My mom died in August 2011 from a Cerebral Hemorrhage caused by Lewy Body Dementia.  Before that robbed her of her wonderful self, she was a warm, brilliant, funny, beautiful woman - wife, mother and grandmother and a very talented professional Watercolorist.  I inherited her house where I'm now living (it will eventually be sold) and I still have the paintings she had hanging on her gallery wall.

A month after she died, I exhibited terrible stomach problems.  They were so severe, I could barely go out and had to ask my brother to do my shopping.  My GI doc said that my grief hit me so hard it affected my stomach.  It took months before I was ok, so I couldn't attend a hospice support group right away like I did with my father. 

I live near the hospital where my mom was in hospice, so I could call and ask for the hospice bereavement coordinator but I feel awkward doing so.  I think it would be more helpful for me to write about it and get my feelings out this way with support from all of you good people. 

In August of last year, 2012, I was diagnosed with Breast Cancer.  They found it on a routine mammography.  I was lucky.  It was early Stage - Stage I.  I had a mastectomy in December, by choice and then I was found to not need either chemotherapy or radiation.    They got all of my cancer when they did the surgery and I had non in the lymph nodes so I'm cancer free and have been for 3 months when it's 5  years, I'll be considered in remission.

I'm engaged to a wonderful man whom I love, but there are times when I still want my mother.  And then I think of how terrified my cancer diagnosis would have caused her to be.