Where'd you go? I miss you so...

 Seems like its been forever that you've been gone -- Please come back home.

I actually wrote this a week ago (June 26th) but didn't post it because I hadn't found any images yet.
Sorry about that.
Tonight there will 2 posts back to back.


This quote is the one I had tattooed on me for me Mom.

My boyfriend refers me as "Jessica 2". 

I told him to get used to me crying every day. 

He said he didn't want to get used to anything to do with our current situation.

I feel like a burden.

I can't turn it off.

I can't turn off my sadness.

I'm either sad or I'm not.

I don't know what to do about this.

I know I'm causing him stress.

I know he's not going to abandon me or anything.

I just feel like I'm a difficult person and I don't like that.

Yesterday was a good day.

I did a lot.

I made a list last night and accomplished most of what I had on it.

I was so proud of myself.

I wore a necklace of my Mom's yesterday and I kinda felt like it gave me strength.

I was mostly happy.

It was nice not to have a bad day.

Today has been an insane day with politics and I really wish Mom was here to talk to about it.
She was a democrat and I consider myself to be a libertarian.
She used to pick on me and I even found a message the other day where she said "Get your republican panties out of a wad."
It made me laugh so hard.
I like to think though that she is proud of me for knowing what is going on in the world.

Today I have been feeling a lot of anxiety.
Sometimes I think about my life and who I am.
How much the person I am is because of my Mom.
It was shocking the first time I realized it.
To name a few:
1. My love for classic rock and live bands.
2. My current university.
3. My major.
4. Me being back in Texas after living in Alabama for so long.
5. My affinity for animals - especially cats.
6. My appreciation for what things cost and how much someone had to work to provide it.



Sometimes I feel like I can't go on without her in my life.
I know that's nonsense.
I'm more scared that going means I'm forgetting her.
I know that's nonsense too.
But it's how I feel and I can't help it



Where'd You Go - Fort Minor

Cowgirl don't cry

 Cowgirl don't cry - Ride, baby, ride - Lessons in life show us all in time - Too soon God lets you know why - If you fall get right back on - Good Lord calls everybody home - Cowgirl don't cry

So today has been so hard. Like one of the hardest day I've had in weeks.

Today I got up in the afternoon and laid in bed for about an hour.

Later Ryan asked me to pick him up from campus around 4:50pm.

When I went to get my keys I noticed a key was removed from my keychain set.

The key was sitting next to my Vera Bradley wristlet.

This key has a keychain photo of my Mom that someone made for me after she passed away.

Someone removed this from my full set of keys and didn't put it back.

I was upset that it could have been lost because I have 2 cats and they could have knocked it off the couch and it could have possibly been lost.

That set my mood for the rest of the day.

The anger I felt due to this was so fierce.

I could literally feel anxiety building up inside me.

My boyfriend got all of my anger. I felt bad and I wasn't mad at him but there was so much inside of me that I had to get out.

I had no one else to vent to.

I'm already very possessive of my stuff and don't like people using my things without asking me.

Even more so, I'm very clingy about things to do with Mom.

Have you seen the movie An Eye For An Eye? There is a scene where the spouse of this woman, who lost her older daughter, washes a pillow her younger daughter spilled ice cream on. The Mom comes out of her older daughter's room freaking out because the pillow was washed and the scent was gone. That was my level of a freak out today.

So after my boyfriend went back to campus I sat here and listened to music that made me think of Mom and cried hard. 

I was trying to cry myself out.

Get all the pain out for the day.

But it hasn't left me.

It's still here.

I don't know why today.

Everyone is telling me that 5 weeks is still very fresh and I know it.

I think I am just overwhelmed with everything that is coming up:
 finishing my CSC 211 course, 
starting PSY 311, 
CSC 202 
and CSC 350. 

Having to complete the latter 3 all in 1 month.

I'm hoping that it ends up consuming my mind and I can just put everything into that. 

I'm also worried about money.

I think one of my problems has been that I haven't been working and I don't have a physical class to attend. So if my boyfriend isn't home or I'm not sleeping then I am just left to my own thoughts and that is BAD.

I envy my sister because she has my nephew to occupy her.

