Mom's Memorial

I remember the good old days...I remember the smell of strawberries in the morning. You used to make us tarts with warm strawberries, rhubarb and whipped creme. I remember running through the back yard atching butterflies hatch from their cacoons, playing with my sisters and other neighborhood kids and the verious animals we had growning up. I remember all the arts, crafts and baking projects that was a lot of fun. When I was sixteen we left Berkeley and moved to San Francisco. At first it wasn't easy settling into the new life and fitting in but we got thru it together. You were always by my side. It wasn't always easy growing up with a disability but you always seamed to know what to say even if others didn't agree you knew what I needed. Together we could to anything. Then you got sick for the first time. I remember staying up with you at night through all the rounds of Chemo and surgeries. I remember how sick they made you but at leased the treatments gave us more time to be together. Then you got sick again the cancer was back but you kept fighting but this time was different. You kept fighting but the cancer was stronger. The first years of the disease I couldn't tell you were sick. You were so cheerful and brave. Everytime it seamed to progress you had another trick up you sleave. It seamed like it was endless but then in the last year things were different. It became clear. I watched the stong independent woman that I knew as my mother start losing her strangth and getting weaker but you still tried. You were in so much pain we didn't know until three weeks before there was a tumor in your back that was pressing so much it broke a bone in your back and it cause you so much agony and pain it was so hard to watch as you lost the ability to walk from all the pain. You had to be on steroids and radiation which made your hair fall out , gain weight and lose your memory along with the brain tumor you had. When you couldn't do your favorite activites anymore then it really hit me tone of bricks I was losing you and there was nothing I could do to stop it. I remember sitting with you one afternoon in you boyfriends backyard. We went up to Sacramento for the day to his house. You wanted to knit, you tried to knit but you could not knit. You couldn't remember how to do it and you got so frustrated. I wanted to put my arms around you and tell you everything was going to be ok. I wanted to cry the activites you once loved were causing you pain. You were fading from us. The cancer took everything from you. It took your independence, your looks, your memory and soon it would take your life. It took you away from us as you faded away but I still have lots of memories of us together and there isn't a day that goes by were I don't think of you.