May in General

I like the month of May in general. I like that the weather starts to get warmer, the blooming flowers, the smell that's in the air, the activities I can do outside now that the rain is gone. But these are surface things. It seems there are a lot of things that I like on the surface, but there's a different story in my soul. May too is one of those stories.

May reminds me of my momma. Every year my mom and her best friend had an Iris sale. It was HUGE. It took round the year preparation for one or two weekends of sales. They ate, slept and breathed Iris. 2 years ago they were getting ready. Then mom had a doctor's appt and it changed everything. Within an hour she was admitted to the hospital. Within 2 days she was having trouble breathing. 3 days she was hallucinating, and 4 days she was dying in ICU.... As I was driving through town yesterday I saw the signs up for the Iris sale.I hadn't remembered yet that this was THAT weekend. Does your heart ever just go "thud?" That's what mine did. I had plans to do something else, but instead turned down the road, and parked at the Iris sale. It just FELT like momma there. Her best friend saw me and just mouthed "thank you" and we smiled through the tears. We didn't have to say anything else, we both knew why I was there.

Tonight I was at Safeway picking up some milk, and saw the card section as I walked to the check out. I found myself staring at the mother's day cards paralyzed. I wanted to get a mother's day card. I wanted to read them and look at their pretty pictures and pick the perfect one for momma. What a sight I must have been: some idiot lady crying, touching the fronts of the pretty cards for half an hour but never opening one. I couldn't do it. I don't have a momma to give a pretty card to anymore. It will be mother's day this coming Sunday. I will dread every single second of it. I will put on a happy face so to not ruin it for all the other normal folks, but I will be silently dying inside the entire day.

The middle of May reminds me of hubby's graduation from Marine Corps Boot Camp. I should remember that event for exactly what it was...spectacular and strong and valiant--but I don't. I can't. 2 hours before I was to fly to his graduation my daddy had a heart attack in my mom's ICU room. I have NEVER gotten past this. I'm still VERY selfish about this time. I felt betrayed. By my momma for being sick, by my daddy for letting mom's health effect his, by hubby for not being there when I needed him, and didn't have anyone else. And by God. Honestly. Was this fair? I am an only,lonely child and both of my parents were on the brink of death and I was expected to be strong and fly to San Diego to happily support hubby's graduation? These events changed who I was. Even though momma didn't die that day, and neither did dad, and I DID make it to graduation....and I am SO thankful for all of that....I changed.I have become jaded.

The end of May is momma's birthday. Not her real birthday, but the one she came to celebrate: the day her bone marrow transplant in 2000 engrafted (started to work by the cells regenerating themselves.) We almost lost her then too. Her body fought through a year's worth of chemo in 2 days to kill everything in her poor little body, but just barely leave her spirit alive to fight. Then she had to painstakingly endure infusions of packed red blood cells and platelets brought to just above freezing so to keep the chances of infection a minimum. Shock, infection, hallucinations, new allergies to necessary medicines all while be quarantined and the list goes on. That was no way to live. Mom would have been 8 this year. The transplant didn't work. It never got rid of her disease, it only made it worse. She developed a new disease as a direct result of the chemo. It did give her 6 more years. But I wonder every day, especially in May if she thinks it was all worth it?

I am comforted by this: "Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus." -Philippians 4:6-7

And each night as my brain, against my will, plays back these times, I pray to God that this passage of hope was meant for me too.