Watching my mother die. She was sick with cancer from the time I was ~6 or 7? Until I was 12. This would be immensely long if I detailed everything over the years.... given that that's 5 or 6 years span. But she had surgeries and was left with some serious scars (to the face no less... so there was no way to hide them). Kids from my class followed her in stores and pointed. It only got worse over the years. We eventually moved across the country and moved in with my grandparents. She didn't go out often so no one from school really knew.

A year after moving, she died. In that year I watched her look progressively worse. She got paler, became absolutely skin and bone, she needed a trach in her throat to breathe and a feeding tube and/or liquid food. Her face kinda drooped and her eyes streamed and oozed. She wheezed and coughed a lot; I used to leave the room we shared in the night once I thought she was asleep, so I wouldn't hurt her feelings, because she kept me up with it so I slept on the couch a lot.

One day she was whisked off to the hospital. I didn't get to visit, my grandparents never took me. Soon after, I woke up late for school one morning and walked into the living room yelling at my grandparents for not waking me up in time, I was now late! I walked in there and my grandparents, aunt, uncles, cousins, everyone was all sitting there silent, and then they told me.

I have no conscious memory of her face without all the scars, the watery drooping eyes, the drool because the scars prevented her mouth from shutting all the way. I know what she looked like without them because of old photos but when I think of her, the face in my mind is that. I got a camera when I was 11, and was testing it taking photos and I guess I ignored her asking me not to take any of her and took some. I found them on the computer a year or two ago and it was traumatizing seeing just how awful she looked, like a woman on her death bed (well, I guess she was). And yes, I deleted them as soon as the feeling of being punched in the gut went away. It makes me sad I don't really have any photos with her, beyond baby photos. She never liked her photo taken, even moreso once her face was scarred. So there are no photos that I know of, of her and I past when I was 3. (I have one of her holding my 3rd birthday cake and I was so excited to blow out the candles :-))