Feeling loss

Loss.

My mom's condition is getting pretty bad. The cancer has spread to her brain making her confused, incoherent, and basically at times I feel like I don't even know her. I was supposed to be in San Diego last weekend. I left last Thursday just before my family decided to take her into the hospital where they discovered the cancer in her brain. On Friday I received a call from my grandma informing me that if I'd like to see my mom alive, I should come home right away. I did. Not before I toured San Diego, explored Balboa Park, ate at In and Out, and walked along the beach boardwalk checking out the sailor boys and surfer dudes. ;-) After some time in the hospital, she got better and was released home, but she was also placed under Hospice care. My sister flew in along with her daughters (Dani and Madi) and her best friend, Chris. She's been the main caregiver and I've felt kinda lost as to what to say and do for my mom. I feel so much more prepared for her death than for her life in this state. I don't know how long she will hold on, according to my grandma's call this morning- not long, but I refuse to believe anything my grandma says until I see for my own eyes. Yesterday I realized that bills important to me (i.e. car insurance and cell phone) were not getting payed because normally my mom takes care of them. Now the job is passed along to me. This is very unfortunate because for the rest of the year I will not be working and thus be earning no money. I may be getting a sizeable refund from Vanderbilt, however, that should prove useful. Nonetheless, I've realized that I'm no longer a dependent, but now a struggling independent which I've been trying to put off for as long as possible. That's a little scary. I'm about to own a car and have my own cell phone plan and shop for auto insurance and who knows what else. Isn't it scary enough that I'm about to graduate, let alone taking on all these other things. Man, I wish the car that I'm about to own was a little better. On top of it all, I just lost my strongest outside-of-family support system in town today and all my other friends have left. I don't know how this worked out so that all my favorite people from high school managed to move away just as I got back in town. Nonetheless, it happened. Thank god for Summerbridge because I feel like I have at least a fair number of people in town I can connect with and many of them have already offered a lot of support seeing as they were dealing with me during some stressful and rough times with my family. I miss Vanderbilt people though. I have no idea when I'll get to see them or if, in the case of those who graduated, I'll ever see them again. The point of this message is that I miss people. I miss the way my mom used to be, I miss all those people that I won't see for so long, and I miss all the people who've left for other places. The condolence is that I have a lot of family around now to offer support and that is nice. But still, I miss you.

I miss you lots.

Heart.