Leaving the nest

I often day dream about what my Mom would think about my life today. It has been five and a half years since she died and so much has changed.




Throughout college I always stayed pretty close to home. I went to school at The University of Northern Colorado which is only forty five minuets from my hometown Longmont, Colorado.  I often was back home spending time with a long term boyfriend I had at the time, hanging out with my Mom and Dad, doing laundry and getting home cooked meals. I think this pattern I had wasn't something my Mom was too fond of. She had moved away from her home, Juniata Nebraska, pretty much as soon as she could. I think I worried her that I stayed so close that I was not stretching my wings enough 

I had applied to the nursing program at the end of my sophomore year and been denied.  It rocked my world when I did not get accepted. I knew that I was supposed to be a nurse, nursing made my soul sing. It was what I had always wanted to be for as long as I can remember.  It was devastating.  I began to look at other schools and started making plans B, C and D.  I had to take some extra classes for different schools requirements.  It was an awkward time in my life feeling very out of synch with the perfect plan I had made;  Two years of pre-requests, get into nursing school, two years of that and then dream come true time.  It was during this transition year that my mom got sick with breast cancer.

Hindsight is always better than twenty twenty though isn't it?  That year 'in between' was part of a bigger plan. I was able to be at home a lot in the fall to help out. I knew she appreciated me being there, she thought of me as her own personal nurse. I now look back and cherish the time I spent with her.

She had completed her chemo therapy at the end of the fall and went in for her double mastectomy mid December. While she was sick, she had a very strong premonition that she was going to die. She was very nervous to have surgery for this reason. As she was recovering back in her hospital room after her surgery I vividly remember giving her a hard time that "she was wrong! She was still alive!" We had a good laugh. That was the best Christmas I had ever had, she was feeling great, my whole family was together, we had the best time. It was two days later that she got readmitted with an septic infection. She went right to the ICU and was there for eleven days before she passed away.

The following spring, I withdrew from classes. I took that time off not really knowing what the next step was going to be.  I was able to grieve.  If I had been in the nursing program, I may not have been able to continue.  That period of my life is not a fun memory to think of, I was a hot mess. Thankfully, time continued.  I was able to learn to manage the permanent hole left from her absence.

But, God's plan worked out, as it always does. I got accepted into UNC's nursing program the following summer and graduated spring 2010.

I hate that she wasn't able to be there for the excitement of receiving the thick envelope rather than the thin one from the nursing program after the second time I applied. I wish I could have vented to her about how hard the classes were. And told her about how coffee can be drank at all hours of the day and night with no sleep interruption, when one wakes at six a.m. for a twelve hour clinical after going to bed at two a.m. post care plan construction after seven hours of lecture. I wish she could have known about my preceptorship in Knoxville where I got offered my very first real job. I wish she could have been there to pin me after the five semesters of the hardest work I had ever done. I wish I could call her up and tell her stories of my patients and coworkers.

Most of all, I wish I could tell her that "I did it," I left the nest, became an independent woman. Drove 1,362 miles by myself  in my green Accord to move to a new city to start a job as a real nurse. Tell her that I had my very own one bedroom apartment that I fully furnished. That I learned to pay all my bills and even do my own taxes (something we would always get in a fight over). And now, as I am half way around the world in Africa nursing on a hospital ship, I wish I could tease her about how she used to be worried about my independence.

Before I left for The Congo, my dad gave me a card that read "The 'stay at home girl' is on her way to help others in the Congo, wow! Love Always, Mom & Dad." Thanks Dad :) I wrote this post months ago before he gave me the card.  It makes me smile and cry every time I read it.

Our last family picture at Elizabeth's college graduation