But if I had a kid I'd probably be a crappy Mom right now.

I'm a crappy cat owner right now. :( 

My boyfriend said yesterday: "The children are suffering."

He was kidding and trying to make laugh. (It worked)

I know I am doing things that I shouldn't. 

Things that aren't really conducive to happy thoughts.

Staying up all night, sleeping all day.

Every week I tell myself that I am going to be productive and do things that I should.

I don't. 

OR

I do something productive.

and by that one thing I feel like I should be rewarded with an entire day of free time for doing something as simple as going to the Post Office or studying on campus.



The pain feels new today. Like my heart is re-breaking.
When I remember it seems like an eternity ago and at the same time it feels so new.



I beat myself up a little because the last time I saw her before the hospital was Thanksgiving.
I think, "I should have visited her more."
I know I can't change the past but it doesn't keep me from wishing that I could.
I remember talking to her the day of the aneurysm rupture.
We talked about how I was feeling because I was sick and had a fever that Monday.
She encouraged me to go to the doctor and checked on me via Facebook about how I was feeling.



I have been on edge about everything today.
I got mad because my boyfriend was watching TV and I was watching True Blood on my laptop and I could hear his show over mine.
I took my phone, headphones and stormed out of the house.
I was just so angry.
I went to the pool and listened to music and cried.

I came home and my boyfriend was waiting to comfort me.
He held me and I just cried heavily.



I told him,
"It's not fair." 
"I still need my Mom." 
"It feels like she was dying all over again."

Where words fail, music speaks

I'm going to list a bunch of songs that make me think of my Mom.

I know a lot of times people look for funeral songs. 

For our Mom's funeral we picked songs she loved instead of a bunch of sad songs.

She LOVED music and exposed my sister and I to a lot and I am thankful for that.

First I'll list the songs that we played at her funeral:

Motley Crue - Home Sweet Home 

Motley Crue - Without You 

Whitney Houston - I Will Always Love You 

*Beyonce - I Was Here 

Sarah McLaughlin - I Will Remember You 

Prince - Purple Rain 

*Kelly Clarkson - Go Rest High On That Mountain 

Guns n Roses - Don't Cry 

Guns n Roses - Sweet Child of Mine (requested of my Grandma)

Guns n Roses - Knocking on Heaven's Door (requested of my Grandma)

Spice Girls - Goodbye (my friend)

Mariah Carey & Boyz II Men - One Sweet Day 

* indicates favorites

Other songs:

Spice Girls - Mama

Puff Daddy & Faith Evans - I'll Be Missing You

Boyz II Men - A Song For Mama

My sister and I created this slideshow. She took it from powerpoint and uploaded it.

In Loving Memory

I'm ending this post prematurely because I am crying too much.

5 Weeks.

It's been 5 weeks since Mom passed away.

It's been very hard. I can't even describe. It's so hard to convey it to other people.

I'm having a hard time doing things. The things I'm supposed to be doing. I'm usually very on top of things. My things. My boyfriend's things. I know what's going on months in advance. I now rarely check my planner. I don't even really want to know what day of the week it is because it's possible that I might have slept through another week without accomplishing anything.

I WANT to do things, I just don't have the drive that pushes you to actually change something from a plan to a goal I guess.

I basically have to be told to do something.

Also lately I have been dreaming that Mom is still alive. I'll dream of her passing and then suddenly she's back and I can visit her and she's okay and everything is okay and how it should be. 

How it was before all of this.

My dreams have been so good lately that all I want to do is sleep. It's so much easier than facing the day.

I took 3 incompletes for the semester since Mom passed away. I am supposed to have been working on my CSC 211 coursework which only consists of 1 more project and studying for my final but I have such a hard time getting into a study mood. It just feels like its too much. Then I get upset with myself because I know Mom wouldn't want me being like this, being so sad she's gone, stopping my own life, but it's hard. I know she wouldn't want it but if she wasn't gone I wouldn't feel this way.

But she is.

And I do.

July 9th starts my second summer semester and I am registered for 6 hours because they told me I had to register for one more course or else I would lose my grant for summer school. So I will be registered and taking 2 classes and working on completing another class (CSC 202). Essentially I will be taking 9 hours because I will be attending the summer II course for 202 as well as the two I'm registered for.

