Tomorrow marks six years since my father died at age 92. I would say reality is that he really died about three years earlier when the dementia really hit hard. I remember him shaking his head as if he was trying to shake the real from the unreal, trying to make sense of the world as his brain changed and his life left him.

He was residing in a memory care unit in his last days. Shortly before his death he fell and hit his head. This fall marked the end for him. I was laying in the epilepsy monitoring unit at Mayo when I got the news that he’d be leaving soon. The last time I saw him it was via Zoom. His usually well-groomed hair was hanging down in a messy mop and I could just barely recognize him. He was just barely there. I like to believe that he could hear and understand me when I told him that I loved him, asked him to tell Mom and Grandma that I loved them and missed them too, and told him goodbye.

Six years later I’m being given another opportunity to think about that time and about my much earlier experience with death of a parent, my Mom’s death in 1984. It strikes how different the two experiences were. I don’t know how this might sound, if it makes sense to the average person, if it protrays the love I feel, or if it might almost seem heartless to some.

I will always miss my Dad. I will always want to pick up the phone and give him a call just like we did every week for over twenty years. I’ll want to stop in and visit and see him at the center of our family gatherings. That’s just the way it is. But, alongside the sadness there was joy with Dad’s passing for me. He was 92, had lived a good life, had made the lives of so many people around him better just by his being. He’d lost who he was and was afraid and angry without himself. He was done with life and ready to be gone.

Mom’s experience was different. She was still young, the same age that I am now. She still had kids at home and a growing circle of grandkids that she loved with all her heart. She had plans and dreams and things she wanted to see and do. She wasn’t meant to die. Cancer took her and unfairly stole away a life that wasn’t fully lived. I miss her in a different way.

I got my own cancer diagnosis a month ago. I am amazing grateful that I’m not living the experience that Mom did. Treatments are so much better and it’s almost certain that cancer won’t take my life at this time. Before my diagnosis I’d been living this year in celebration of my life and in honor of hers. My diagnosis is deepening that experience. I’m learning more about who she was, who my dad was, and who I am.

A few days ago I hit one of those emotional walls that exists along my journey. I found myself laying in bed that night, my arms wrapped tightly around my “magic blanket” (an afghan that my Mom and Aunt Coletta made for me that I received the Christmas after Mom died), and I cried. I found myself crying and just saying “I want my Mommy.” Literally, that was the message. It wasn’t fair that she died. It wasn’t fair that she left far too early. And, it remains unfair that she’s not here today to hold my hand.

One of my sisters told me a story the other day about a memory she had from when Mom was sick. I’d asked if she remembered Mom ever crying. I don’t remember her ever crying during her illness. My sister did. She was able to tell me of moment in Mom’s journey when both Mom and Dad were hurting. Dad was yelling, throwing things, and stomped off angry at the cancer. Mom cried for a moment when he left the room. I am holding that story close to my heart right now. It is reminding me of who I am. It’s giving me the okay to be angry to that point of shouting and throwing and to sometimes collapse in tears. I recognize both of these people in myself and am appreciating the okay that this story tells me to feel the feels.

I don’t know why this is all important for me to share today other than to say that love continues and it is okay to feel the feels associated with all of that.