As many of you know being a caretaker to a loved one that has a life threatening illness is a period in your life where you go deeper and richer in your relationship together. If your loved one dies you are left with twenty-four hours a day of emptiness. Nicki and I spent most of our time together before and during her illness. When Nicki was diagnosed we made many trips to Gainesville Florida , followed with a four hour round trip drive daily for months for her to receive radiation to her brain. Seizures followed and rendered her unable to drive herself anywhere. Numerous stays in the hospital and weekly clinic visits, we were together. The day Nicki died I started to write. I needed to pour my heart out and I needed something to do but all I wanted to do was be close to her. Writing helped me to heal tremendously and I hope that if I share my story it will keep Nicki's memory alive and help you to have hope because I want you to be happy again and smile.

Chapter 1 - Letting Go

As Nicki reached out her hand for mine I felt a desperation that had never come from her before. I knew at that instant that I had to release her so I spoke beyond reality and into eternity. I stayed calm, I don't know why I didn't embrace her I just took her hand and softly told her that I would be alright. Being alright is honoring what God has placed before me. A journey that I call living beyond myself, I have never ask God why some of us are chosen to loose our babies, our precious children, or our future. I ask him what he wants of me. I am fortunate that my daughter left me so many things to do in my remaining time on this earth. She told me not to be sad but to smile, she always smiled even through out the three years that she lived with cancer. She ask me to help other people with cancer and she told me to stay positive and healthy. She always took care of me and praised me for being strong. I wonder if she knew that she was my strength. Two months before Nicki died my retina detached. She had just been informed that the tumor in her brain was bleeding and her time was close. She worried about my eye because after surgery my doctor told me not to read or drive for two weeks. It was hard then because Nicki had lost her ability to read while she was taking a literature class at The University of North Florida and I had been her eyes and her driver. People always ask me how my retina detached but I just couldn't tell them that I tore it rubbing the tears away. For three years I cried myself to sleep, my eyes were tired and sore. Now I can be honest and admit that in my private hours I was weak. Every night as I lay my head on my pillow and the tears began to flow I begged God please no, let this be a bad dream, I can't survive this please heal my daughter, please God. He simply held me, I felt his arms wrapped around mine as I wept. God whispered in my ear, I'm here child. I now have very little vision in my right eye but it is a blessing to me because Nicki never complained, not once so how can I. In fact she never told me that she had become blind in her right eye, I found out when her doctor tested her eyes because he could see from the MRI that the tumor had taken her sight. She left me an example that I will follow and a legacy that I will honor. I want to take courage and help others throughout the world. I know that the afflictions I have faced and the trials I struggled with are the very things that I will be remembered for. I never imagined that I would ever watch my child suffer and die right before my very eyes, and to be helpless to save her. I don't know even now how I did it. My daughter was my lunch partner, she loved to eat out. During her illness she couldn't even taste her food, or remember what her favorite foods were. She couldn't read a simple menu. She was my shopping partner but she couldn't wear her favorite jeans because the steroids caused so much weight gain. We made our hair appointments together but she only had hair on one side of her head, the radiation caused baldness. She finally got a used car when she turned 18 but she had a seizure a week later and couldn't drive. Seventeen through nineteen years old and her mom had to drive her back and forth to high school and college in her car at a time when her peers were gaining their independence she was loosing hers. She had a seizure at school and once again a trip to the hospital. Every time she left the house with a friend I wondered if I would get a call to go to the emergency room.

While I was living through those days I had no idea that Nicki was preparing me to live without her. We cannot know the trials that will come to us in the days ahead. We have difficulty seeing light through darkness but I know now that those days were the most significant days I have lived. Any mother who has given birth knows what a joy it is to experience life, especially when it comes through you. For me even the joy that giving birth brings does not compare to the pain of my child's death. Therefore, I know that if I have only lived a life of cheer and lightheartedness I have then missed the deepest things of life. The words of the master planner come to my mind, “Blessed are those who mourn” (Matt.5:4). God uses the deepest sorrow and pain to bring out the fulfillment of his promises. And as I mourn I rejoice because I know there is great joy in having a purpose for living, and a goal to achieve. I didn't ask to be where I am today, I wanted to die instead of my child but I wasn't given that chance. I will take on the task before me with my head held high and a smile on my face. It's not about me, I represent a living God and the spirit of my young daughter, I hope to honor and help many other people that have experienced or are experiencing sorrow in their life. I thank Nicki for giving my life purpose. Everyone must go through the darkness to enter the light.

I understand the trials I have faced in my life may be small in comparison to yours but a friend of mine once said to me, “grief, it is not a competitive sport.” We are all facing life together. I can only know my pain but I have a desire to feel yours, to understand and to be compassionate, to be human. The birds still sing in the morning and the stars still shine at night. When Nicki died I woke up the next morning and wondered why life was still all around me, and why the earth didn't shake. Everything was the same except not for me.

Chapter 2 - One Week After Burying My Child

I ask God why? And I know that we should never question God, but I did. I ask him why Nicki had to suffer and die. I ask God to heal her and let her be well again.

I realize that God doesn't always answer our prayers or give us what we ask for but a request like mine and other mothers who have buried their children seems like a cruel and unjust denial. I know that I need to keep my faith and continue to trust God and then I look around and everywhere I see mothers and daughters. It's as if the world were made of only mothers and their children. And what flashes through my mind is my Nicki at every age. I hold her as an infant in my arms, I'm taking a picture of her, it's her first day of school and I missed her that first day but I never let her know it. I always knew she was coming back. She's a teenager now, my how she's grown. I've started a hope chest for her and she's only sweet sixteen, I want to make sure that it's full when she delivers her first baby. I long to be the mother of the bride one day, I long to see her well one more time, I never did. I never will, be the mother of the bride.

I prayed so hard that God would heal Nicki, we prayed together, we went to church together, we held each other, we cried. We didn't want to part or let go. She needed her mommy and I needed her so badly. I wanted a miracle for her that's what I prayed for.

“Please God heal my child”. I don't know what Nicki's prayers were as she silently bowed her head and folded her delicate hands in prayer. When she told me that she was tired I ask her to keep fighting, she was loosing the fight and I couldn't accept it. She was strong, I was weak, and God was mighty.

I know she was worried about me and concerned about what would happen to me when she was gone. She became the mom and I the child. Now I have to honor her and make her proud. I keep her with me and I talk to her, she softly comes to me and talks to me and she is happy. She brings me words of encouragement and I promise her that I will help those who are suffering like she did, because she ask me to and because I know, I saw it. I am full of hope because as Nicki moved beyond this earth she left me something to do. Help others mommy, it's hard. I know it's not hard for Nicki anymore it truly is over for her, the pain, the suffering but her work is just beginning from heaven.