I expected that by July I'd be over this enough to function well and get on with my life. But the way it seems right now, it's not going to be the case.

Thus I get mad at myself again.

I experience many feelings daily, sadness, guilt, anger at myself, confusion, loneliness.

It sucks.

Onto things that suck:

When someone says "She's watching over you." or "She's here with you."

I'm sorry but that does NOT help me feel better. That just reminds me that I'm sad because my Mom is gone from the world where I can reach out to her and hear her voice so clearly.

On a better note: 

I have a phenomenal boyfriend. He has tried helping me so much and I could not have asked for a better person to be a part of my life while going through this. He says he's going to help me through it and I believe it. I just sometimes feel bad because I think maybe he thinks this might pass sooner than he anticipated too and it just doesn't look like it.

They say the 1st year is the hardest. 

We're only 5 weeks into the first year of me not having my Mom anymore.

Can't Go Back - Rosi Golan

How am I gonna make it better if I can’t go back.

This is my first blog post on here. So, I guess I'll start by explaining the process in which I lost my Mom.

On Wednesday April 3rd around 7:30pm, I received a phone call from my grandmother, telling me that Mom had a stroke and she was being taken to the hospital in Austin, TX. I got teared up, hung up, told my boyfriend and began packing. It was a 4 hour drive and I got to the hospital around 12:30am. They called the doctor for me and I talked to him. He told me they would be doing a "coling" surgery in the morning. That morning the nurse came down and told us the procedure went well and the surgeon was closing her up. What felt to me like a long time had passed and then the doctor came down and pulled my grandmother, me, my little brother and my uncle into a consult room. The first thing the doctor said was "This is not the conversation I want to be having with you." He informed us that she had another rupture and her blood pressure skyrocketed up. He said that they could not currently assess what brain functionality she had but he gave her 24 - 48 hours to live. We were all devastated, as we were having to anticipate the impending death of my mother. Their daughter, sister, mom. I had to call my sister, who I had just told everything went well and tell her that she needed to get to Texas from Alabama ASAP. Over the next few days we all stayed in Austin, observing Mom. I came in daily and played her Motley Crue, Poison, Journey. Many of her favorite bands. I kept trying to bring her back. She'd open her eyes and look like she was trying to focus but couldn't quite figure things out. She would move her hands a bit and her legs. She also had some facial reactions which looked like she was in pain. On Monday afternoon (April 8th) , based on her progress I decided to come back to where I lived to resume classes. She was making progress. They said it would be very slow but she was doing much better than they ever anticipated. On Sunday April 14th I got a call from Grandma saying that during Mom's routine angiogram (to check on the vasospams in her brain), she went into cardiac arrest. 10 minutes had passed before I got a call back. I was told that they brought her back. I was so relieved. But I had experienced a world of heartbreak during that 10 minutes. The next day was my 2 year anniversary with my boyfriend. It was also the day I was supposed to make up the exams I missed during my week at the hospital. I was so devastated from Sunday's events that I couldn't make it to class. My boyfriend and I decided going out would be best because it would make me happy and get my mind off the current situation. I stayed up all night Monday because I was very scared I was going to miss an important phone call. I had a feeling I just shouldn't sleep. I called the hospital at 8am Tuesday morning to check on my Mom and the nurse told me that she was non-responsive and that I should call any close family and tell them to come to the hospital.

When I got to Austin again on Tuesday (April 16th) and entered my Mom's room, something had changed. The air was different. The room felt empty. Mom didn't move anymore. They had completely removed the sedation and yet she still wasn't reacting. I talked to the neurosurgeon and asked him if there was anything he could do, even with a 5% chance of success. He said he had done everything he could medically but I could still have hope. I picked my sister up at the airport Wednesday and we began discussing Mom's future. We all (our immediate family) knew that she would not want to be in that state for the rest of her life. It wouldn't be much of a life. Despite her handicap of her peripheral neuropathy, Mom still had full functionality of her brain and could do other things. But this was not what should would have wanted.

