Sixteen Years

Today I have thought a lot about where I was 16 years ago today, I so vividly remember the moments and the pain and numbness I felt.  Losing my mom at 19 years old was devastating, and something that I thought would always top the list of the hardest things I would live through.
I have run through many emotions since Georgia was diagnosed with the same cruel disease that took my mom.  I have been angry, feeling like she was supposed to prevent this, why wasn't she watching over us?  Her name is Georgia's middle name because I wanted to pass along her strength and wisdom not a legacy of disease.
I clearly remember a conversation I had with my mom in the last weeks of her life, I was telling her that it wasn't fair, she responded, "honey, life isn't fair."  We talked about her belief that she had in a sense signed a contract with God, agreeing to the terms of her life, so some how, at some time she was okay and agreed to how her life would unfold and she couldn't go back now.  This is not to say that she wasn't mad as hell that she was dying, she worked so hard to raise my sister and I to be who she knew we could be and now she woudlnt' be around to see the fruits of her labor.
That contract she talked about has crossed my mind many times over the years and more recently I have found new meaning in it.    I have come to believe that perhaps there was a paragraph at the end giving explanation as to why she died at 53 years old.  I have to believe that she knew when she signed that contract that many years after she died she would be the reason that her namesake didn't have to.
I love and miss you mom.  You are talked about and remembered.  On a clear day when you can see Mt. Rainer I point to it and ask Georgia, "what is that?"  She responds, "Grandma Claudia's mountain."

Grandma Claudia

Georgia Claudia