There is nothing quite like the sensation of losing someone you love. For death, unlike love, is neither patient or kind. It shouts in your face and shoots bullets through your gut, and when you feel you can't go any lower the pain of death pushes you down even more.

I was 15 years, 101 days, 5 hours, and 35 minutes old when my mom died, give or take a few hours. It had been seven days since she had stared acting funny, five days since she was admitted to the hospital, and three days since she had been put into hospice that my mother passed away. I strive everyday to forget that last week of my mother's life but I can never seem to black out the moments when her mind didn't finish it's thought, the times when a once strong woman needed help into bed, or the brief moments when I knew I was completely helpless and I couldn't do anything to stop it. You can prepare yourself all you want. You can build up what you like to think is a steel shell, but the moment it happens....there is nothing you can do. Nothing you can say, and nothing that could happen to make you want to take one more breath.

To me, the weirdest thing that happend in this whole situation was not the sudden change of condition for my mother. Rather the desperate want to do her biddings left and right because there was this unbelievable feeling of nervousness in the air. Running off on erronds gave you the false sense of time to collect yourself that came tumbling down as soon as you returned to her side. The bravest souls in the world could not have faced what I faced without feeling sick to there stomachs. For the loss of someone so important to you is like swallowing fire and being burried alive with scorpions. Though the pain numbs your entire body it lacks the ability to cease the hot firey tears the leave you with a red streaked face that are associated with those who survive a death.

I can't fix this and I can't bring her back, and I know this. I can't wake up in the mornings ever again and give her sass. I can't get up on stage ever again and desperately seek her face in the audience because no matter how hard I look she will never be there. When I want to cry the only shoulder I will have to cry into is that of my pillow, and it doesn't have the comforting hands of a mother to help your cause. I can never look her in her big blue eyes again and tell her that I love her just because I feel like she needs to be reminded. I feel guilty for not telling her things that may have been minor at the time, but seem so important now. I feel sorrow at the fact that I didn't tell her that I saw the "Hangover". I get a knot in my stomach that I didn't tell her that I wasn't best friends with the same person anymore. I feel guilty that I blocked her out of my life in the last year that I was able to be with her, and for that I shall never forgive myself.

It has been three days since all of this happens and I have yet to really feel emotion. I feel like I should be lying in bed all day crying, but instead I talk and laugh with my sisters. I'm not sure if this is normal, and I know that it's not fair that I get to be alive and laughing and someone like my mother does not. Three days ago I had a mom, and I find it difficult for me to chance my verb tense when I talk about her. I start to say, "My mom is a minister," but I realized then and there that is isn't the word I should be using anymore and I correct myself, "My mom was a minister," is what I always repeat. People try their hardest to be respectful of this, but I can see the glimmer of curiousity in their eyes as they search my own eyes for an answer. My thoughts as they try to examine the inner workings of my mind all I can think is, "Good luck with that one buddy, even I don't know what's going on up there," and that is the truth. If I thought I was confused before this I hadn't predicted how I am now. It's greater than confusion, it's complete numbness.