Mom is disabled. She receives various types of assistance to help her since she has been wheelchair bound for 7 years. We knew she had no life insurance. We started to research funerals and costs and realized how expensive it was. We had no idea how we were going to pay for this.
We then tried to think in terms of money,
"Okay, we don't need a funeral. We can have a memorial later." 
"We just need to get her buried with family." 
"Even just burying her is too much." 
"I don't want to cremate her...it doesn't feel right." 
I set up a donation fund on Wednesday night. By Thursday we had only raised 1/3 of the cost of a funeral. We couldn't leave Mom on life support much longer. It wasn't right trapping her like that. We gave ourselves until 5pm on Friday or we were going to have to concede to having our mother cremated. We didn't want to do this. Mom left no will or anything indicating what she would have wanted. Who anticipates losing their mom when she is only 44 anyway? I called every agency I could find.
"There currently aren't any funds."
"Just cremate her."
Around 3pm on Friday (April 19th) I started to get distraught. I was having to accept we were going to have to cremate her. "Fine." I said, "I'm still going to bury her." I was able to talk the funeral home and cemetery down a good bit from what they quoted me. By Friday at 4:30pm (30 minutes before the deadline we set) we got news that we would have enough due to some much needed assistance that came through.  We could not believe it. The kindness and generosity of the people within our family and circle of friends is beyond me. I cannot believe and I am so proud of the caliber of people we surround ourselves with.

 The relief I experienced is hard to explain.

On Saturday April 20th at 11am we withdrew care. She passed away at 8:27pm. My sister and I had been alternating being in her room all day and she was never alone. Around 8:20 we decided we were hungry and we were going to ask our Dad (who came from Florida to be with us) to get us some food. As we entered the ICU waiting room to talk to him the nurse ran up behind us telling us to hurry and come back that she was passing. We ran into her room and her respirations had lowered to just 1 per minute. I started calling my Grandmother and telling her she needed to get there stat. I didn't tell her Mom was gone yet. My sister watched her take her last breath. We believe that Mom was being stubborn (as she always is) and wanted us out of her room to pass. But little did she know, we are also stubborn and got back in time.

So then came the planning of a funeral. 

My Mom's funeral.
The first funeral of someone very close to me I have ever attended.
 I previously had only attended two funerals (that I can recall).

I prayed to God for strength to get through it.

He came through there.

Her funeral was Tuesday April 23rd in Houston, TX. The place she was born and has many memories throughout her life. She is buried with her grandmother and uncle. I received many blessings during this hard time. From the donations and the people who made her funeral and burial possible to my former hotel managers helping me get discounted rooms for myself and family. I can't even express my gratitude. I knew we were doing the right thing because of all the good things that were coming our way in the process. I have never been more proud of what I accomplished in my life. I spoke at Mom's funeral because we did not have a preacher or any religious leader due to us knowing Mom believes in an array of things and we wanted this to be for her. We played music throughout the entire funeral just like we thought she would have wanted.

Ever since the funeral ended I feel lost.
I will plan to go out or to do something, go to class, whatever...and then I can't. I just start to cry.
I know Mom wouldn't want me to stop living and I don't want to stop living.
It's just hard...
I don't know if this is how everyone feels when losing a parent, if I'm reacting differently or what.

I got a tattoo to memorialize Mom.

In the last Harry Potter book before Harry goes to fight Lord Voldemort in their final battle, he realizes that he may not live. He sees the spirits of those who had been lost in the fight against Voldemort surround him. His parents are both at his side and he says, "You'll stay with me?" to which his father replies "Until the very end." I wanted this quote because I stayed with Mom until her last breath Saturday April 20, 2013 at 8:27pm.

I really miss her. I'm very accustomed to being able to call her in between classes or when I'm feeling down or when I just need advice. I was noticing how much alike we are as I've been growing up in the past few years of early adulthood and so it's been very helpful to have her guide me through things. Things I used to be so mad at her for as a kid, I am over. I see her reasoning. I understand. I know she did some things that sucked. But she was a young Mom and I can only imagine how scary that must have been. She did so much for us on her own. Sacrificing, working doubles. It's so different now that she's gone and now that I know these things.

Everything is different.

Song: Can't Go Back - Rosi Golan