It feels like Fall today...

It feels like Fall today and it's bringing me down.  I don't remember exactly when my mom was diagnosed with cancer, but I think it was the Fall. The Fall always brings feelings of sadness, yet hope nostalgia?  I'm not sure.

Anyway.  I remember my mom being diagnosed with cancer.  I remember walking through the halls of my middle school feeling special for that reason.  But feeling like I had no reason to feel special.  Don't get me wrong.  I didn't feel special in a good way.  But special like "this isn't supposed to happen to kids my age and it's happening to me."

But I minimized my own pain.  I told myself, "people get diagnosed with cancer everyday."  People's parents get diagnosed with cancer everyday.  It's not like you have cancer.  So on and so on.  I told myself not to feel this strange sort of special.  Or maybe, not to acknowledge that I felt so.  I did myself a disservice.

But I wasn't prepared to deal with such a situation.  I didn't have the tools or the resources to deal.  No one told me it was okay to feel this way.  Or to feel at all.  No one really even told me what cancer meant.  I mean... I knew what cancer meant.  In the way that all 14-year-olds do.  But I didn't know the way that adults know.  Or the way that adults who have lost someone to cancer know.  No one told me.  No one held me in this strange feeling I was having.  In the strange feelings I was having.

I think back and it feels like no one was thinking of me.  Like, people were trying to think of me, but at the same time were letting their fears get in the way of constructively thinking of me.  And maybe I'm resentful.  Maybe that makes me feel like a child (in a bad way).  Like I can't let go.

Here's what I wish:
I wish I would have spent more time with my mom when she was diagnosed with cancer.
I wish I would have held her in my arms, resting my head on her shoulder.
I wish she would have taken me out of school when she was diagnosed with cancer.
I wish she would have taken me on a trip before her cancer got really bad.
I wish she would have let me live with her in the nursing home.  Even though it smelled like pee and old people.
I wish she would have let me visit her more often in the hospital. I wish someone would have made me visit her more often in the hospital.
I wish I would have hugged her more.
I wish I would have spent more time with her.  And less time with my friends. But mostly I wish I would have spent more time with her.