My husband and I were in the hospital twenty minutes after she passed away.  I couldn't cry, I had been crying for fourteen days and as I saw my mother's lifeless body, I lost touch with reality.  We stayed with my mother until she started to get cold.  I left before they covered her with a sheet, I couldn't bear to see that.  I realized that I am a very strong person but not strong enough to deal with my mother's death.

We left the hospital and made the funeral arrangements.  We also had to perform another painful task.  Pack her belongings and do with them what she had asked us to do.  As we were sifting  through her possessions, I found 2 inhalers and asked my sister if she knew anything about them.  Because I am an asthmatic, I already knew the answer.  My mother had asthma and she never told us.   I had to call the doctor that prescribed the inhalers to find out when did she started to suffer from asthma.  I was stunned.   She never used her inhalers, they were still unopened and full.  I thought that life had played a really bad practical joke on us.  Asthma appears in a particular order, it is transmitted from parents to child and when the child grows up it transmits it to her/his  offspring's.  We had the disease in reverse order.  First my son, 15 years later me and finally, 7 years later my mother.

 When we were done packing and moving her belongings, we looked around and it had become  just an empty space.  It looked like a very pleasant, and comfortable apartment where you could have peace and quiet and there was not visible trace of my mother anywhere. That realization stunned me.  I stopped for a while  before closing the door for the last time and took a deep breath.  On that breath I smelled my mother, she was still there after all.  The apartment smelled as sweet as she did.  I could do nothing else but smile.  I wondered if the person who would occupy the apartment after my mother would be able to smell the sweetness of the air or would know who she was.  To an observer that was an empty space and my mother had never existed.  I noticed that I was still thinking about my mother as if she was alive and looking around the empty apartment put a finality to it.

My mother always asked us to make sure that she got cremated and to  scatter her ashes in the sea.  My son made all the arrangements for it to happen and my husband took care of the financial portion of it.   I love my husband with all my heart, but I loved him even more for letting me go through the pain of losing my mother, and everything else that comes along with the death of a loved one.

As we performed the task of letting her ashes be received by the ocean, I had the feeling that my heart was also scattered with them.  We also let twelve soft pink roses go.  We stopped the boat to see what was happening to the ashes and discovered that they were still floating  on the surface.  We didn't know how long we were there waiting for the ocean to take them into its bosom.  A few minutes later it opened its blue arms and welcomed them.  A funny thing happened, one single rose was left laying on the floor of the boat under my feet.  We knew what it meant; my mother had left that rose for us.  My sister asked me if she could keep it.  She did.

It has been over a year and a half since my mother died, and even though I said goodbye to her in the hospital while she was in the coma and again after she was dead, in my heart I refuse to  let her go.  I can make the choice of letting her go or of keeping her alive.  I choose to keep her alive.  I know that eventually, one day, I will be with her again and all the pain and suffering that life has given us will be forgotten and a new life will start for both of us, without painful memories, without memories of death. No one will ever be able to fill the empty space on my heart.  I loved my mother as she taught  me the most important lessons in life.  I watch her suffer in silence and die with dignity.  I hope I can do the same.