This time last year, we were waiting. I could go back in my paper journals and find out what I was thinking, read the notes I took, comb through my thoughts.

But some memories are left hazy, fuzzy, and just out of focus. A little muddy, maybe painted slightly rosier than you remember. A feeling of optimism still in your mind – regardless if you’re still left with the glaring reminders of how things really are.

This week, which we all knew would have to happen, honestly, sucks a lot worse than I think I imagined it would. As someone who writes a lot, I could come up with a more eloquent way to say it, and I can hear my Mom say, ‘Corrie, you truly have a larger vocabulary, you should employ it.’

But let us say it as it is: It sucks. It’s hard. I have fluctuated between tears, nausea, exhaustion, insomnia (worse than usual), irritability, and downright morbidity (telling Mom’s car “spoiler alert: she’s dead”). I don’t know whether to laugh or cry or maybe both at once and I for sure didn’t want to be one of those people who waxed on poetically about her dead mother, but… Here I am.

On August 26th (which is also my beautiful niece’s birthday) was the day we had the teleconference with my Mom’s doctor with the results of her July cystoscopy and where we would learn more details about what was going to happen. How they were going to treat her bladder cancer.

All in all, it was a good call. Some good news, some bad news. My sister and I still carried worried – as I am sure my Mom did. We had lunch and I probably watched the ball game with her.

Mom’s birthday was the next day. Today: August 27. She said ‘you don’t need to come back. Today’s lunch was good enough.’

I went home and told my husband the news, and told him through tears and sobs, ‘I am going back tomorrow too… Because what if it’s her last birthday?’ I could hardly choke the words out. ‘What if this time next year, I am crying over the fact I didn’t go back to spend her birthday with her?’

I went back. I can’t remember if we had pizza or A&W. We watched some of the (baseball) game. The Toronto Blue Jays were on fire in 2025. They won that night. It was a good day spent with her.

I never, ever truly expected it would be her last birthday on earth.

As I sit here writing this, I don’t know how I feel. Numb. In disbelief. I am trying to pretend today doesn’t exist. However, Facebook – for some reason – has reminded me three times since I logged in. Like I could ever forget.

Everything hurts today. Words. No words. The right words. The wrong words. Hearing from people. Not hearing from people. I think it is just one of those days where every emotion, every nerve fibre is exposed and open. Perhaps I just have a flair for the dramatic, perhaps there is just a lot of my life ‘life-ing’ right now and it is everything all at once, I don’t know.

I am not looking forward to November and that first anniversary. I feel like there should be more to say, but what can you say when a loved one… No, when more than a loved one is gone. Your mother, your rock. Your person. Is gone? There is no replacing someone like your Mom. She’s your Mom!! You can’t just erase that history, that feeling, that go-to person. And I know, not everyone has that person, and my Mom was a strange one sometimes, but she was always there. She was eternal (I’ve said that before), but she was always there. Always in the wings.

And now she is not and it burns. And sometimes it doesn’t burn as hot, but days like today, it is fresh and hot and it aches like it is brand new and like it is never going to stop. I only hope, like people say, it will grow easier with time.