If your body is damaged, wounded, it can be fixed, but if inside, mentally, you are wounded you cannot fix it, it’s hard. Haile Gebrselassie
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As a child I climbed a tree, one that I was told not to climb, along with my sister.  I was on a branch and said to my sister not to step on it with me.  Well she did not listen, the branch broke and down we went.  She walked away with just some scrapes, I broke my arm in three places, it hung in an almost perfect circle.  It healed rather slowly, but, it did heal.

Now when it comes to our mental wounds the initial sting of the wound fades over time and it’s place is a scar that we carry with us all of our lives.

So it is with me.  Scars of being told I would never be anything, I would always be poor, and the list goes on.

1999 was nearing the end and I had planned to sit up and watch the New Year ring in. I wanted to see if the Y2K threat would materialize, which it did not.  Just before December 31st I received a phone call from Ontario.  It was about my mother who became ill on Christmas day and now being rushed by ambulance to London, Ontario.  I was told to come home because this was rather serious.

I made a series of phone calls trying to arrange some funds to travel to Ontario.  I did receive the funds and found the next Grey Hound bus, the ride would be about seventy-two hours.  I remember half way through the trip I thought to myself well mom has gone.

In Toronto I decided I needed some sleep, I called my family and told them I was spending the night in the city and would catch the bus out in the morning.  I arrived at my grandmothers place and was filled in with all the details.

My uncle said he would take me but I would have to drive.  We arrived in London at St. Joseph’s Hospital.  We found my mother’s room.  I walked in and I did not recognize her, she had swelled up to three times her size.  She was in an induced coma and one of those thin silver blankets covered her.  It shocked my system seeing her that way. I stepped out of the room to get some air. As I was walking I felt someone pushing something against the back of my knees.  It was a nurse who recognized that I was about to faint. The nurse made me sit down.

That was January which rolled into February. One afternoon as I was approaching my mother’s hospital room a doctor approached me.  He told me to contact the family, if they wanted to see my mother once more.  Only my brother and one uncle showed up.  They arrived later that day. 

We were asked to step into a conference like room where doctors explained my mother’s condition, that she would not recover.  They asked for our permission to withdraw life support.  The next morning they did, within minutes she passed.  That was February 11, 2000.

In fours year after her death I hit rock bottom mentally.

So, I urge those whose has a mother still living, love her dearly, give her her roses now, not when she is dead.  You only have one Mother.

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