Big Daddy and I are coming up on an Anniversary.    How we met is sort of a long story and not nearly exciting as, say The Pioneer Woman’s, but basically in two weeks it will be the anniversary of the day Big Daddy and I met in person.  The beginning of our beginning.  Eleven years ago.

And, this time of year is also the anniversary of a beginning, but a beginning of an end.  I don’t recall the dates, but five years ago this time of year my parents had me over to dinner, fed me something I liked and told me the pain in my Mom’s back wasn’t a slipped or ruptured disc, it was a tumor.

Tumor.

TUMOR.

Cancer?

They weren’t sure, but it was likely.

Cancer.

CANCER.

It was like a movie.  Everything slowed down.  I considered vomiting my potatoes.  I don’t know where my brother was, but my sister seemed to continue eating.  I think she was only 16 or so and while she knew all those words, I’m not sure she put them all together.  She was only sixteen and you can fix cancer.  Sometimes.

The past few weeks have seen me losing a grip on my tightly controlled panic.  Four years ago this time of year, I started having crippling panic attacks.  There’s more to that story too, but needless to say, it took medication and therapy to get me to a place where my panic floats along the surface and doesn’t have me tightly in its grasp like it used to, but lately, I’ve been faltering.  Last week, I edged close to an actual panic attack.  I told it to eff off, but it was there.  Making faces at me.  Taunting me.  Telling me that I wasn’t rid of it yet.

I took a little extra zoloft that night and woke up feeling a little better, but the specter of the attacks is at my back like Norman Bates waiting outside the shower curtain.  I’ve been upset over this, not just the malaise but the fear of what panic did to me before.  Fearing that more than the attacks itself.

After my shower today, I was rocking upstairs and it was quiet and I thought about how MUCH I was missing my Mom lately.  So much.  I could feel it.  It weighed on me.  Tears  are pricking my eyes.  I moved a box of her things, things she hadn’t worn in decades but that managed to smell like her somehow and I considered curling up inside of the box in the fetal position.

And as I rocked and thought maybe it was just the coming holidays that was causing me to miss her.  Another Halloween that she wouldn’t see, another Thanksgiving and another Christmas when it hit me that this was the time of year of her diagnosis and more than that, it was five years since then.

And the world lurched to a stop again and the lump came into my throat and I thought of that dinner when I hadn’t noticed how different my parents were acting and how I tried to ask calm, rational questions because the Princess was there and Big Daddy was on business in Mexico and the last thing I wanted to do was lose my shit because not only was I someone’s mother, and mother’s do NOT lose their shit, but I’m the oldest and we don’t lose our shit either.

I didn’t eat anymore.  I went home.  I put the Princess to bed.  I called Big Daddy and I climbed into the shower in our rental condo and I sobbed.  I begged. I pleaded.  I bargained.  Big Daddy came home.  Life became surreal.

The beginning of the end.

I don’t know the exact date.  After the summer and before Halloween, our pumpkins purchased during a time of optimism not carved.  No candy bought, the Princess trick or treated with Big Daddy and my Brother and me trailing along behind. Probably lost in our thougths and trying to put on our happy faces.

And so, I’ve been  itting here, considering my sadness, my apathy, my longing, my panic and missing the anniversary of the beginning of the end that’s been sitting right here in front of me.  Stewing some place in my brain that I buried or refused to acknowledge but that was there, needling me.  Reminding me.  Calling to me.  Paining me.

Two years later, I miss her. I crave her presence and wisdom. I crave her humor. I miss her voice and the way a room felt with her in it. I don’t really miss her cooking.

When my Mom died, I assured the Princess that my Mom would be able to see us, that she’d still be participating with us in the way she could, but my grown-up skepticism scoffs at what that actually means. Does she watch us? Does she have better things to do? Does she miss us to or is there no such thing? And, the worst still, what if there isn’t a heaven and then there’s nothing at all.

I have picutres of my girls as newborns laying in my Mom’s lap. She was tall with long legs and she’d lay newborns on her lap, their head at her knees so she could look at them. There will be no picture of Baby Bee laying like that. No personal contact. Like Littlebit there will be nothing but stories and unlike Littlebit none that actually involve her. Baby Bee and my Mom will never meet on earth, but I hold on like a fiend to the childish hope that before Baby Bee left Heaven to come to us that she and my Mom got a moment together, to know each other. To decide that, yes, they would have been good friends like my Mom was with the Princess and like she wanted to be with Littlebit (at seven months old, Littlebit was too little to have friends).

Grief is an unknown disease. You can’t predict how it will act and how you will act with it. How it will affect your body or your mind. You don’t know if it will make you grow or mow you down. It is guaranteed to change you.

I realized this past week, that I’m entering my Sad Season. In three weeks we will mark the second Anniversary of my Mom’s death. It’s crept up on me this year, as we deal with a flurry of activity related to the kids and Baby Bee and getting our house on the market or sold or whatever. I found myself feeling weepy and restless and finally put two and two together. Easter came last weekend, which is when we got the news that my Mom, at 49 years of age, would be moved into hospice care. There wasn’t anything else that could be done for her. Easter morning, as the girls found their baskets, my Dad called telling us to come. They weren’t sure of her time. We went. My heart broke. I’ve never been the same. Literally.

Last year, I upped my zoloft to deal with this time. This year, I won’t for the sake of Baby Bee, but I’ve identified why I’ve felt so tired and off. I’m sad. I miss my Mom. So, to get back on track, I’ve reverted to my most basic; armed with schedules and a to-do list. Hoping that forcing myself to march in order will stave off at least the restlessness.

Make no mistake, this isn’t a misguided attempt to NOT be sad. That couldn’t be farther from the truth. But, I promised myself when she died, that cancer got no more. That was all cancer got. It wasn’t going to get my happiness or my happy memories or anything else. It was getting NO MORE PURCHASE IN MY LIFE. All I was going to give cancer from that day on was a big FU, some possible nose thumbing and a stink palm if I got the chance. No more than that. So I make a list. I plot a schedule. I revel in the sound of a pencil scratching across paper. I march on because cancer got all it’s going to get out of me.