Bump in the Road....or shall I say huge boulder

I am stricken with grief. My mom is dying and I am so heartbroken, that I am numb. I take time to visit her maybe once a week with her two beautiful grand-daughters, which is the highlight of her days but isn't nearly as much time as she deserves. I have such a hard time with this because the illness and approaching death makes my mom unrecognizable to me. She is a shell of the strong woman that I was raised from. I am actually reading about how to grieve because I feel like somehow I need an instruction manual just because it feels so wrong. The anticipation of her death paralyzes me with the reality that one day I won't be able to even hug her anymore or more importantly, she won't be able to hug me.

My mom has a slew of health problems that include the latest of which is thought be tumors in her lungs. She is not strong enough to perform a biopsy on because she has congestive heart failure and she has stopped breathing the last time they tried to biopsy. Three separate radiologists have given a prognosis that the tumors are cancerous. She is loosing about one pound a day consistently with a day or so when she may gain a few ounces. The doctors have said that the tumors are leaching protein and nutrients from her body and regardless of how much she eats, her body will not retain the nutrients. So basically she is starving to death and now is suffering from malnutrition at this point already.

I don't know how long she has. It could be days, weeks or even months. The agony of watching this is so difficult but the realization that she will die and not be here anymore is even more unbearable. Believing that the person who gave me life and sacrificed so much of herself to give to me instead, will be gone from my life some point soon just kills me. My mom is the one person in the world who loves me more than anyone could and life without that love leaves me so empty and naked. It really takes my breath away. The invisible safety net that my mom provides will be gone for me and I sure hope that I don't fall with nothing to catch me.

The crazy thing about this is my logic kicks in and says "We should all expect our parents to die one day because everyone dies right? As the joke goes, the only certainty in life are death and taxes so why is it so damn difficult to process?" My emotions kick in and say "This is my mom for Pete's Sake, it is quite normal to freak out during this type of trauma." I am sure that I will experience many more face offs between my logic and my emotions and at some point they will meet and agree. Until then, I will remain a mess. I need to get this off my chest and into space so I figured blogging about it would be a good way to do that. I might change my mind tomorrow so don't think you are crazy if you see the post and then you don't. So my little bloggy world, you may become on occasion that which I release my inner strife onto.