief right now, I'm certain it will be nothing like the real thing when it arrives. We finally have continuous hospice care. Someone is by her side 24 hours a day now, and they can tell if she is in pain even by just a facial expression. She is transitioning, and they anticipate her time left on this earth to be 24-48 hours.