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Making the Best of the Worst: A Tribute to My Mother



I have seen many memes and jokes over the past several weeks about how 2020 has been a terrible year so far. I agree. This year began with my mother passing away from heart failure and a laundry list of other ailments on January 9, 2020. I wasn’t expecting the death of Kobe Bryant to affect me as much as it did considering I wasn’t a basketball fan, but just knowing that he and the others who died with him had families, dreams, and lives to live, and the fact that it happened the same month that I lost my mother, made it an extremely emotional event for me. Now, as of the writing of this post, we are amid the global pandemic COVID-19.

Finding any type of normalcy since my mom was first hospitalized in July 2019 has been a task I have been failing at. My workouts fell by the wayside. My suffering finances suffered even more. My mental struggles almost got the best of me on a few different occasions. Now, as you may have heard from numerous sources, is a time to create a new normal. I had to start doing that anyway once the medical staff caring for my mother said that they believed she was terminal.

I have to be a mother without my mother. She has been a daily part of my and my daughter’s lives since before my daughter was born. We live in a place where we know only a handful of people and we are starting a new life from scratch. And now on top of all the other viruses and illnesses that exist that we fight to avoid daily, we are now under a shelter-in-place order to avoid COVID-19. Nothing about this year has been easy or desirable. However, I personally have found a silver lining to all these dark clouds.

I hear my mother’s voice daily because she left me with a wealth of information to get through the tough times in life. She supported me in my pole dancing endeavors. She thought I’d make a good yoga instructor and was proud when I told her I was working towards a fitness certification. She pushed me to publish my poetry. She loved me. Because of that, I’m still alive today. The creativity I was born with and the resourcefulness that she taught me has been coming in handy. Making a lot out of a little. My daughter and I currently live in a very small space, however, there is just enough room for my yoga mat on the floor. I don’t have all my belongings with me currently, but I have what I need and have figured out how to make room for the things that I needed and had to acquire. In all the chaos, I feel that a part of me has been reborn.

Who knows what the rest of this year has in store? Whatever the case, I feel that we will be ready for it.



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