shauna marie

My heart goes out to you, Tan Sim. I've lost both parents and it's just a complete nightmare, isn't it? I remember commenting the day before the funeral of my father that I now understood why we only have two parents. (My father passed away four years ago Jan 16, my mother will have been gone three years Sept 7.) My mother was ill and I knew she was going to die, I just didn't know it. I remember going to work that day. I remember her saying that it was getting serious. I remember brushing her off. I remember getting that call at work. And I remember that guilt--maybe because at times I still feel it. There are days that I've accepted that I was at work. She was my mother for only 27 years. She was my best friend. How on earth could I have dealt with watching her die? I don't think I could have. I was around for my father's last breath, but I couldn't have dealt with my mother's. But there are days that I feel such guilt that she died alone. My brother was there, but even he didn't know she was gone for about two hours. She just quietly passed away. Why didn't I stay home that day? Maybe I could have saved her. Yet...what would I have saved? She was in so much pain that she just had to be set free. I remember that day. I remember letting go. I remember turning my back on my mother and saying that she was going to die, but she wasn't taking me with her. She died that day. I still cry about it. I doubt I'll ever fully stop. I will always have mixed feelings about it. Yet I know in my heart it's the way that I wanted it to happen--to be peaceful, quiet, silent--but I know nothing about it and I not be the one to find her. I did not want to be the one who had to try CPR unsuccessfully. I didn't want to be the one who has the guilt that I was only in the next room when she died and I knew nothing. I couldn't have survived. And maybe you need to ask yourself the same kind of questions. Shauna