Best friends
She sits with her mom every day.
They’ve always been more than mother and daughter. They’ve been best friends. Never living more than a block apart from each other.
She is grateful for her mom who has always been there to help, support, and listen.
So now it is only right that she is here. Beside her mom. On the palliative care unit. Having taken leave from work to do this.
Helping her mom through this final journey.
She cherishes the memories she has of her parents 53-year marriage and loves how they still talk and laugh like teenagers.
She thinks about her close-knit family. She laughs when she remembers that her parents unwrapped the game players they bought for their kids and played them for months in secret at night before wrapping them and presenting them as Christmas gifts.
She remembers their April Fools’ jokes and their wonderful senses of humour.
She thinks about her mom with her humour, strength, and hard working and optimistic nature.
When her mom got cancer, she fought so hard to get through the treatments, and beat the cancer.
But it returned.
Although she knows it is the hardest thing ever, she tells her mom if she is ready to go, that is okay.
It is typical of her mom (even on the palliative care unit) that she says, “I will let you know when I’ve given up fighting.”
