Three years today. Gone but NEVER forgotten. Hi Miki. Please let it be so that you are SOMEWHERE and that you know I'm talking to you. Please let it be so that I WILL see you again. And PLEASE let it be so that you are pain free and in a state of joy and bliss.

What you went through in the last almost 50 years of your life would have broken me and also would have broken most people.  You had a courage and acceptance that I am still searching for.

Your choice to stop treatment and enter hospice so that your remaining days would be as pain free as possible, told me the pain you so bravely endured all of those years had finally become too much.  The pain caused by your last TEN AND A HALF hour surgery and the subsequent healing of most of your internal organs finally became not more than you COULD bear because you my friend, my precious friend, my hero, YOU endured more pain in your little body than anyone should ever have to.  But I think for you, it was the relentlessness of the pain, the side effects of the meds and the glimpse into a future of even more pain with the chemo and radiation that was going to be coming if/when you were ever released from the post op care.  I think you spent many hours contemplating your future while in that hospital bed. And you simply decided once and for all "ENOUGH!"  

Nobody blamed you. Nobody blames you.  And what you said to me when you gave me the news of your decision to "let go let god - or,  "G_D" as you always wrote, I think of them often.  I see your sweet little face full of concern FOR ME...always FOR ME...when you held my hands and looked me in the eye and you told me that you wanted to enter hospice and to stop all treatments, and then you said, to try to comfort ME "I've a had a good life. A BEAUTIFUL life.  I'm ready to go. I want to see Regina." And I knew that not only could I talk you out of this decision that rocked my world, but that I shouldn't and I wouldn't even try.  At that moment I understood what you were dealing with and I was ashamed that I could even begin to wish that you would endure more just so that I could SELFISHLY have you in my life, could have MY BEST BEST BEST friend for awhile longer.  So I told you I understood (I didn't) and that it was ok (it wasn't).  And I STILL clung to hope that you would somehow leave the hospital, and be able to go home for your hospice care and that by some miracle (because why WOULDN'T G_D want to spare someone like you?  

I'm not going to say he just wanted you there with him. I don't believe in any of that. I do believe that you are from SOURCE and you  still exist in some amazing form. I HAVE to and DO believe I WILL see you again!  But today.  After not hearing your voice, your laughter, in your kitchen, sitting in the passenger seat of YOUR car while YOU drove us everywhere, sitting across a bridge table from you, or across a restaurant table having one of our favorite meals, talking to you on the phone, going to every art fair in northern Colorado with you, walks around Wonderland Lake with Lily and Benny and watching the hang gliders descending all around the mountain...I miss you more than there are words invented to describe. 

Peace my dear friend.  And if there IS a G-D of any kind, you are in eternal bliss with your Regina who you missed so very much in your last years on the planet without her. I do hope that I was able to replace some of those moments of sadness over her loss with my goofiness and my dramas and maybe even my neediness because you, my amazing friend and surrogate mother, you were a giver of the grandest kind and I was a vessel that allowed you to satisfy for your need for nurturing.  You told me numerous times that you regretted not having a child and that you viewed me (only 2 years your junior) as the child you never had because I never really had a nurturing mother and you wished YOU had been my mother.  And we would fantasize about what a different life we both would have had. 

Perhaps in another lifetime for both of us we will be able to live out that story.  Blessings and all the love in all the universes my sweet ANGEL friend.  Missing you massively.

Marie