30.

I feel how much love I have for you and I will try to work towards holding that same amount of love for myself. I know you would want me to do that. It's hard but you've taught me I'm capable. I will do my best to live with this loss on my own terms, treating myself with the love and kindness you always showed me. I can't change what happened, but I can be my own companion through my grief. Yes, there have been blessings, sacred moments, opportunities, but this also is just the worst. Both things are true.

It's the end of this writing program. Does that mean a new beginning starts after? It's hard to think about endings and beginnings. What about the threshold in between? That's where I am. Your life ended but I'm still in this threshold. I'm no longer who I was, but I don't know who I will be, yet. I know you'll help me. But I feel off balance.

If I could, if I had the power, I would go back to the beginning. I would go back to the beginning of this story and re-write every moment, every happening, that led to you getting cancer and dying. If I had that power I would do it. I would do it in a second.

What is my story? Right now, my story is that I'm in pain. Pain that can't be fixed, or managed, or ignored. All of this is painful. It takes up space. It shifts the very foundation under my feet. The landscape is new and it's a whole new world I have to discover and learn to exist in. But I'm also not there yet. I don't want to learn how to exist in the new landscape yet, I don't even know how to start learning. I am in between.

Normally, you would be here. You would be a guide. An anchor, a tether. But you're not here, so it's different now. I'm having to learn who I am, without being in relation to your physical presence.

What will come next, I don't know. I don't know and it's okay. You would tell me that. The ending of your life, it's not how I would have written the story, it's not how I thought it was going to go. But it happened and here we are. Is this a new beginning? Do we ever step out of the threshold?

It's not something I want but I will step into it. I will exist in this threshold for as long as it takes. Until I feel ready to begin again. For now, I will tend to all that comes with an ending. I will practice all that you've taught me, and I'll do it in honor of you. I love you mama. Thank you for it all.